We had our final race of the series today, it was really surprisingly nice weather for December, high 40s and high clouds. I did a 'proper' warmup on the trainer, and missed callups so I had to start at the back, -oh well. An old mtb race friend/mentor showed up to watch, that was cool, I haven't seen him in years; having an old race/training/riding buddy cheering you on is helpful!
It was at a fairgrounds, lots of grass, some mud, and a pretty big runup, probably 50' vertical, about 'stairs' steep, and some singletrack down from the runup area.
I worked up to probably 20th before the runup, I've been doing runups like this one as part of my regular training for about a year, and today was the payoff. I was able to pass about 5 guys on the first runup, and pretty much stayed even except when we came to the runup and I'd pass a couple more, working my way up to 13th at the finish, and 8th ( for the season I think). There was a section where we went through a covered arena (horse) with sand, kind of like a chicane off a main gravel road, the sand had a packed line, maybe 12-18 inches wide through a steady curve for 100' or so. First time through I got off on the soft edge and had a close call, the next times through I'd remind myself to 'look where you want to go' and I was fine. 2nd to last lap a guy passed me kind of unnecessarily close just before that sand arena, he got off the edge in the arena, went from one side to the other, and lost a lost of speed so I was able to blast by him again, I put a gap on him on the runup and even though I'm sure he was riding faster than me I was able to finish ahead of him due to the runup.
Dead legs tonight, and thankfully I was not in a sprint to the finish situation (like the last 2 races), those really hurt me.