The jersey is old, before the days of sweet wicking material, on top of that it was going to hit almost 90 degrees. I knew this was going to be a problem so I loaded up on water and enduralites. I got called up and lined up behind Brian Matter, knowing he would have a good start.
We took off and I got a good jump off the line. At the end of the lead out field I was sitting in the top 10.
We came to some fast double track through the woods and I moved to 8th. I was really pumped to be up with the leaders and although we were going fast but I wasn't riding harder than I wanted too. The course was probably 80% single track. I settled in place and kept up as we wove our way around the woods. We had a group of about 10 so on the fire roads we had a really good pace line going. I was still feeling good as we started the second set of single track. I knew this was going to be a long race but wanted to hang on as long as I could. All of the sudden I heard a *PING* and my pedals just spun, I knew what happened and the guy behind me confirmed it.."your chain broke pull over" I got out of his way so that he could stay with the pack. I ran back and grabbed my chain. It only took a minute or two to get it fixed but in the time about 35-40 people got around me. I took off again a little flustered but still focused. I got back into the grove and started to pick people off. I think this is were I began to run into problems. I was feeling good at the start and didn't feel like I was going overly fast, now I was playing catch up and was really pushing, and passing a lot of people. I tried to stay focused but I was starting to catch some fast guys and had to really push to get around them, do this a couple times and you loose focus. On my 3rd of 4 laps I was starting to hurt I was still passing people but could tell I was a little sloppy in the single track. I ran out of water half way through the lap, and took a hand up from a spectator. I was hoping this would get me back to the water station but it didn't. Things went from bad to worse VERY fast! I was getting really sloppy, dizzy, and couldn't slow my breathing. I ended up crashing and it took me a long time to get up. I knew at this point I couldn't do another lap and had to get back to the water station FAST or I was going to be in trouble. I took the last gel shot I had started walking/riding against traffic to get out of the woods. I made it out and got to Cathy, she had 3 bottles ready for me and I killed all of them. It took me some time to get relaxed again, we made it back to the car loaded up and took off.
In all I was disappointed I had to turn in a DNF but on the other hand I was glad that I am figuring out good warm up techniques for solid starts and hanging with the top 10. Everyone is going to have a problem here and there, it is how you react to it. I can't wait to get my Wipperman back and be able to run the next race with confidence.
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