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The 4th race of the NYCROSS series was located in Bennington, Vermont on Sunday. After the heavy rain on Saturday, the promoters rerouted part of the course, so that it would be less of a mud fest. Unfortunately, that made the laps a little shorter, but it was still a great course. Among the features of the course were: three step-ups on the side of the hill, which was ridden by a few, a set of barriers, and a short, steep run-up that leads to a paved climb. There was also a sand pit, but it was barely noticeable after all of the rain.

Since it was a Halloween event, we had a fun costume short race. Rey Misterio showed up for a good elbow-to-elbow action with a land shark, a rooster, a school girl, a grandma, and some other funny characters.

Fast forward to race time, in which I was lined up in the last row of the Cat 1-3 race. The start was delayed since the women's race ran longer than anticipated. It was a hard start on very wet grass leading us up to a road climb. A few minutes into the race I felt something wasn't right with me. I started giving away positions like candy on Halloween. I noticed that guys that I passed at the start were now passing me back. I first thought they had a bad start. Then I realized that today I was 'that guy' that started super hard, just to blow up and pedal backward through the field.

So, I was done at that point; damage control mode on lap 1! That was really hard to overcome mentally. To make things worse, the officials miscalculated the number of laps. So, the winner's finishing time was close to one hour instead of 50 minutes. Since the laps were short, that was about two additional laps. I managed to get my highest one-hour heart rate of the year, but my performance was definitely not a record breaker. It was one those days that you fight hard, but don't perform as well as you hoped. Anyway, I still had lots of fun chasing as being chased for over an hour and I ended up finishing 25/29.