Charm City Day 2. Lessons in how NOT to prepare for a cross race.

1) Spend the entire day before the race driving/riding in a car and going to a museum.
2) Don't ride the day before
3) Eat steak and sushi (which was awesome-freshly rolled-yum) the night before
4) Forget to set your alarm so that you wake up 40 minutes late (thanks to my wife for getting me up then or it would have been worse.

 This ensures that you will not have enough time to warm up and you will feel even worse than you normally do during the 1st 2 laps.

 Got a 10ish minute warm up, had some nice woman re-pin me since I was an idiot and put it on the wrong side. Got to the start and decided not to peg it at the beginning since I didn't really warm up. Got stuck at the back, then had someone go down in the mud bog in front of me, dropped my chain and promptly lost about a dozen places. Kept slipping back and on the next time through the bog decided I saw " a good line", got 2/3 of the way through and stopped immediately, doing a stylish endo. Kevin Dillard was there but was changing the card in his camera and missed capturing it. I did provide entertainment. I started feeling better and started passing some riders but got caught by the leaders with about 1/4 of a lap to go. A mercy killing I'd call it. Had guys beat me who have never even come close. Yay! 52 out of 59ish finishers. Guess this one willl be dropped from my cross-results.com points. I hope.
 On a positive note, Heidi V was at the reg desk and signed me in; always nice to see her and while watching the next race saw another cute Hupster named Kimberly so now I have another racer to root for.  Got to see some friends I hadn't seen since last cross season, had a good bison taco and a nice Belgian white from Du Claw brewery, so it wasn't a complete wash-out.
 I'm not racing next weekend but will be doing BCA the following Saturday. too bad; I was feeling good in training.