Hammer, brake, slide, repeat

Today's OVCX race was a mud-fest. The title is about how it was ridden, hammer anytime you could, then as soon as you got speed, brake for a turn of some sort, slide into, through and out of the turn, then hammer again. It also featured multiple run sections (some that would have been ridable in dry conditions, some that were run ups no matter what), but given the mud your shoes picked up tons of ground and 1)weighed about 5x what they normally would and 2) made clipping back in pedals very difficult at times.
I snapped this pic of my pedal and front derailler cluster, which are pretty packed w/ mud.
Also, it was muddy enough that Scott Bond took a pit stop to hose off his bike and shoes mid race (he was having a crappy race and decided to have some fun by pit washing during his race, it was hilarious really).

All that said, I did have a very good race though. I took the whole-shot and opened up a significant gap on most of the field in the first lap. Just one other dude bridged to me, and he's beaten me every time we've raced (usually by a lot to boot), but I'm not going to stop trying. Basically it was he and I trading the lead until 2 to go and he pulled away for good; I just couldn't match him.
So I rode in for a solid second place. I still don't know what my gap on third was, so I just rode as hard as I could the whole time.
I was very happy with my race an very happy with my result.
I can usually gauge my effort afterwards by how bad I feel and for long I feel bad (what I have dubbed "Effort Sickness"). Today I felt really bad for about an hour or so. And it was the kind of bad where I'm not sure I'm going to be able to drive myself home. That means I went really hard. But I got feeling better. And I made it home.