First Off-road for the year

I'm hitting my first off roader this year. I have the ol' Rig set up as well as it's going to get considering it's fairly beat up right now. I do need to dump a few bucks into it, but it's ready for tomorrow. I'll be flashing on my mantra of 'NO BRAKES' for the most part. Last year, I probably lost more time on the downhills than I did on the climbs. Thanks to the early season training, I think I'll do fairly well.

I've been working on the body this past week to deal with the scare I had last week. It's been responding quite well. I was able to blow myself sky high in a training race after being at the head of every chase in the first 15 laps of our local training crits. 3 times, I was able to take it up over 35mph on the back stretch and be on the front of the pack for a total of 5 half lap pulls. That, with a batch of other short pulls sealed my fate when immediately after another of the big efforts, I chased onto what looked to be another group going off the field. After getting dumped, I kept a steady 35kph effort going til the pack came around. I had to drop it a bit since they were dicking around and not going very hard. When they finally came by, I dropped in at the back. They put in several hard efforts, but just sitting it at the back, I was not doing anything more than scratching myself wondering when they were actually going to speed it up. Then the field sprint came. The wind up came with 2 to go and I went to the back not wanting to interfere, but I came out of the final turn after having rolled past half of the field without trying. Then dumping it into the 53x12 and doing a calm sitdown effort, I rolled to a 5th place in the field sprint. If I'd tried, I could have taken it, especially as I went out of my way to stay wide of the field. Not bad, considering the effort I'd put in earlier. Maybe things aren't as bad as they seem.