On April 3rd, I had my first ever road race. I had been super excited for this day and working hard leading up to it. The course was fairly short 10mi/lap and there were three laps, so 30mi in total. I knew that I was able to ride that distance, and I was ready to race. I had done multiple pre-rides of the course before hand and I was aware of all of the good places to make a move. On the day right before the race, I packed my bags and got a good night's sleep. On the morning of the race, I woke up at normal time and went downstairs for breakfast. I got everything in the car and we left to go to Walton Middle School, where the event registration was. I arrived, registered, and went back to the car. Once I was back, I got on all of my riding clothes and prepared to warm up. I rode over to my teammate's car, and rolled over to a nearby hill with him to warm up. We went up and down the hill a few times, and before I knew it, it was time to roll to the start. Before we started the race, the announcers told us that they had a problem with an electrical truck blocking the road. After a pretty long wait, they announced that the trucks had left, but they would need to cut the race a lap to only 20 miles. I was slightly bummed, but I didn't care all that much.
After the announcements, we had a neutral rollout to the start. After the rollout, we lined up at the start line and waited. The start whistle blew, and we were off. The beginning of the race was pretty fast, but it calmed down soon after. I got to about 3rd or 4th wheel, and drafted off of my opponents. We arrived at Blenheim road, which marked the beginning of a hill. Everyone went pretty hard up the hill, but I was able to hang on. For the rest of my race I conserved my energy and stayed out of the wind. I was able to hang on for the two laps and as we were getting towards the end of the race, things started to ramp up. When we were about 1k out, it was getting really hard. I made sure to be in a good position at that point. At 500m until the finish, I was about 4th wheel, but someone went for it. 500m is way to early to start sprinting, but it caught me off guard. All of the sudden I had a gap to close, and I did, but it was exhausting. When I caught back up there were about 300m left and I went around the guys and sprinted. I ended up close to the leader but he was able to stay ahead for the rest of the sprint. Two other guys came around either side of me also since they stayed on my wheel getting a draft the whole time. I ended up 4th, which is a satisfying result for a first race.
Overall, I had a super fun time racing and i'm looking forward to doing it again.
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