Breathing through a straw in Snowmass

So, I just spent the weekend racing up at altitude at stop #5 of the NORBA NMBS tour. What makes these races in Colorado so hard? There's no freakin' air at 9000+'. I felt like a vacuum cleaner that needed its bag replaced. Actually, I took a lesson from a couple of years ago at Durango and told myself to ride good tempo and refrain from going gangbusters from the start, a sure fire method to self implode in the first half lap of a race. The strategy worked...for the first two laps, except there were three in the race. Lap three was the kind of painful experience where you just want to crawl up into a ball and go to sleep in a nice little cave. I bonked (hard!) knowing full well that I was about a thousand vertical feet short of reaching the top of the main climb, ouch. Help granny help, spin legs spin! It occurred to me that I wasn't taking in nearly enough food or water and the effect hit me about as subtely as a bag of bricks to the side of the head. That third lap I felt like I was riding my bike backwards cross-eyed as at least 10 people came around and from out of nowhere. Yup I was going slow and I knew it. I did make it to the finish but lost buckets of time on that third lap. Lesson of the day from a flatlander - eat and DRINK at altitude. Besides the race, the course was actually good fun. For the most part, it was pretty standard ski resort fare (go straight up then come straight down) but had a good amount of fun single track and variety in a 7.5+mile loop. The downhill half was a good bit of fun too, as always.
Now, I get to breath in copious amounts of good heavy air as I get ready for the upcoming races in Snowshoe and Mt. Snow later next month.