wors 9

The weekend of the race in the Green Bay area started of with rain which canceled the pre ride, damn! Race day came with two days of rested legs due to not pre riding. I wasn't sure how to feel about that but the race started and i felt pretty good. I was heading into the first section of singletrack in about 4th place in my wave with my teammate Jesse leading the charge on his home course. By the time we got out of the first singletrack section my lungs were burning from either the dust or the speed of the leadout. At which point I probably should have started pacing myself, instead I just kept the pedal on the gas. Somewhere during the first lap a nice fellow came up from behind me and we started chatting, this young mans goes by the name of Ben or BW if you will. He asked how far ahead Jesse was, i replied i wasn't sure. At this point we were slidding through the singletrack pretty good and BW said "don't worry, if we keep this up we'll catch Jesse" About a lap later i was cooked as i watched BW set out after Jesse by himself all I could do was watch. My legs were burning something ferce and I just couldn't keep the pace any longer. I couldn't help but wonder what had gone wrong? was it air pressure in my fork? air pressure in the tires? my fittness? my lack of taking a draft? a mix of all these things?
I suffered through the rest of the race and finnished 36th or something to that effect. Although i didn't finnish very well I was proud of myself that I didn't let up. I left what i had on the course and had a blast in doing so. It may not have been a victory but I'll take a "bad day" like that over a good day on the road any day.