Seeing Chipcom's post a couple week's ago motivated me to enter my first race this weekend, a 24 mile 35+ 4/5 road race. The course wasn't terribly difficult, a steep uphill start, flat, another short uphill climb and then things settled into mostly rolling terrain with a steep down hill in the middle. 3 laps for a total of 24 miles.
I had ridden the course with some friends a few weeks earlier so I kinda knew what to expect. I figured I could suffer through the couple of short steep climbs and hang with the rest of the pack through the other 7 miles. The only thing about the course that made me nervous was a steep downhill stretch which is where I thought the problems would be (wrong!).
Before I go into the race, I should mention that I'm used to riding a fairly fast group ride with some good riders who know what they are doing. I naively went into this race thinking the riders would ride in a similar manner to our Tuesday night ride (another mistake on my part). I was not prepared for all the sudden slowdowns and riders who could not or would not hold a straight line.
After five miles of this I started getting nervous so I moved to the front, did a long pull and decided to break with another guy for 2 miles (huge mistake!). That break lasted about 4 minutes and massive amounts of energy before gettnig swallowed up by the pack just before we were taking the sharp right turn going back up the first steep climb.
This is where things got ugly. I watched as guy in front of me turned his head to the left and I saw the whole thing coming in slow motion - his bike drifted to the left, I hit my brakes and then I heard the sound of a bunch of bikes crashing. I was fortunate to stop before the carnage, but the front took off and the back was able to get around and take off while 5 of us had to stop and unclip, before starting from 0 to get back up the hill. By then the race was over for us. We worked to chase, caught a bunch of guys, but finished well off the lead.
Lessons learned:
1. Ride near the front where there's less chance of getting caught in sudden slowdowns/ stoppage
2. Don't be an idiot! It's wasted energy in a 4/5 race doing long pulls in the front, better to save them for the last few miles assuming you have people to work with you. And breakaways don't work in a 4/5 race, at least not in the first 2/3rds of the race
3. Ride on the outside of the fast downhills, away from all the skittish riders (you can always cross the yellow line if it means avoiding a crash)
4. RELAX as much as you can and enjoy it!

All in all though, even though I was dropped bad it was a BLAST! I can't wait to get out there and do it all over again!
JohnB