10AM Ride: Am I hallucinating?

I was going to do the 7am ride this morning but when my alarm went off at 6am, my head went back to sleep until 8am. Change in plans, looks like I'm doing the 10am ride.

Got the cats fed, got some food in me, got dressed and out of the house by 9:45. I started riding towards the corner of Old Georgetown and Tuckerman. Reverse the route until the 10am ride comes through. Around 10:15 a group of 15 riders comes by and I'm thinking this is the 10am ride, but didn't see the usually riders, so I kept going. Eventually, about 40 riders decked out in team kits (Harley, Rt1, Artemis, etc) comes through and I circle around and get in the pack along Beech Drive.

I'm feeling good, but this was to be short lived. The pace wasn't too bad along Tuckerman, but towards the end I was working too hard on the downhill sections, and I wasn't getting any recovery time. My heart was high and not coming down. By the time we turned onto Glen, I was feeling my legs. At this point a major break in the pack had occurred and the usually suspects up front were hammering it (Harley boys, Russ, NickB etc). All of a sudden there were now three groups, I wound up in the third group with a whole squad of Rt1 boys. We tried chasing down BryanV and a couple others along Esworthy, but we just didn't have enough firepower. My legs were also screaming at this point, and my HR was super high. After making the left onto Rt28 (?, at the top of Esworthy), we came upon Ad, who had some kind of mechanical, and a couple others helping Ad out. NickB had also turned around to help his old man out. NickB went hard, BryanV and Ad jumped on his wheel, Rt1 boys just let them go. I was late to react and stayed with the Rt1 boys. Cliff, another Rt1 guy and I were able to bridge up to BryanV, Ad, and some others before the left turn onto River Rd. There were maybe about 10 of us at this point, I was really tired and my legs were really feeling it. I think the rest of the way along River Rd was pretty much a blur, not sure if I started hallucinating, but I sure was hurting. I was basically in survival mode. At some pt, I was sitting #2 and #1 wanted me to pull through, and I didn't even have enough energy to say "I'm gassed, and I can't pull through". I just needed to try and recovery some energy. Eventually I did, and was able to take some pulls. BryanV and Ad pushed a really hard pace and at some pt they got a big gap on us and were eventually out of sight. I got to find out what Artemis is feeding their team. We eventually picked MikeEsmonde up along RiverRd after he dropped out of the front pack. His comment was "this is the hardest 10am ride I've been on".

The ride along Glen and Tuckerman was hard, and my legs were super spent.