I'm more in my element with the 4's, but they're just too friggin squirrelly. Always have been too.

Good job. Keep it up.

Yes, the 40 yr olds are fast. Well not all of them. If you do a race down in Southern California, many times you will see the guy who just got a top 10 in the 35+ or 45+ crit go out in the Cat 1-2 field and get a top 10 again and many times win. Definitely not uncommon.

Now that I am older, I train harder than I ever did when I raced as a Jr. I watch everything I do more. With age comes discipline.

I clicked on the thread, looked at the picture... and holy hell I want your legs!

Seriously. As a 43 year old Cat 3, I always feel like I've got a better shot in the 3's race. 35+ races are brutal.

Great post. I like your attitude; learn from your mistakes and keep at it.

I'm pretty sure it was put on by a local bike shop. It was not the first time they had this race there so I would suppose that it is about the same time each year. Great volunteers and very friendly local folks. It drew a very small crowd downtown for the crit. I watched the races before and after and they were quite a spectacle to watch.

+ 1

get a blog.

I enjoyed the post as well. Sad to say, some people don't have the attention span to handle more than a paragraph or two. Makes me wonder how they ever made it through college. Are classes being twittered too?

Good read. Thanks for sharing. I am discouraged from participating in racing.

Good post. Good luck with your recovery and in future races.

Just what I needed. I am getting the newbie anxiety of beginning to race and I really don't want to rush into it. I am running out of time to try things out and certainly don't want to drop-out, or crash but I don't mind crashing because it means I'm putting about the right amount of effort . You kept with it and wrote out a lot of the experience of your first race and passed it on to inquiring minds! Thank you!

My goal is similar; buy expensive bike and reason the expenditure by racing. Though, we all know the truth. We could race on an 80's steelie and perform just as well.