It was a pretty awful showing - I threw it in about 3/5ths of the way through (7.5 hours).  I've had pre-rides of the course go much better than that.  So what happened?  I wish I could blame a mechanical or some unlucky encounter with a tree, but the truth is that I just failed miserably.  

I didn't follow my plan.  In a race like this, nutrition is very important.  I'd spent the summer refining my on-bike eating - settling on the right combo of Sustained Energy/Hammer Gel/water, figuring out how much and when, etc.  And I'd gotten pretty good at doing it right.  But come race day?  All completely out the window.  I should have stuck with the "every hour, on the hour, no matter what" routine that I'd set up, but I did one of those "Okay, when I get to the top of the hill" and then, at the top of the hill "crap, I can't let him pass me, I'll get it at the bottom of the descent . . ." things.  And before I knew it, I'm three hours in and had consumed less than an hour's worth of calories.  The smart response, of course, is to consume your favorite anti-bonk solution (Clif Shot Blox, for me) and then get back on schedule.  But this day? Oh, no, I decide to try and make up for it all at once.  Yeah, bad idea.  I'll spare the details of the result, other than to say that it kept me from trying to consume any more calories after that.

I also got incredibly frustrated by a chain suck issue that I thought I'd solved.  But it stopped me dead a few times (and resulted in the first time I've ever picked up and thrown my bike).

I finally called it quits after I realized 1) that I was getting really unsafely sloppy on the descents, and 2) that I was almost certainly going to miss the cutoff at the next aid station, so, you know, f(@k it.  I'm okay with the first half of that reasoning, but I'm pretty appalled about the second.

All that said, I did get some great riding in.  I surprised myself with an excellent (for me, anyway) showing on what was probably the most technical climb of the day, and I did a damn fine job bombing down Wolf Ridge, which had previously given me trouble.  Also met and rode with some very cool folks.

But in the end, I'm incredibly disappointed.  I was never going to be in contention for anything (beyond the Lantern Rouge), but I'd really expected more (and could have delivered more, any other day). Nothing to point to but myself for screwing up what I'd intended to be my highlight of the year.