A New England Masters Cycling Team

I try and do a mountain bike race. I have done 6 mountain bike races in my life and the last time I rode my mtb was last year at the Winding Trails race. Read: My technical skills suck and I have only my fitness to fall back on. We went out fast - following a Target Training roadie. I moved up to 2nd behind him but faded to 4th by half way through lap 1. I could see no one behind me and occasionally I could see a guy or two up front. Target training blew and I passed him not long after we started lap 2. By the end of lap 2 I was closing in on 2nd and 1st. I caught and passed them both and pushed it on the easy sections and lost time in the single track. I thought I had shead them but I was being too conservative was caught in the last 1/4 of the lap. I held the guy off by using my fitness on the fire roads and getting to the single track sections first. But when I ran over a log - yes I have to run over anything bigger than a twig - he pounced and got to the last stort very steep hill with a 2 second gap. He got to the downhill first, went down faster than me and that was that. Had I got to that downhill first the race was mine 'cause he wasn't going to match my last kick on the dirt road that leads to the finish. Oh well. Shoulda rode that log. A bike racing first for me. I saw some yahoo lighting up a cigarette before the race. He was "racing" the single speed. They started a minute or 2 before us. I caught him before the half way point of lap 1.