Obviously, my biggest mistake was getting lost. When the group of four guys I was with approached the turn out of the first section of singletrack, all four of us failed to see that the arrow on the tree was pointing down into a parking lot, and not up into a rocky hell. I wasted 45 minutes hiking to the top of a ridge and riding back down. We did 5 extra miles of mostly walking.
When we finally figured it out and returned to the race course we had gone from being 15 minutes off the front of the pack to very near the back. I had to have lost at least an hour on that excursion. Next time I absolutely need to pay better attention to the course markings.
My crash and subsequent bloody elbow, though not really my fault, took a little steam out of the kettle. It was a hard, hard crash (we were moving at over 28mph, and landed on sharp rocks) I'm honestly surprised that I didn't break anything on my bike (or skeleton). I got up from the crash fairly quickly, but I know that I spent almost five minutes cleaning my glasses and asking the other guy if he was ok. And once I was back on the bike, it was slower going because my hip and arm were throbbing. I guess the lesson there is that I need to install some spikes on my wheels so no one can get close.
Otherwise, I'm perfectly delighted with my race. My nutrition was spot on, I felt fit, and I had no problems with my equipment. I would have finished very close to, or under 9 hours without getting lost. That would have put me in the top 15ish single speeders. Not to shabby for my first hundred miles.
or ashamed
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