Pre-Ride from Hell

I think I should have read my biking horoscope for today. I think it probably would have told me that my stars were very much not in line.

The day started off okay, some work I had intended to do around the house was better tackled with two people so I left that and got an early start on the ride portion of my day. I went down to Concord, stopped in the city to get a tux fitting for Jake and Tara's wedding. Got in and out fairly quick everything was running smoothly. Get to Pat's Peak with plenty of time to do two laps or so and still get home before Gina gets home from work...perfect. Until I actually got on my bike.

Right from the get go I could tell my energy levels were off. My heart spiked pretty early into the ride and I had a real hard time getting things regulated. The trails were still very wet from all the rain we've been having. I decided I would just ride the course slowly to avoid causing any damage just to get a feel for the terrain and then head out. For some reason riding slowly and me dont mix at all. I completely lose the ability to ride correctly. Tipped over a few times, got extremely muddy, every time the trail tilted up my heart rate would spike and take far too long to come back down. Not sure if it was the humidity or the sequence of things I had eaten for my last few meals or what, but my engine was not firing on all cylinders.

My troubles quickly spread to my brain and I was unable to follow the course, basically at all. I went off track at least 3-4 times. It's not excellently marked but I was definitely missing some obvious turns. Almost killed myself on a waterbar on the decent, for some reason I didn't even realize it was there until the last second and was barely able to absorb it. After the decent I lost the course again and ended up getting back on track on a previous portion of the course heading back the way I had come somehow. At this point I was so confused/frustrated that I just pointed the bike down the neareast ski slope and got back to the base area and packed it in.

http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/8481733

I lasted about 30 minutes, didnt even make it 3 miles. Quite the waste. Didn't get a workout and didn't even get to see the whole course. But what I did see has assured me that this race is going to be tough and more than likely leave me quite battered after 6hrs.