Thanks, all. I strongly considered withdrawing from the race after experiencing the conditions during the warm-up lap. EVERYTHING was either wet or muddy. I decided to go ahead with the race, but without trying to win or even place since I'm not really a strong technical rider and have a lower threshold of risk tolerance than most.
After falling behind in the short grass loop to start out, we entered the singletrack and the person in front of me immediately went over the handlebars on the first downhill. He was okay and I had just enough room to go around him. Stayed just behind the lead group on the flats and was riding their wheels on the first climb. Started passing people around 12 minutes in and caught the leader around the 20 minute mark, and he crashed shortly after that on a downhill switchback. Almost all of the climbs became unclimbable by bike at that point, so my biggest strength was eliminated. I had to use the flat sections as my only chance to maximize my power output. The downhills were brake, slide & pray scenarios.
During the 2nd lap I started to have serious issues with my rear cassette, as the mud was accumulating in the highest gears and causing the chain to skip. I was constantly having to change gear to find one with the least mud. That only got worse as the race went on, which made even smaller climbs unclimbable for me and reduced my ability to punch it on the flats. By lap 3 the trail conditions were even worse (50+ riders) and I was riding super conservatively to simply avoid crashing. Only had 1 crash, and it was more like a low-speed tipping over situation. Held on and won by 1:10. Lap times were: 28:45, 33:18 and 35:49. Hahahahaha! Got some cool actions shots from a pro photographer:
