XTERRA Rant

Okay, so clearly I'm not gonna be happy with dropping out of my first race ever. And because of a stupid broken chain none the less. But let me just list a couple of other things that are crappy about XTERRA.
90 bucks for an off road race. 90 bucks!!! There's no police detail, no road permit fees. I'm down with paying for a good race that is safe and well run. But dude, seriously, for a race that doesn't even have chip timing. Come on. There must be a butt load of fees to pay to the XTERRA peeps.
Due to no chip timing and the havoc that waves starts would wreak upon the stopwatch holders there was one big ol' funky mass start.
....Which is actually kind of cool, because then you know how you're doing against everyone in the race. So that part I liked, but it still sucked because I paid 90 bucks and had to drop out.
And seriously who's good at off road triathlons any way? Notice how all the really good triathletes do regular road triathlons and then jump into XTERRA races and throw down? And how'd Conrad do in Hawaii ironman last year? Huh?
Naw, I bet some of those guys are still pretty nasty athletes. But XTERRA is so the Busch league. Kind of fun, and hard, but so the red-headed step brother.
I'm hoping to give another one a shot later this summer and have a change of heart (and a chain tool).