Why even bother with little races?

Why even bother? You have to stay up late the night before cleaning your bike from yesterday's muddy ride. You have to dig out all of your gear, make sure you have a clean change of underwear, make sure you don't have any missing gloves and that your socks match. Then you have to wake up at the butt crack of dawn, stumble out the door, walk out into the early morning drizzle, all the while grousing about what a disgusting time you are going to have as you pedal across that 100 yard flat-uphill section that's going to be full of peanut butter mud. The thought of that cold wet spray from your caked-up tires catching you in the shorts and up the back of your jersey is already beginning to make you feel nauseous. To top it all off, the highly competent college-aged race promoters haven't so much as posted a start time for the downhill. The only information you are getting is coming from some patchy internet forum chatter where the supposed promoter who hides behind an unrecognizable internet handle is indicating that the race may not even happen if its raining too hard.
A few of us found ourselves in this very predicament this past weekend for the ETSU Downhill race in Johnson City. I was watching the dismal weekend forcast on the weather channel, hoping for the best but expecting the worst. There was no posted start time, and there was a rumor floating around that the race may start as early as 11:00 and as late as 5:00 if it happened at all. The deck was stacked against me and I was leaning ever closer to folding my deck and staying home. At about 11:00 pm on friday night, Jeremy called to ask me if I was going. Upon hearing the tone in his voice, it became obvious that he was having the same misgivings about going to the race that I was. We both got to thinking though- Why not go? What is the alternative? Unless we go race, we aren't going to go ride in the rain, who would? We realized that we'd probably get stuck sitting on our butts, feeling imprisoned by the rainfall and going stir crazy, driving our wives mad. Besides, it was a 10 dollar entry fee and non-NORBA. So that did it. Deal us in, We were going.
Don't get me wrong, it still wasn't easy. I still had to do the late night stuffle-shuffle. The early mornging despondancy hit me just as hard as ever but by the time I'd arrived and done my first muddy practice run, I was in the game. Sure it was a little disorganized, sure we had paper plates for race numbers, and yes it was really muddy and sketchy-sloppy. On a brighter note, the rain gave us a window for the entire time we rode! I ended up getting second place and Jeremy finished just behind me in 2nd. (Young pinner Ethan Quell took the win by 8 seconds on the minute and a half course) Because of the chilled-out atmosphere and low attendance, the promoters encouraged racers to take as many runs as they wanted, providing us with the chance to get in several timed runs so that we could really gauge our effort. It proved to be a great training experience to set us up for some of the bigger races this year. Would I have gotten to enjoy any of that if I had stayed in bed? As I look back over my racing experience, I realized that I've woken up early to go to a lot of races that I really didn't want to waste my time on, but I've never left any race wishing that I hadn't gone. No matter whether it's a great course on a perfect day or a crappy course on a rainy day, its always a race, and that's what's cool about it. It's just one more chance to line up and diversify my racing portfolio if nothing else. I give two big thumbs up to the ETSU guys and it's these kinds of races that keep the true racers coming back! I had a great time and big props to the small venue promoters who keep it real even though they never get the love for it!