Crouching Squirrel Hidden Monkey: Things you can pull out of your dog's ass

was just one of the many interesting dinner conversation topics at Chris's house the evening after the Firecracker race. I guess we were tired and strung out after a 2.5 hour race with 4500 vf of climbing. The course was brutal and fun, with an awesome downhill - continuous from top to bottom - and a steep slog back up to the top on singletrack. We had to do 4 laps of the fun/pain cycle. I didn't preride the downhill, so it was all a surprise on the first lap - especially the table-top with an unexpected steep runout, which cause me to land too front-heavy and go flying over the bars, towards an old-growth tree that didn't look like a soft impact. Managed to twist my body and only graze the big old conifer, resulting in upper and lower body scrapes. Otherwise, was fortunately OK, and back on the bike in less than 30 seconds after untwisting my handlebars and re-railing the chain. Hmm, I better setup the rebound correctly on my rear shock, as the the crash shouldn't have happened under normal circumstances.
The Crash made me a bit hesitant afterwards, as lost confidence in my bike setup (I found out later something was wrong with my fork, as it was bottoming out on any sharp hit). Caught up to the people who passed me while I was down on next climb. But then for the next 2 laps got in this annoying cycle where people who were climbing faster than me passed me 2/3 of the way up the climb, then I would get stuck behind them and their feeble downhill skills for half the descent, virtually twiddling my thumbs waiting for a passing opportunity - there was no way to pass unless someone in front of you screwed up or crashed, as the downhill was continous narrow single track. This was the only failing of the course, and a critical one if you got caught behind the wrong people. I don't usually get pissed off or annoyed during a race, but I'll admit I was unhappy to not be getting full enjoyment out of the downhills. Losing time was secondary to loss of enjoyment :) Finally on last lap I had the downhill to myself and had smiley face syndrome, though was hard to hang onto the bars after 2.5 hours of racing. Actually almost missed the free ride, as a climber came up behind me just as I was entering the final downhill. Put over a minute on him on the final run - so the downhill times actually have some impact on final results, unlike most races. Ok enough whining :) Many people commented that I should have been more vocal, asking slower riders to pull over lest I run them over. Yeah maybe I try that next time - but these weren't like beginners, just slightly slower Experts, so not a big deal to me at the time. Anyways had I not crashed, I probably would have able to avoid being caught in the downhill slowdown cycle. Shit, are you still talking about this ? Shutup already !:) Now start working on slow-rider harpoon.