Chase the race

I should have known things were going to go wrong. Race morning for the DINO MTB race at Logansport started out fine, but different. I'm a creature of habit, very ritualistic and superstitious to boot. That said, whenever possible, I eat Muesli cereal on race mornings. It's just what I do. But at TN training camp in March we ate Bob's Red Mill steel cut oats prior to big volume training days. I normally don't like oatmeal. I don't like the texture and it's flavorless gruel to me. but steel cut oats have a totally different texture and a little salt and a little maple syrup and it's pretty good stuff. Anyway, I decided to eat some of this prior to DINO Logansport. No biggy in-and-of itself, but eating cold cereal forces me to open the fridge (to get out milk) which causes me to see the flask of First Endurance EFS gel that I put there the night before, which reminds me to put it in my bag of "food" and water bottles. Well, eating oatmeal, I didn't have to get out milk, so I didn't grab my gel and I showed up to race w/ no nutrition.
Whatever, I bummed a couple of gels from my friend Will, not my brand of choice, buy I was thankful that he had some extras and was willing to give them to me.
FF to race time.
I didn't have the best stat of my life, but I felt good. The first lap is slightly shorter than the following three due to the position of the start). First lap is ~20min long. I'd say by about 12minutes I had moved into third. Then at about 17minutes I picked up a huge thorn in my back tire. Then by ~20min30sec (just after passing through the lap chute) my rear tire was completely flat. Crappers.
I stopped and got it fixed, but lost probably 5minutes or so in the process. The entire Cat 1 field had passed me at that point and a good portion of the Cat 2 field had as well. So I was left chasing for the remainder. I was able to ride good and hard and passed back 3 Cat 1's and was just a couple minutes off of a few more so it wasn't a terrible day, but I was riding good enough that w/out the lost time doing bike repair I might have pulled out a good result. It's worth mentioning too that w/ the co2 cartridge I was only able to get ~25PSI in the tire and I still had over 1.5hrs to ride so I really had to nurse the rear of the bike to make sure to not pinch flat...no one wants to double flat.
So, meh, whatever. Not the best day ever, not the worst.
On the way home Lindsay and I stopped for food at Red Robin hamburgers on Indy's far north side. I have to say, the burger was on point. I also have to say this place is why Amerikkkans are fat. Okay, not "this place" but the ethos of this place. 1) I ordered A Coke (as in one coke). I like the sugar, etc after sweating my balls off for 2hrs, sue me. Anyway, before I had even finished the Coke in question, the waitress had brought m another one. I understand that this is "good service," but I'm a one Coke-pony. 2) this place has "bottomless" baskets of fries. That's absurd. We were asked more than once if we wanted another basket of fries. Again, their just trying to be good service people and I'm sure there are a host of people who come just for the endless fries,but god damn, all you can eat fires? Really? Obviously that kind blew my mind. And yes, I fully understand it's not much worse than a all-you-can-eat buffet, but at least you have to get up a time or two (or three or four) at a buffet. Not that it matters.
Enough of that. I think I'm going to go to Chicago this weekend to visit my brother and his family (my niece turned one last week). And then the following weekend there's the final MTB race of the season which I may or may not do. I'll just see. It's a course I've never done particularly well at, but I like to have the racing in.
We'll see. That's it.