Last night at Buck went better that I expected... after fair amount of fun riding last weekend, a heart stopping Tuesday, a solo lunch ride on Wednesday (too nice to ride slow), and that uh-oh-bad-legs feeling in warm ups, I wasn't sure that I belonged on the front line. However, I was pretty sure the ensuing laps would have me on the red line.
Doug Swanson showed up to make things interesting, but after a hot first lap I was able to gap he and SamO. My legs were too close to locking up so I couldn't put in another big surge. The gap to SamO grew slowly, and the first two laps were very painful. I finally found a maintainable groove for the last two and was able to cruise in alone.

Equipment setup update: I tried a new fork setup last night that seemed to work well...for those that know Rock Shox, I locked my fork out but turned the "floodgate" almost all the way off (one click in). Then I lowered the fork pressure. This left me with a fork that feels kind of like the old Fox inertia valves except it can be preloaded and never gets "confused" (those that rode the FX forks know what I mean). I am going to give it a few more rides before I commit to this, but it definitely felt stiffer sprinting out of corners while still being compliant over the bumpy stuff.

Cheers.