The transformation is astounding, and the justice, poetic. For just one weekend a year at one of the United State's premier car- and motorcycle-racing tracks, Lycra shorts replace fireproof suits, full leathers are doffed in favor of nylon-mesh hockey jerseys. The scent of wildflowers and the gentle whir of in-line skates and bicycles carry on the breeze where days before only clouds of exhaust and the scream of Formula One cars and factory-race motorcycles filled the air.

Welcome to the Laguna Seca racetrack, home of - take a big breath - the Rock Shox Sea Otter Classic Sports Festival & Exposition. Originally called the Laguna Seca Challenge when it was created in 1991, the road- and mountain-biking event added in-line racing and roller hockey to the mix in 1994. This year, the Classic, held March 24-26, also incorporated an unsanctioned aggressive skating competition.

Covering the Classic's already legendary road race was K2/Kryptonics skater Eddy Matzger. The following is Matzger's impression of the 45-minute-plus-one-lap gaspfest:

Water seems a natural, if not exactly welcome, accompaniment to an annual multi-sport festival called the Sea Otter Classic. Last year's rain-or-shine edition on the Laguna Seca motor Speedway in Monterey, California, was held in a torrential downpour, and this year's running promised to be no different because it had rained without a break in northern California for two weeks. Even though I don't mind a race in the rain every now and then (in flat-as-a-flapjack Holland, it sometimes seems as though a wet race is the rule rather than the exception), the idea of hydroplaning down Laguna Seca's infamous corkscrew turn at 50 miles per hour wasn't exactly attractive.

It wasn't until the morning of the race that I discovered my apprehensions were unfounded. I rolled out of bed in a nearby hotel to a postcard-perfect day; the sky was clear as a bell, and the grasses covering the hills surrounding Laguna Seca's eminently skateable 2.3-mile racetrack shimmered in the breeze. The track itself was dry, and the fortnight of rain had scrubbed the asphalt clean of any oily residue.

Still, wet, dry or oily, Laguna Seca is easily the most technically challenging course I've ever skated, with everything from flats to hills to hairpin turns. Its most notable features are linked: A highly technical, nearly vertical decreasing-radius corkscrew turn may be the track's most challenging feature, but racers must first climb 300 vertical feet just to stand atop it. The once-a-lap grind up to the jumping-off point is akin to dying a slow, painful death, then recovering, then dying again. (Climbing it makes me think of Sisyphus, that unfortunate hero of Greek mythology whom Zeus condemned to an eternity of pushing an enormous boulder to the top of a steep hill; every time the boulder neared the top, it would roll back down and Sisyphus would have to start over.)

The race began with a pistol shot, and a few minutes later the pack and I began our initial charge up the hill's severe gradient. I should say that I now weigh a portly 170, the heaviest I've been in my six years as a racer, and this year's climbing was the hardest yet. It's funny, though, the more I suffer, the less I want to relinquish my title to that hill. Some Laguna Seca skater have dubbed the hill Matzger's Mountain - it's where I move to break my opponents, come hell or high water.

The climb is a real strainer, separating the men from the boys every time. Normally it takes two or three laps to do the deed, but this time the shakedown was complete the first time up, thanks to a suicidal attack by perennial contender Sandy Snakenberg (Mike's Bikes) and fellow workhorse Brian McKay (Skate Pro). Their early fireworks forced a fast chase pack to form. Moving in lock step, Stanley Bunn (Mike's Bikes/TwinCam), Dan Burger (Mike's Bikes/TwinCam) and I passed Snakenberg and McKay, crested the hill in the lead and went steamrolling down the other side. The immediate anaerobic overload brought on by the hill caused our chasers to detonate. They were out of the running, and the race too soon became a three-way war between Burger, Bunn and myself.

The serious parrying and thrusting began immediately. Burger's sizzling downhill style (superior heft and a deep body position) allowed him to open up a substantial lead by the hill's bottom. Forced to close the gap, I had no choice but to pull a drafting Bunn back up to Burger, setting the stage for rattling counterattacks. Covering these nearly made me go cross eyed. Engaging in the usual customary playful banter was an impossibility - not that I was in the mood anyway. Were it not for that Godforsaken hill, which gave me a reliable opportunity to hurt my breakaway mates, I would have spent the race in deep trouble.

As we smoked past the more popular spectating areas, the approving roar of the crowd was loud enough to penetrate my dense, finger-tingling anaerobic haze (my heart rate never fell below 186 for the entire 52 minutes). And unlike the clap-track piped in for racers at the Disney World race some weeks prior, the applause and shouted encouragement I heard at the Sea Otter Classic were from real people whose enthusiasm was genuine. Maxed-out skaters responded to the cheering like horses to the lash - if not always with increased speed, then with increased effort. The crowd noise attracted other spectators who stopped watching other competitions to see what the commotion was all about. To me, it was easy to see - the Classic's arduous climbs and breakneck descents were providing intense and inspiring entertainment that actively involved the audience. You couldn't help but stick around to see the outcome.

Charging ahead of the final climb, I opened up a 100-yard cushion so as not to worry about making up any lost ground before the final sprint. Burger's deficit seemed insurmountable as I crested the hill, but by the bottom he blew by me once again as if I were standing still. I had to claw like mad along the pits to catch up. Once or twice I tried to shake him with a quick burst of speed, but he clung like molasses, forcing me to finish him off with a crowd-pleasing drag race to the line. Too tired to raise my hands in victory, I could only coast to a stop. The rest of the field was cooked, too - only six skaters were able to finish on the same lap as the leaders.

I do like to win, but the brightest part of my day was a prerace occurrence that gave me hope for the future of speedskating. As I hurried past the hockey courts, running late as usual for the start, a uniformed kid saw the stack of PowerBar postcards I was holding and asked for one. Before I knew it, a small horde of his hockey-stick-wielding friends came running after me in the soggy grass, demanding postcards and autographs. I begged them to catch me after the race, but just then a voice on the PA announced that there were still 15 minutes to warm up, so a pen was snagged from a bystander and the promised autographs given. Their interest increased as I told them about the corkscrew, and soon I had hockey players tagging along with me on the warm-up lap, trying it out for themselves. I'll never forget the joyous, blood-curdling yells of those neophyte racers as they bombed the corkscrew for the first time. They were hooked, and their enthusiasm seemed to give lie to the claim some folks have made about racing's supposed decline.

You never know. Maybe we'll see them out on the track next year, eh?