All went quite well. I mean no crushes, injuries and such. Finished in 10:05 which was just a little bit disappointing as I was aiming for time under 10 hrs. I had one flat. A piece of wire got stuck in my rear tire causing an annoying slow leak. And I had a problem with my drinking system (a kink in the hose). If not those it could have been under 10 hours easily. However, poor downhill riding skills cost me at least 30 minutes I'd say so no reason to bitch about 5 minutes. I just felt like I was too far from home to take any risks that I could possibly avoid. Broken collar bone (or worse) would have made for a damn bad trip. Just for illustration, I was in the 502nd position overall at the Colombine aid station and finished 583rd (or something like that) and only 3 riders passed me on the uphill sections on the way back to the town that I did not catch and pass later on. On the other hand, I've been passed right and left on the downhill sections as if I was standing still. Also, I did carry too much water and food. Should have relied more on the aid stations. And my tires were a little too much on the slick side for the terrain. It looks like it had been quite a rainy summer down there and quite a few riders were saying that they did not remember the trails/roads being that rough. I personally found the Sugarloaf descend to be the harshest, though fatigue probably played some role in that. On the other hand, the feared Powerline descend was quite easy in my opinion, even from a roadie's point of view, although the traffic was still quite heavy there on the way out and the pace quite slow.
To wrap it up, it was quite hard. Not the hardest, physically speaking, day in my life but in the hardest let's say 15%. And those 5 minutes over 10 hours keep bugging me even if I play it cool (OCD, no doubt!) so I may try to go back at some point in the future to rectify that unfortunate situation. Maybe in 2 years when I will be 50 to take the advantage of being at the "young" end of my age group.
