Buckwallow

This is the race and course that i've always had mixed emotions about.  during pre rides i absolutly love the course but once the race starts things start to get sketchy.  Last year when i raced here i had a few mechanical issues (ie. cracked frames and my seatpost dropping on me at the start).  But anyways this year:

The tuesday prior to the race i went up with the lib boys and we got the lib school bus rollin through thoses trails for a good 3.5 hours of solid riding.  This was a tone of fun, the course looked great and i thought i was ready for the race. I still had a little hesitation at one point in the elite section,  West D' Nile, but this section was so cool.
Saturday made my way up with Andrew and met up with Justin at his cottage.  We rode over to the course and did our customary 3 laps then rode back to the cottage.  Later we rode over to a beach and gooffed off on a Tarzan rope for a while then rode back. i felt ok at the end of the day, but was a little worried i may have done too much work that day.  We had a great pre race feast, as always.

Race day came with a cooler morning, but soon the temperature rose and became the scortching day they called for.  Got a pretty good warm up in with andrew even though his knee was killing him.  LIned up at the start and was ready to rip it up.  I was confident and excited cuz i had a chance at podium because Bretton and Marc-Antoine were in Windam.
The start was great, had lots of power and settled in the a train of the top 5 guys : Dan, elliot, Corey, Dominic, and myself.  Everything was going great, we were flying and i was keeping up no problem, we started to put a little gap on the chasers, then we came to West D'Nile and things were downhill from there.  Unfortunately i had did a stupid screw, something that shouldn't have happened.  We turned a corner and i went to tight and hit a rock and crashed, my chain fell off at the same time.  I had to stop and put it back on.  When that was all done i was in last place, and stuck behind these guys throught the rest of Wst D'Nile.  We got out and i dropped the hammer in attempts to catch the others, i mannaged to catch the chase group of: Micheal G-P, Daniel HIll, and Ian Bagg, at the start of the second lap but by that time i had just blasted out the hardest lap ever in the hot weather.  I was beat, my energy was dropping and so was my motivation.  They dropped me again and that was it. 
I managed to finish the race, i thought of dropping out a few times, but said "No i'm going to finish".  I caught and passed Ian because he was cramping bad.  I finished in 7th place ( but something like 11 minutes back) not my day for racing.

Oh well thats mountain biking for ya, unpredictable and crazy.
I'll come back at kelso and do great, i love that course and it suits all my strengths, that will be a great day for racing, hopefully!!
Catch ya guys later