Originally Posted by Bobby Lex

There are a ton of "my first race" threads on this board. Do a search and soak in as much info as possible. There's a lot of good advice and discussion here.

It takes a certain level of fitness to be able to hang with the pack in a race. If you don't have that, then all the advice in the world won't be able to help you, because you'll be off the back. But once you have that minimum fitness to hang, the rest is about racing tactics. i.e. the decisions you make during the race.

If I could give you only one bit of advice, it would be to draft, draft, draft. The draft is your friend. The winner of the race is most often the guy who did the least work during the race, not the "stud" who did the most work.

Bob