First Cross Race, Ouch!

I don't want to make any excuses here, I basically sucked. I raced in the 3/4 instead of the 4 because it had a 2 hour later start time, 11am, and I figured it wouldn't be that much fast. Truth be told, I don't know if it was that much faster or if I was just going that slow the whole time. But I finished way, way, way, way off the leaders and must closer to the last place guy than the first place guy.

The course was not suited to someone like me. Of course the only course actually suited to my needs would be on that starts at sea level, ends about 1,000 to the 2,000 feet higher. Throw some barriers and a few tricky corners to screw up the purest of pure climbers and I probably have a chance. This course was a fun one, but only gained an approximate 1' of elevation per lap. There were technical sections but there also a lot of wide open power sections, which, made one of my greatest limiters glaringly obvious. That limiter being the ability to put power down.

I started pretty much in the back because they staged us by registration number. I registered like a week before the race so apparently that means I start in the back. I felt like I got a decent start, you know, considering and was trying to make my way up through the first half of the course. Somewhere in there, and I'm not exactly sure where by my moving up switched to moving back and that was a pretty consistent theme for the rest of the day.

Things you need in a cross race:
-Power
-Bike Handling Skills
-Snap
-Muscular endurance, a lot!
-Aerobic endurance, not a lot, but it certainly helps.
-Will power.

Things I had for this race:
-will power.
-1/2 bike handling skills.

Will power does not win races. It does however make you fight really hard to catch the group of three guys in front of you that somehow seems to be getting further and further away. It then transitions that focus to holding off the guy behind you who seems to be getting closer by the lap until he finally passes on the last power section. It also motivates you to sprint to get on his wheel which I was unable to accomplish.

So, the positives, because I mean, it was still fun:
- I beat the guy in the bowling shirt. But, if there were 2 more laps, who knows.
- My tubeless tire set up seemed to work great. I was running about 30lbs of pressure in both tires and with all the roots in the tree section I'm pretty sure I would have flatted with a tube in there.
- There was an obstacle of logs lining a walking path. The course went over it, 180 degree u-turn and then back over it again. I rode that section every lap which makes me feel good about my bike handling skills. Not sure it was faster to ride but I wasn't getting passed by guys getting off their bikes either. Even in traffic.
- I was sort of motivated before, now I'm really motivated because getting your ass kicked by that much is bad for your soul, or something like that.