Race Report: 2025 Sea Otter Classic, Fuego XL Men’s19-29. Bonked my head
Race Report: 2025 Sea Otter Classic, Fuego XL. Bonked my head
Race: 25’ Fuego XL Men’s 19-29.
Date: April 12th, 2025
AVRT racers: Hunter Wilson
Top Result: DNF ): Race ended in a concussion.
Goals and beginning: The goal is to qualify for Leadville. I started the single track just behind the front group to conserve. Ended passing people throughout the 1st hour. When we hit the backside of the course a few single track sections before the long fireroad section, I knew two friends of mine were 2 or 3 minutes up the trail from us and the group I was in was taking it too easy. I decided to attack in on a tailwind road climb and easily put a few minutes on the group. I took one other rider with me, who was hurting worse than me but rode well on the descents. He was very motivated to ride hard. I let him go on a fire road climb because he was riding over my target power for too long, thinking he would blow and I would recatch him. This was a big tactical mistake because he bridged to another rider on course who he was able to work with on the windy fire road sections. I was riding tempo just watching them rotate just a minute ahead of me for about 25 minutes.
Middle Section: I ended up soloing the race for the next 2 hours. For a while I could hear the group I had attacked in the early part of the race behind me, but they never caught me. After locking myself onto Dillon Holinagers wheel through some windy fireroad sections in the late part of the first lap, I got towed into roughly 5th place on the course for my category.
Ending: I was riding super strong, riding corners very smoothly, and fueling well in the early part of the second lap. I felt prepared for the last 1.5 hours of the race and expecting to start bringing back riders in the last single track section after the fire road miles. Which is generally when the wheels start to come off for most MTB riders and my roadie miles start to shine.
Crash: Then I crashed (AHH)! There was a shaded, soft, sandy, loamy corner with a rut the first lap that stuck out to me as technical but with the right line could be ridden very quickly. I went into it on the second lap and found that as I was hitting the rut, it had gotten a lot deeper from the other riders racing it. I pitted the front wheel and went over the bars at about 10 miles an hour. I landed on my side and felt fine. Started to ride, but my head hurt pretty good.
Concussion: I started to show significant concussion symptoms over the next 30 minutes including an inability to ride hard, distorted thinking, loss of balance, sensitivity to light, sensitivity to bumpy terrain, hyperventilating, and extreme emotions without warning. I decided to stop racing and found as my heart rate went down I began to feel better. Ultimately I rode about 3.5 hours and 50 miles of the race. Not my ideal finish, but I am happy with how my form is coming along and hope to heal this concussion quickly and safely so I can return to training as usual as soon as possible.
Course: Two times around a 32.5 mile course. Starts and finishes on the Leguna Seca Raceway. Begins with the Corkscrew climb the 15% road climb into single track. Single track rollers then turn into a fire road and then back into single track. Lots of fire road on the back section of the course followed by large sections of steep and rolling sections of single track.
The most decisive climb before the finish is Lookout ridge. It's an exposed and steep fire road climb broken into two parts by one 100m false flat section. It is preceded by a long section of steep up and down single track sections and followed by a steep fireroad descent and then climb section into some single track hairpins that take you onto the corkscrew descent and into the finish line.
Fireroad sections and singletrack sections in the middle section of the course were extremely windy. Lookout ridge was a crosshead wind. Trail conditions were loose and sandy.
Strava Link: Hunter’s Strava
Nutrition: On the startline I had Gel. On my bike I had one 20oz bottle of water and one 26oz bottle of a malto mix I make, (roughly 80g malto and 20g - 30g of sugar, 12g of salt, and Noon tablet). I had a USME pack with roughly 150g of carbs and 1500g of water, high sugar content made it very tasty. Had a GU roughly every 45min. Took a 20oz bottle on the second lap with roughly 85g of malto mix and appropriate amount of brown sugar content.