Your story reminded me of my ride out here a couple of weeks ago with Michael and Ulisses from Monkey Wrench, both of whom were 3-lap finishers at DragonSlayer. They spotted me at the beginning of Deception going W-E. They had been riding a couple of hours already and were on single speeds. I was fresh, on my 26lb fully 11spd, and on my home court. So I led the way through all of the techy stuff and was killing just about everything. Tried to keep a good pace too, but any distance I put between us coming through the tech was quickly erased, as Ulysses would announce his presence riding my back wheel like a predator on prey. In the end we had a great ride and I believe Ulysses even conquered a feature or two that he hadn't cleared before. Whether that was due to him following my great lines or simply because he didn't want to get shown up by an old geezer I'm not sure.