gsteinb

They raced.

carpediemracing 

I learned that it is. If you get shelled, at least in the B race, you can get back in. You just can't contest the finish.

dobrado

(not sure if this is for me)

Yeah, I should have taken the risk of getting soaked again and the race being canceled. My mind wasn't really in it though so I figured I'd skip it until I felt better mentally.

Not really in THAT much of a rush to get dropped! :-)

rsoffar

any chance you made it out last night? the torrential downpour that came for the 3/4 and 123 races sure made for some crazy fun before they called it off for the flooding. Within about a lap of riding in the rain the back side seemed to be one huge 3-4 inch deep puddle, its amazing how fast that place collects water... or maybe it was just raining that hard.

dobrado

GUYS.

GUYS!!!

I finally raced. Tons of fun, tried some things, but in the end the most important thing I should have been doing I didn't try hard enough to do:

Stay on wheels and in the pack.

Anyways, I finished 8th...out of 9 finishers. People had flats...actually I had a flat too, but my front wheel only started losing air after I had rolled across the line so I didn't notice it.

Here's the ride on strava...I think I need to work on more threshold efforts: https://www.strava.com/activities/77411316

caloso

Congrats, dobrado. Is that on an old airport? That looks hella fun.

carpediemracing 

Congrats on your first race. Floyd Bennet Field is a great place to learn/practice dealing with wind.

dobrado

Yep, it's an old airport, and it was hella fun!

dobrado

I totally could feel the effect of sitting in versus being off the front or back...to the point where I was surprised at how much different the required effort was! I watched some (ok, all) of your videos and now they make even more sense now that I've experienced racing.

billh92109

Your profile says you have a 2.1, which is what I have. Since I will be doing crits for the first time next year... How do you think the bike handled in the race? I may have an oppty to upgrade to something else and keep the 2.1 for backup so I am curious.

dobrado

It was fine! I didn't feel that I was unstable in cornering. I can't really speak about things like stiffness, etc. because I haven't yet ridden any other bike. It was good enough to race on so I'm a fan!