Sea Otter Short Track

The race was at 1:45 in the afternoon which gave us plenty of time to enjoy a relaxing morning. When the time to leave came, we packed up the Town and Country and headed to the venue. I started to get the familiar pre-race nerves...the permanent need to pee, the full-body jitters, and the inability to think or focus. I was also pretty excited to be wearing my skinsuit-I was always feel like a super-hero when I wear this thing. I got an ok warm up in, but as usual for me I had a hard time getting pumped to go hard. i did several laps on the course. The course was fun, and kind of technical-there was a very steep climb which topped out to a very loose corner. I knew this was going to be the make it or brake it point as not everyone would be able to ride this section. So, I tried to find an alternative route that would allow me to go up on the inside line and hopefully bypass some of the traffic...Too soon, it was time to line up. The call ups were really weird, I don't know how they determined the order. I was called up towards the end, but for some reason there was an open spot on the far right on the front row!! So I figured why not and non-chalantly went to fill that space. I then noticed that Pua Sawicki, a super, super fast and very nice and sincere racer hadn't been called up?! She's usually in the top 5-10 at most national races so this was very odd. I called to her and was going to give her my spot, which would've put me right up against the boards. Somebody said something about being careful to not snag a handle-bar on the boards at the start...and Pua said I should just go ahead of her. So I did. I had a pretty good start, but I wasn't overly aggressive. I just knew that I wanted to be on the right side leading up to that steep climb. My strategy worked! There was a bit of a pile-up and I was able to get through on the inside line. I was with a good group of girls and was feeling good...sitting in ~15th. Then I dropped my chain and had to put a foot down to get it back on and got dropped by the group I was in and passed by several others. I was able to chase a few down, but was really starting to hurt. I was ready to get pulled!! With 3 laps to go I got my wish. I finished in 21st...not quite what I was hoping for, but I feel like if I hadn't dropped my chain, I would've finished a bit higher.
Anyway, my lungs were absolutely burning and I was a bit dehydrated with some goosebumps...but it felt good to be back racing. And then it was time to think about tomorrow's race...