State STXC Race. Shoot me now, please.

I'll try to keep this as short as possible, but I'm guessing it will be rather verbose in the end.

This past weekend, I toed the line for the Oregon state short track cross country championships. The race was 45min, go till you blow. I had a shitty start, and the guy who won the race ended up putting 10 seconds into us on the first lap, and probably got most of his final 30 second winning margin within the first three laps.

Despite the seemingly non-technical nature of the course, it was hard to pass, as there was no place to recover, or in reality, no area that wouldn't punish you for any extra efforts to get away.

After a couple of people ahead of me exploded, I decided to ride the wheel of the dude in front of me. In case you were wondering, this is where the plea for termination comes in to play. The guy I was racing for second place was a whippet lean college kid who couldn't have weighed more than 125lbs. He was strong, and technically sound. However, I was able to cover any and all accelerations of his with relative ease, and had no major technical bobbles of my own. The thing was, I was perfectly content to wait until 10min to go to make my move, and if that failed, try to out sprint him at the end, instead of actually racing my bike like a respectable human being, and at least TRYING to get away.

Plan A fell apart when the team who was running the show didn't have lap cards, nor did they feel inclined to tell me the time gone or remaining any of the 4 or 5 times I asked them. Now, I've never been a sprinter, but when they rang the bell for the final lap, I figured that I could out-muscle him to the line, instead of taking a flier. 1-2min efforts being one of the few things I'm good at, this should have been the tactic I chose, but the brain does weird things when presented with oxygen debt.

Unfortunately, we passed a lapped rider during a muddy section, which lead to a slightly bigger than normal gap between myself and the 2nd place guy heading into the last corner. I hit the gas, and closed down all but a bike length, but it was too little, too late.

Now, I love to blame other people for my failings. We all do. But I'm going to stand up and take complete responsibility for my 3rd place finish. I raced like a Nancy, and I deserved nothing more than 3rd place. I got what I worked for, which was a decent finish, a step or two below the guys who actually raced their bikes.