First off, so glad I did this race and so glad I got to do it with Lane and Pete, and I had a blast the entire time! But I had a couple of mistakes, both on my part, as a result, I ended up doing a lot of this race solo. First I was able to stay up front for the first few miles and I was working hard but it was tolerable. I had some bad positioning and had to brake a few times on descents, but nothing major. Then while trying to close gaps and move up within the group at the front, I tried to go around someone and suddenly the road where I was turned into a ditch and I had to stop completely and put a foot down, thankfully I didn't crash. I also had to wait a bit for traffic to thin enough to get back going. This cost me a few seconds but I had to chase back on and ultimately i couldn't, partially because we were going into a fairly strong headwind. In any case I needed to back off from going so hard as the race was long and the upcoming long climbs were looming. I figured I had as much chance on those to perhaps get back on. This never happened though, although I felt like I climbed them ok. Perhaps not though as about four people caught me slowly and while I kept them in sight, I couldn't stay with them and they went up the road from me. I stopped at the aid station and filled both my bottles, and several riders passed me here. I worked at a hard pace and caught a few of them and we formed a little group once we topped out the highway climb and started down mostly gravel Burrells Ford road. This was the only part of the course I had already ridden before, and I was able to stay with the group thanks to my better descending skills. It was a series of little, punchy, not too steeo climbs. We turned onto HWY 28 and caught another rider from the front group who had been dropped, and the pace in the group turned way up and I got dropped. So I was on my own and mostly just staring down at my garmin for navigation and ended up blowing by a clearly marked turn. I didn't notice at all because as I figured out later, I had loaded the wrong route onto my garmin before the race. I had the one that they prepared for folks to ride the course not on race day and didn't include a little private gravel road that was only open on race day. I would never have noticed but coincidentally the group containing both Lane and Pete turned onto the highway as I was coming by(because i had taken a shortcut), and we both turned onto the next gravel road. Something was way off and we were all very confused. Where did I come from? They thought. Where did they come from?!? I thought. Wrong turn? Several people suggested. I asked Pete if they'd done that part before because I knew the route ran back over itself at some point. No was the reply. So the only conclusion was that I had made a wrong turn. I retraced my trip down the highway back not super far to the obvious proper turn. I was rather peeved at myself and the motivation to race hard was waning fast. But I thought about it and decided i'd just ride myself into the ground regardless of what was at stake, just for funsies. It's a race after all. I dropped the little group I had fallen in with on a descent and kept it rolling at a steady tempo. I caught a couple more groups and began the long climb up Whetstone mountain, a steep fairly long gravel climb. Eventually the group caught up to me but I just kept on going at my own pace and didn't even look around for help. Eventually the climb ended and I started bombing the descent. Came around a corner and was met by about 25 horses with riders, all across the road. Ended up dismounting and walking through and around the herd, and got back to the descent. By the bottom i was all alone again, and I kept up the pace. I was feeling the efforts of the day but I kept on turning the screws for no reason other than the fun of burying myself. I made it to the last little big open paved road on into town right as that same group caught me, and it had by this time merged with another I had dropped before, I was pretty spent and a little dehydrated because I didn't stop any any other rest stops, and just managed to stay on the back of this group till Walhalla and they sprinted surprisingly hard for like 50th place or whatever, while I rolled in still at a decent tempo to finish strong. Very glad we made the effort to come up here and do this race, had a lot of fun even if I couldn't manage to stay with the front very long.