So, i just had my first race ever today. it was raining, muddy as hell, and a pretty interesting course with tons of 180 hairpins.

here's my offering, mostly pertaining to conditions and mud:

- always look far ahead. the faster you go, the further ahead you need to look. if you're focused on the wheel of the person in front of you, you'll have to slow down for a feature they negotiate better because they're looking for it. i heard so many people say "i lock into a wheel and i don't let it get away from me" but as a novice, this is putting the cart before the horse. at least, it was for me. the more i 'locked onto someone's wheel' the less i could see of the line and the more i got into trouble or lost momentum to superfluous mud. it was also harder to avoid clipping tires, which happened twice and was one of my primary concerns. you can avoid clipping tires with periphery vision... the more you forget to look ahead and the more you'll find yourself too close to another bike when you or the other rider loses control. you have to focus on what line you're taking and what features and obstacles are coming up one, or even two turns ahead.

- don't get too clever. the first thing that will slow you down more than not knowing what you're doing is mental exhaustion. you DO have to stay focused, but you just need that focus... don't try to figure stuff out to save energy. overthinking something means you're using your brain to think, not drive muscles. when you see a problem or a line choice ahead of you, make a fast and wise choice like mentioned before... but don't go searching for ways to negotiate or find a line if you can just power through the line you're on. it's more important to put that mental energy into keeping your output up. also, you may think "oh look the mud isn't as deep there" only to find out that it's far, far deeper, bumpier, and harder to maintain. working smarter comes once you have the expertise, working harder is how you get that expertise.

- don't clip in if your cleat doesn't want to. wait until it wants to, and in the meantime, stand on the pedal and mash! maybe this is just from my crappy spd knockoffs giving me trouble... but especially in mud, you will likely have cleat problems. everyone does. it's a fact of the sport. if you can just get on the pedals, you can power out of a situation that requires momentum and worry about clipping in when you have the chance. i can't even begin to think how many times i was passed because i was trying to clip in more than i was trying to get through a turn or up a hill. you may find it's terribly inefficient to pedal like a twelve year old only on the down strokes, but unless you make this mistake you won't know just how more efficient it is than getting bogged down in muck and losing all your momentum you carried onto the bike/through a turn just because your frakking cleat is gunked up. bike handling with your foot resting on pedal is very different, but be prepared to handle your bike and you can focus on going fast, not getting your cleat in. this is of course only important if you're having trouble. get some nice pedals and maybe you won't have to worry about it as much... maybe. i can't tell you how many remounts i nailed only to slow to a standstill because i was still kicking my cleat when i should have been standing on the pedals!

- run when you're off your bike. i know this is almost stupid, but no matter how dead you are, no matter how collapsed your lungs are, you need to jog and run when you're off your bike. walking alongside your bike is slower than running and having your legs come out from under you. you can rest when you finish your bell lap... do whatever you need to do to make the race a race. if you're on a run up or off the bike, you aren't in a section that you should be using for recovery. sand, mud, barriers, run ups and corners with zero traction are opportunities to go fast, not opportunities to get off the bike and catch your breath. braking sections before tight turns, long downhills, and technical back to back coasting corners are much better for catching your breath than walking your bike, and they won't kill your momentum. walking your bike just means you'll lose the breath you catch and then some when you get back on the bike. if you are out of breath, dial it back from 90% to 80% until you are seeing straight again... just keep jogging!

- practice in racelike conditions. you can't learn how to handle on mud without cycling through mud. you can't be fast through mud without skill handling your bike in mud. taking turns slowly because you aren't comfortable handling is a great way to end up at the back of the field, and you end up doing more work because you take a longer line. if you take the line of a fast rider, you may end up on your face- but you can get back up and learn from what you did wrong. i practiced a lot of grassy off camber corners but when there's water on the same ground, it's going to feel like a completely different thing. i had never ridden mud before aside from high school playing around with a mtb and the more you practice, the higher your confidence, the faster you'll go. notice this does not say 'do not practice in non-racelike conditions... more practice is always good, even in the wrong conditions. just, don't expect to get things right in the rain if you never get out in it.

- use the same tire inflation front and back. this is something i didn't mean to do, but i was at maybe 30 psi front and closer to 45-50 psi rear. i let air out in staging with no guage... it was a bad move, almost as bad as staying at 60psi. i could feel tire roll on the front and had a good idea of when it was going, but my rear was so dead and slippery i thought i had flatted a couple times. it's just a bad idea... until you know what you're doing and until you know your tires, run everything the same front and rear. that way you can focus on where you put your weight, not what your bike is doing with that weight. it also keeps the handling pretty linear, instead of having a sloped curve of "bikes gonna jet out from under you the more you lean back."

-don't worry about how you look: worry about how you feel. unless it's the final lap, running full sprint up a run up because someone is heckling you is going to take a lot out of you. maybe their cheers when you pass five people that are walking up through the brambles will add some pep to your step for the next minute or two, but that kind of burst is the wrong kind of instinct. don't ask yourself "am i going as fast as i should be going?" instead, ask yourself "how much faster can i go?" and answer it with your muscles... just don't forget that if you outpace yourself you'll make loads of mistakes. you want to work harder than you've ever worked in your life, but you don't want to be running on fumes when you cross the finish line and still have a full lap to go.

in the end, it's really like everyone says... there are a thousand things that you get wrong in every cross race, which means there are a thousand things that could have gone right. getting faster is about getting closer and closer to perfection. i finished 60th in a field of 68. considering there were 8" mud banks, technical corners everywhere, and this course was basically ripped to shreds by the second lap, i am overjoyed that i wasn't dfl or dnf'd. my goal was to finish the race, but getting as much wrong as i did really makes it hard to ignore all the things i could have done better, and how much harder i could have worked.

i guess to sum up, this was my first race and i don't know anything about what i'm talking about- but my feeling is that i was too preoccupied with working smart, and it would be far better to concern one's self with working as hard as you can... smart can come later- you will learn more if you power yourself into learning situations. you'll probably still fall to the back of the field if you are a novice, but at least you will be on the path of self discovery and learning.