The Double Boundary

Things started out a little tough on the DB for me this weekend... I managed to twist a wheel up about four miles into the race and crash, I was hanging out with the lead group at the time and the soon disappeared as I pulled myself together.
Things got worse at that moment as I realized the GPS screen was blank. Most of the trails of the DB were new to me, and the first half, the NBT, was a maze of little used single track, I hung out for a bit and latch onto the wheel of Chad from AZ. At that point I had given up on doing anything with the race and wanted to use it as a training ride. After 45 minutes or so, we caught Matt, Dan, and a couple of other guys as they were stopped gettting food. I latch on to Matt's wheel and never left it. I felt a bit bad about following Matt, these are supposed to be self supported races and I had NO idea where to go. I finally caught Matt and explained and he was really cool about it. we ended up riding together most of the day.
The DB included some amazing trails around taos, the SBT is the best known, but a new loop on the Jacarita is my new favorite trail in NM. I cant wait to get back to that place.
Matt flatted with about 10 miles to go and encouraged me to go on. I was on the SBT at that point and knew my way. 20 minutes after I left Matt I managed to crash again (I will blame weariness). It would not have been that bad but I landed on my arm, between the shoulder and my elbow, directly on the exposed end of the cut log. My original thought was that I broke my arm. I looked at it and then thought I had taken a huge check of skin out as there was a large indentation... the indentation turned out to be a "dent" in the arm and it returned to somewhat norma looking. Normal looking is different that normal feeling. It hurt like hell. I had to use my left arm to do most of the steering from this point on, the right arm ached and I had sharp pains when attempting to brake.
Matt caught me on the last downhill with about a mile of single track. he was flying. I was able to catch him on the road as he was on a single speed, We finished together and he gave me 2nd (one of the two that were ahead had missed the Jacarita section of trail).
All and all a great day. 9 1/2 hours on the bike, some amazing arm art (I will post a picture of the bruise) and a good confidence builder for Moab. I am going to try to make all of the NMES next year as these are great races.