As one of the DNF'ed, c'est la vie. My goals are improving with each race so I can get out of the back of the pack, whether I get a report telling me that I was precisely 101st or 102nd is not critical. I know what I did well and what I need to work on; putting a number on it doesn't really affect that. (Maybe I'd have a different feeling if I was in a 1/2/3 race, though.)

One of the things I like about CX is that it's more open to noobs trying their hand. At least for the giant Cat 4 race, I think most of us at the way back are just happy to have a fair number of races where we can show up and have our butts handed to us under real race conditions. How else are we going to get faster? Better that than constraining the size of the entry field.