That Familiar Burn: Well then

Cross has started, it has been a few weeks since the last race, so it was good to start hammering it again.
This morning Sean and I cruised on up to St. Cloud. It is really nice doing the top level races, as they are always late. I did not have to wake up very early at all. Anyway, I was exhausted the whole way up, I think it was because of lack of sleep Friday night. But hey, thats college!
Even while I was warming up I thought I was going to fall asleep, I envisioned getting to the start line and just tipping over fast asleep. But luckily that did not happen and it was off for the first 60 minutes of cross of the year.
St. Cloud has a nice course set up. This year they even added a hill and barriers to make it even more fun. The course starts on top of a hill, weaves around for a bit then drops down to the Mississippi back up, right back down. A bit of flat then up and down and up again. It is not very technical and does not have a whole lot of recovery.
My start sucked, I felt well not good at all. I was just not able to push it super hard. After a bit over 2 laps I guess I got warmed up, and brought the pace up high to try and catch Herr Casper who had just blown by the small group I was in. I just went and kept going (never catching the ghost), but thanks to him I actually started racing. At the start I was a good 15 places back or so, and I had no idea how many people were in front of me. I just assumed it was 10 or so since that is where I finished up last year. About halfway in the Duluth guys started yelling that I was 6th. I was quite surprised at that, and noticed that 4 and 5 were not far. So I did the only thing that makes sense and chased hard. With about 4 laps left I caught them (Micha and Matt of Grandstay), Matt got on my wheel and we rode together for the rest of the race. He sat on, and said that I could have the sprint, but I think he coulda kicked my ass if he had wanted. ha! But anyway, the race ended up going surprisingly well. I had no idea that I was going that fast, I was not feeling all that great, or so I thought, but I guess I was. I wonder what will happen if I feel good for a race?
But it was a good time. I am off to a much better start than last year. Where I finished 30 out of 37 or so in this race compared to this year which was 5 out of 33. I'll take it! Now lets just hope I keep getting faster and not stay the same or get slow while everyone else flies by me.