Worked over.

I've never felt so worked over after a race. I don't know what it was but after this race I just wanted to go home, curl up in bed and pass out for a month. Standing around in the cold waiting for Rhonda to collect her ribbon was pure misery. My legs ached and I could barely keep my eyes open. I guess that meant I had a good race.

There were close to 20 guys lined up with me at the start, only 13 or 14 finished. The pace from the start was predictably fast since the singletrack started 100 yards from the line. I didn't want to be "that guy" who hung everybody up so I took it easy off the line and settled in near the back. Unfortunately after crossing the water I realized I was stuck behind "that guy" so I hung on his wheel till the first road section. Passed him and a few others on the first bit of road but once I hit the BST I started getting caught up behind the expert women. On the climb I concentrated on reeling in the rest of the expert women so I could enjoy the full extent of bombing down Clarks with one way traffic. Unfortunately there must have been a horse parade up Clarks in the rain storm because the trail which was buff on Saturday was postholed from the ponies on race day. My legs were pumped from the downhill but my HR recovered so I slugged across the BST. Pre-race I was concerned about the lack of passing on the BST and my concern proved warranted. Since I start with the first group of sport men and I am among the slowest of all sports I get passed A LOT. Most people were polite, waited for an opening and went. A few didn't wait for an opening, didn't even announce their pass and tried to muscle by me. Twice this resulted in getting tangled up and once on a corner I was literally pushed off the trail into the trees resulting in a nice tear in my brand new jersey. My favorite pass was by Napoleon Dynamite himself (yes apparently he races Icup). I heard somebody approaching me from behind huffing like a freight trail. "Gosh, I need to pass" he said. I said "call it and I'll move". "I need you to flippin' pull over, gosh". "Everybody else is getting by me just fine" I said. Napoleon replied "You know, there's like a boat-load of gang members on my team. This one gang kept wanting me to join because I'm pretty good with a bow staff so you better pull over". (OK maybe I made the last line up but the rest was pretty close to word for word) He finally got by me at the first road crossing and proceeded to eat shit and get in my way on the first corner after the road. Later just after the start of the 2nd lap I saw him taking the walk of shame back to the start area. Retard. I did what I could through the golf course and BBQ alley but my energy was waining fast. I hadn't fed well and was feeling it. This is becoming a consistent problem that I need to address. Took a few big pulls on my bottle through the start/finish area and headed out for the 2nd go around. By the time I hit the BST my energy drink had kicked in and I got my legs back. I lapped a few beginners and got lapped by a bunch of experts. I got passed by Mike Oblad with about 100 yards to go but figured what was the difference between 13th and 14th so I let him go. It was actually the difference between 8th and 9th with eighth being the lucky number for a swag giveaway. I was kinda upset by that. I love swag like no other! I ended up 9th out of 14 or so with a bunch of DNF's. The race was fun but I'm not sure how many more of the mostly singltrack races I want to do until I get faster. It's pretty annoying not being able to get any rhythm going on the singletrack because I'm getting passed all the time.

Rhonda had a good race. She hung with Tasha and Dot until the climb where they dropped her. Normally she would use her mad DH skills to try to catch back on but Tasha and Dot's homecourse advantage erased Rhonda's small DH advantage and she never saw them again. Tasha rode strong for the win and Rhonda held Jolene off for 3rd.