Second weekend of racing

Did a roadrace and a crit this past weekend. The roadrace was the annual start of the racing season: The Boulevard Road Race. The course was pretty rolling, with a few kilometers of uphill that stretched up to the finish. So not exactly my kind of race really. I decided to do the collegiate to see what that was like out West. Not feeling like racing at 6AM in the desert (FREEZING) I signed up for the A's race at noon. Didn't go so well- Stanford guys tore the small field to shreds on the first lap's climb, and I was basically just riding for training after that.

Next day was rainy and windy- great time for a bike race. It was a crit though, so I was feeling much more motivated to go get wet. I raced the 3's, and like last weekend's wet crit, the field was small likely due to the weather. Maybe 30-40 guys. I made sure to stay right near the front, knowing that the group would probably split up after not too long. Turns out I didn't even realize when the split happened (good thing I guess!). A few laps after it had happened, I let myself drift 6 or 7 guys back, took a peek what was behind us, and.... nothing. No one else in sight! So... that was the race. From that point on I just sat on- we were clearly not getting caught (we actually lapped everyone else) so there was no point to get stuck in the wind. Things got a little more animated when we lapped the field- people used teammates to try and spring off... but it was all together coming into the final lap. One dude went off the front at the bell, and was working up a decent lead. I was getting worried, but didn't want to do any work just to drag other people up. We were slowly bringing him back in on the last corner, which I carried more speed through by going wide.... jumped from 3rd or 4th wheel to the the first guy chasing down the leader... stayed way outside and started my sprint... WAY too early. I got almost all the way up to the guy off the front, but then three guys came barreling through with 50m to go. If I had been smarter I could have easily have been top 3, but I ended up 5th- so more upgrade points! Not bad... but I'm hoping for better next weekend.