I guess I'll post my Poolesville race report too.

Good times were expected on Saturday after last week's Ephrata success.
First bad news occurred when I learned that Cameron "stormin mormon" Patch
crashed out early in the race, so early in fact that it was last Monday and
busted his bike so he couldn't join in this race of attrition. Right off the
bat then, Drew A went off the front. This perplexed a lot of people but
nonetheless David and I were at the front to make sure the pace didn't go
too hard in case Drew managed to put in a lot of time in the dirt section.
First time through the dirt was pretty surprising. It looked like the
previous field decided to just dump all their bottles and the course turned
into a mine field of bottles and giant potholes. I hit one pretty hard which
caused my left shifter to move all the way down to the drops. I spent the
next lap just trying to move the shifter back up my handlebars, which was
 pretty unsuccessful. Coming over the wall and onto the straight-away, we
got the misfortune of finding Drew on the side of the road with blood all
over his face.

Coming back to the dirt on lap 2, I was sitting somewhere near the front and
my shifted shifter made my front brakes rather ineffective so I didn't slow
down fast enough. So of course, since I didn't crash at Ephrata last week,
here I was, bouncing into the ditch. The landing was pretty soft, thanks to
the huge poison ivy bush that broke my fall. I got right back up and
instantly felt like my skin had been set ablaze. I set forth on the dirt
path, intent on chasing back to the pack.

I passed a bunch of other stragglers. Drew W was on the side of the road,
holding his back wheel, others were dropped and had broken spirits. For the
rest of the lap I was going all out, picking up racers on the way. I must
have been setting a really hard pace because as we wound our way around the
course, only 1 guy managed to stay with me, some dude from DCVelo who rode
my wheel al the way back to the field. Anywho, By the time we hit the dirt
the 3rd time, I had managed to catch the pack. I needed to recover a bit so
I hung out in the back. As we exited the dirt, I saw David standing next to
his bike, which caused me to wonder who exactly was left in this race.

On the last lap, it appeared it was Chris Chapel, Ben Mingo and myself. I
honestly wasnt thinking I'd be much of a threat in the field sprint so was
happy to see Chapel there. The entire pack had been whittled down to about
20 people. As we wound our way around the course for the final time, I moved
closer to the front making sure I was in the right place at the right time
but also without doing any work. An Artemis rider went off the front after
the wall and the pack kept him within our sights. He gained a decent enough
gap and it looked like no one was going to chase him down. When I saw 2 of
his team mates move to the front, I thought they were going to try to block
for him so he could stay away. This is when I decided to jump and bridge up
to him. I looked back and no one had gone with me and the gap was being
maintained. I just kept on telling myself that this was it, all I had to do
was catch up to this guy and I could ride his wheel to the line, and then
just pass him and finally get a win. Well, of course that's not what
happened. I'm not sure when it happened, maybe it was at the 200m sign, but
the pack came roaring by at a speed that made it impossible to just swing to
the left and jump in. Essentially, everyone went by and I had to jump in the
back and again move up as fast as I could, which at this point wasn't very
fast. So instead of winning the race, I got 16th. Great.

Good times though. So much fun I decided I'd do the 3/4. That didn't last
long, biker pile up in the dirt caused me to flip into the mud on lap 1 and
that was that. Final tip: pouring water over your body to cool off poison
ivy burn only makes it worse.