Subaru Cup Report #2 - XC Race

XC Race: 16th of 18 finishers. At one point I thought of pulling myself from the race, but made myself finish and own up to 16th as punishment for being so shamefully out of shape. Oh lord, it was awful. I started out strong, and was where I thought I should be (around where I thought I would finish) but no. I faded hard and got passed by a few people. Then I thought I would level out, but I got passed by more people. Then some more. Then I thought that there couldn't possibly be that many more people behind me. But there were, and most of them passed me, too.

Grimace.

A few high points of the race: I heard I was one of a handful of women who rode the big rock with the intimidating looking drop down. It wasn't too bad, and I took it with more speed each time. (I liked the technical areas. I'll practice launching off of features for the race next year.) The second time I rode the drop down I heard someone yell "Yeah! Pegasus doesn't give a crap!" in the style of Honey Badger, like 'it ain't no thang for her', or so I imagine. That was nice.

That brings me to the other nice part of the race. There were a lot of people cheering for me. Even a lot of the guys, when they came around and lapped the tailings of our race, said hi as they passed. That's nice when you're clearly not doing so well. Thanks for not pretending not to know me and hiding your face in shame at my performance, everyone! I get pretty wound up because I think that people will watch how I do in the race and comment on it later, or catalog it away- especially for track racing, where everything is on display. If anyone was paying attention this past weekend, they probably would have filed me under 'Not A Threat', Sub Category: 'Might as well be dead'. However, the cheering gets it through my head that even if friends are noting these things, they don't really care and will heckle and cheer me on anyway. So why get wound up? Yeah.