Well I did my first race on Saturday. The 6:30am start, and about an hour’s ride to get there meant a 4:15 wake up call. Got up, ate some leftover rice and a couple eggs, woke up my girlfriend and headed out.

The forecast was cloudy with a 30% chance of showers, but they weren’t supposed to move in until around 10am according to the Weather Channel. Well about halfway to the start it began to sprinkle a bit. Nothing major, no big deal. Soon it started raining harder, and by this point it was obvious that this was going to be real rain, not just a little mist. So now I’m fairly annoyed that it’s raining on the day of my first race, plus I’m nervous because the rain slowed us down and it was looking like we might not make it in time for the start.

Then came the kicker: POP...hiss…hiss…hiss…hiss.

Not a flat! On the way to the race? Yes, I was that unlucky. By now the rain is really coming down steadily, and I was more than a little pissed off about this entire situation. I thought that screaming and cursing would fix the flat, but my girlfriend advised me that this was not so. Well I composed and redeemed myself. It was a lightning change…back on the road in under three minutes, and made it to the start with a few minutes to spare.

Fast forward to the start. There were 10 guys in the Cat 5 group. The race started and we were underway. The course was five laps around a 3.4 mile loop with one small hill (less than ¼ mile and not steep). I wanted to hang near the front for a while and get a feel for the pace and the rain factor. I settled in somewhere in the third or fourth position for a while. The first lap was at a pretty easy pace, as it was still dark, and by the second lap I was feeling pretty comfortable. Laps two and three were pretty much more of the same, though a little quicker. One guy tried to break away at one point but the group caught him pretty quickly.

By the time lap four came around, I was feeling really confident. I had not gotten dropped, and the pace was not near as fast as I had anticipated. The rain had stopped, but the road spray was still pretty bad. Lap four was a little faster, but still not too bad. I had expected things the pace to explode by now, but it didn’t really. The group stayed together. Lap five arrived, and that’s when the pace cranked up, pretty much right at the start of the lap. I was feeling good, a little tired, but plenty still left in the tank.

The hill came shortly after the start/finish, and I was positioned near the front at around three or fourth position as we started up. Then the two guys in front really dropped the hammer pretty hard going up. I didn’t want to risk falling to the back of the pack this early on in the lap, so I followed suit and started really grinding it. At the top of the hill I realized I had made a mistake. I was pretty spent, but the rest of the course was mostly downhills and flats, so I figured I could just hang at the back of the group and be ok.

Well before I had a chance to recover even a little, the pace picked up really fast on a downhill section. I slowly drifted back, and before I knew it the group had put a small gap on me and one other guy. We weren’t far behind so I thought we could make it up. I was really hammering it now, giving it all I had, but my legs were just toast. To make matters worse, this other guy was not interested in working with me to get back on, he just hung on my wheel. The group couldn’t have been 100 meters ahead, so I kept thinking to myself, “If I really give it one huge effort and I can bridge the gap, then just hang in the draft all the way to the line.” Well I tried that about three times before I realized I was doomed. Once I had spent myself, the other guy went around me and left me in the dust. I crossed the line probably ten seconds behind the main group.

Overall I was really happy with my performance. Looking back, I know that my mistake was pushing myself too hard up the hill right at the start of the final lap. If I had held back just a tad and saved some, I think I might have been able to stay with the group. All in all, I had a blast and consider my first race a success!