Riding through the discomfort

Yesterday bordered on painful. Actually, just south of the border, which is a region known as discomfort. I packed up my multispeed mule currently set up as a 1x9, a cooler of 4 water bottles (for a 3 lap race) and headed to the John Muir WEMS event. Before the start I was distracted by a grill with a few charred hot dogs. So I took one and immediately inserted it in the end of Bubba's handlebar. I thought it might delay him long enough for me to get ahead of him. Russell was in a playful mood at the start. As the announcer counted down to the start in 30 second increments, when there was roughly 15 seconds left Russell shouted "GO!!" and the forward most line of racers took brief lunge forward before they realized it wasn't the same voice. This moment of confusion was broken by the actual announcement of "GO!" We were already off to a good start. My target lap time was 1:15 based on what the announcer indicated was a solid average lap time. The fastest lap time at that point was roughly an hour for the roughly 11.5 miles. Later it would be 52 minutes set by Nathan Guerra (un-friggen believably fast) who would win the 3 lap affair by nearly 20 minutes over 2nd place. I mounted and rolled out reasonably efficiently and was in a line of riders for the better part of the first lap. It didn't feel too fast but at 1:12:12 I was 2 or 3 minutes up on Bubba and Russell. I pitted at my cooler, grabbed more water and headed out. The second lap was the hardest. I wanted to stay in a rhythm but was finding that difficult. A minor crash half-way thought the lap when my front wheel washed out in a corner gave me pause, but I remounted and settled in as best I could. At the end of the second lap I thought I was done. I was tired, thirsty and ached a bit. At 2:31 I was still ahead of Russell and Bubba and on a tidy average lap time, but I wanted to quit. Marcin was there for Maciej (who would win the 6 hour) but he came over to ask how I was doing. I suggested I was done, but he asked the best question "why?" The only answer I could fabricate was "I need another water bottle for the last lap." Half a second later Marcin had a cold bottle of fluid in my hand as Bubba rolled in and almost as quickly rolled out. Then Russell rolled in. Peer pressure kicked in and I put my foot on the pedals. I took my time catching Bubba. I didn't know it but Russell was doing the same to me. A couple of miles down the trail I caught Bubba and on the next climb Russell was rubbing his front tire on my rear tire. We agreed we weren't racing anymore and we would stick together to the end. Bubba and I were on the ragged edge, although for me, Bubba's pace was a recovery pace for me. Similarly the same could be said for Russell. Russell shared his licorice with me, which didn't sit well, but it was the thought that counted. On the second figure 8 on the course I was descending behind Russell and I hit a rock hard enough with the rear tire to cause a pinch-flat. It leaked slowly enough we were a fair way down the trail before I was riding on the rim. I told Russell I needed to stop and change tubes, so he said "see you at the end" and they kept going. I stopped, changed the tube, hopped back on the bike and pinned it. I was possibly 3 miles from the finish and I thought I might be able to catch back up since they didn't seem to be going very hard. I caught a few other riders who had passed me as I changed the tube, but Bubba and Russell were nowhere in sight. As I came down the final straight Marcin was there cheering so I gave him a good showing of my effort. Later I would look at my last lap split and was pleased with the 1:31 lap. Close to 4 minutes of that was occupied by my desire to quit, 5 minutes (maybe less) was the flat tire repair and add a couple of minutes to the gentlemanly pace of our trio. So it wasn't much slower than my second lap. I can definitely live with that. So ~35 miles of fairly punishing singletrack at a respectable pace. This morning I was tired from my neck to my toenails. It was the tired, dull ache I get from a good effort. Not the pain I get from not being in shape. I'm definitely getting closer to a respectable race form.