I was also there in the U30 cat5s. Having never raced in my life, I definitely did like how helpful the mentors were, and came to realize that I need to change my bars out as riding in the drops the whole time, I was noticing my wrists hitting the hoods pretty often. During the crits it was definitely cool to see how the entire peloton seemed to move as one unit, especially towards the final laps as we took the final turn. I think the coolest part though was how organized it was. I was expecting craziness for all laps, but it ended up being quite mellow and in my mind I was just like "oh, this isn't so bad".
I definitely plan on trying harder to move up in the race next week, as this week I stayed primarily in the back just to watch and see how everyone behaved.
Am sorry to hear about the crash in the 30+
I wish you all the best of luck in the coming weeks for the clinics, and I hope to see you all out there (I'll be in a Folsom Bike kit
)