The race went "ok". I finished, and felt that I performed better than in the ORAMM. However, I did suffer badly from lack of preparation. I didn't train AT ALL for it, and in fact only registered 1 week before the race on a whim. I'm finding that my conditioning just hasn't been up to par this year and I need to work on intervals and leg strength for next season. The first 2 segments went pretty well. I went through the first aid station in the top 50, but got calf cramps at mile 17 on the second segment, and they didn't go away the entire race. I had to be careful not to push too hard because of it and had to stop repeatedly for that and for a saddle that was doing bad things to my man-parts. In fact, my calves were sore all this week I had damaged them so badly. 
That said, the climb up to Farlow Gap was horrendously bad and is what cost me a decent performance. Partly because it's steep, and partly because I just didn't have the legs for it. After that segment I regained the remnants of my composure and put in a pretty quick final segment and picked up a few positions. It helped that I rode it with a guy who paced me real hard... I told him I wanted to finish by 4pm, and we did. We did the last 10 miles in about 1hr:5min, so we had some pretty good speed in that section.
All-in-all it was a good experience though... I will do that race again next year for sure, but with better training.
That said, the climb up to Farlow Gap was horrendously bad and is what cost me a decent performance. Partly because it's steep, and partly because I just didn't have the legs for it. After that segment I regained the remnants of my composure and put in a pretty quick final segment and picked up a few positions. It helped that I rode it with a guy who paced me real hard... I told him I wanted to finish by 4pm, and we did. We did the last 10 miles in about 1hr:5min, so we had some pretty good speed in that section.
All-in-all it was a good experience though... I will do that race again next year for sure, but with better training.
Here is the not so impressive GPS data... http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/7127562
