Cone-Azalia Cat 5s, 3 laps of a 10.1 mile course. Four-ish miles of dirt/gravel each lap, and the actual paved sections weren't much smoother. Finished 13th out of 22 thanks to some bomb-proof wheels.
I guess I'll start with everything that went right today, because it's a short list:
1. I didn't flat.
2. I didn't crash.
That's about it. Rough roads and big chunks of gravel conspired to take lots of riders out all day long. Every lap, I'd pass about a dozen people either fixing a flat on the side of the road or walking their bike back to the start. One of the stretches of gravel also had a nice deep patch of sand that looked like it caused a few crashes today.
As for the actual race part...I got spit off the back very early today, which was disappointing because I'd been doing a decent job of hanging with the pack in the training races I'd done earlier in the spring. The very first section of dirt, I hit a huge hole. Kept it upright, but my bars changed position and the bolt in my Sram Garmin mount flew out. Managed to snag the computer and stuff it into my jersey before the mount actually fell off my bars, but the damage was done. The hole scrubbed enough speed to separate me from the pack in a section with some very nasty crosswinds. Gave a half-hearted chase for half a lap then just decided to join up with a few others who also got dropped quickly and finish the race together.
Looking at the final results and lap times, my experience wasn't unique. Nobody in the front of the Cat 5 field finished within 20 seconds of each other. But for my part, just terrible decision-making in the first third of the race. Gotta learn and get better, three weeks until the next one.