I failed

[jobob]

I am just now starting to feel better.

Excellent - I'm very glad to hear that.

I have emailed one of the organizers of the ride to find out if they know how many drop-outs they had.

Errr. What if they had only, say, 10% of the riders not finish (just tossing out a number here)? That might make you feel bad all over again. But what if nearly all those non-finishers were doing their very first ride over, say, 50 miles in length, and the people who did finish had done at least one 50+ mile ride prior to that? I seriously doubt they'd have that kind of statistic on hand, but its something to bear in mind if the number comes out lower than you might expect (or hope) to see. Just sayin'.