Screw ATV's

Friday morning. My normal drive to work. My normal traffic on I-81. The normal sun in my face. My normal bumper buried in a white van in front of me. Damn. Fender bender... my fender is bent. as is my radiator making my car undrivable. The radiator leaks dammit. Parents came and picked me up from work and took me to God's Country. Yes, it's a race and no I'm not dead. It's a marathon (50 miles) way up in Potter County, PA. We checked into our cabin around 8 that night, ate and went to bed. Next morning I went out for my race. It as going very well. I was riding in the top 10 overall (6th for a while, then 8th, then 9th) until I had a major derailleurment. I was cresting a road climb and the [poor] course markings told me to head through a gate to my right. There were 6 guys on ATV's coming through and the fourth one stopped and waved me through. I went through, thanked him and continued on my merry way down the road. About 20 min later I came to an intersection with no markings. There was a road heading off of the one I was on at a really steep angle. I paused for a minute, then went straight, figuring that no markings meant continue on. I went about a mile up the road and still saw no markings. I turned around and headed back to the intersection. After a quick check for missed markings. There were none. I turned around and headed back in the same direction. About a mile later I ran into another Bean's rider, Mark Backastow, riding back towards me. Problem. He was lost, which meant that I was lost. We decided to head back to the intersection and check out the other road, figuring that it had to be the right way. We rode about 5 miles down that road to no avail. On our way back we ran into one of the ski patrol guys on an atv. He said we were way off course. We had missed a turn back at the gate. We headed back to the gate and found the singletrack we were supposed to descend two hours ago. When I had come through the gate two hours ago, there were three atv's blocking the trail. Damn. Damn. Double Damn. Triple Damn. We dropped down Pepper's Trail and came out at Aid 2. We refuled and finished the race. It took us about 6.5hrs. It should have been about 4.5. Mark should have gotten 6th. I should have been about 9th. Damn.

The good news is that I was very far ahead of everyone behind me, and rode strongly for the entire 6.5hrs that I was out there. My legs felt really good, and all the miles I have put on have been doing something. I am happy about that, although sad about the fact that I have probably dropped back a bunch of places in the MASS Endurance standings. I was 3rd, and needed to finish ahead of the 4th place guy in the next two races to hold that place. I was in a position to put a lot of time on him at God's Country. Now I have to basically win at Iron Hill next week to get my podium back. I'm going to go for it. Hopefully I can get on the podium. and redeem something. I need to ride smart and fast... and that is exactly what I will do. All for now...