From the view of a racer

Race anxiety during the week.
When you're big into racing, looking forward to the weekend is like a little kid waiting for Christmas morning. You are beyond excited to get to the track and see all your friends, and just get out and ride. Everyone has their favorite track that they look forward to even more. Many times you arrive the night before, to camp and have fun.
Anxiety pulling into track
You pull into the race track and you start getting some major butterflies, seeing the track is like seeing your significant other for the first time. Within the first couple hours before the race its quite a hassle, you're running around. Getting last minute things around trying to make sure everything is perfect. Finally you pull you're quad up to the start line, and begin to wait the excitement grows.
Getting ready to roll
Right before you hear the national anthem, their is a lot of giving each other some grief. Talking a big game knowing anything can actually happen. You see the guy with the 10 second board pulled up, you're hands are on your helmet just waiting for the board to drop. As soon as it drops you try to get your quad started, you then begin the fight through the crowd. You're pushing for the holeshot and to be first into the woods You get into the first corner and begin to get your pace started. You have trees left and right, challenging crossing many lines to choose from.
During the race
From this point on your excitement continues to grow you have a lot of lines to choose from. You have to be strategic to make passes because you don't have a large number of good passing sections to choose from. You begin to choose if you want to push yourself to the pace of other riders. The first time through scoring you begin to see your position and what kind of pace you need to set. Sometimes seeing your position isn't helpful because you ride out of your ability and begin to make mistakes that cost you more time.
Towards the end 
You continue with this for two hours, you have to battle fatigue, trees, ruts, arm pump anything else that is  possible. You start to come up to the finish line and beginning to push even harder. After you cross the line, you slowly pull up to your pits. You almost have to have someone else help you remove your race gear because of how exhausted you are. After a little while you begin to be yourself, you start to figure out everyone's positions congratulate each. After this you load up for the next round and you're excitement grows for next time.

Photo Credit to Kathy Bratz! She does such an amazing job for our local series, and the racers can't thank you enough!!