I was the last person to roll up so started in the back row. I think only 4 guys total from our team were there and I was the only Cat 5 racer. There were 33 in the field and a few teams had 3-4 riders.

Given I was still new at this type of riding I was quite content to sit back and not be too agressive, especially at the start. The whistle goes off and wouldn't you know it, dude in front of me has trouble clipping in and so does dude on my left. So I had to work hard to get a wheel right from the start. No big deal, caught up by the 2nd turn.

For the first few laps I was content to hang in the back as long as the group didn't split. I'm still working on my cornering so as long as the group was one, I was happy bringing up the rear as I didn't want to be the cause of a crash. Last week they told us the total lap count would be announced after we completed two laps but this week they said we'd do 20 laps.

My friend Mark, a Cat 3, kept shouting at me as we went by "you have to move up Reece!" After turn 3 I would lose ground and have to catch back up so too much gap means I have to work harder. Yeah yeah I know. This was a big group with some other inexperienced Cat 5 racers in there so I was content at the moment to sit back and observe so to speak. And then, as I was kind of expecting, at around the 5th or 6th lap, boom two riders in front of me go down! I hit the brakes, fish tailed a bit but was able to avoid a collision. A couple guys went off into the grass but recovered. I think they just got tangled or something, After the bikes went down there was a big "pop", a tube bursting no doubt.

All I was thinking after that was "that's two more places I can move up, LOL" Around lap 9 I was about 3 feet from the right edge of the road and here comes this dude on the right. We were approaching the fastest of the turns and we had the winds at our backs. Speeds went over 30 mph in this section. Welcome to crit racing I told myself. Around lap 11-12 this dude on my right swerved left and we touch handlebars, we were on a straight-away, what the hell was he swerving from?

Sometime after the 4th or 5th lap this one guy bolted ahead of the field and no one went with him. He eventually won and at least at one time had 45 seconds on us. As we went by I could hear Mark shout "you guys are gonna get lapped", ha ha. I think there were 3 prime laps for which I was not in contention but yet, we were one group, minus real fast guy for the whole race.

At one point I had made my way to 4th in the main group (minus the breakaway guy) but that didn't last long. My confidence improved each lap of this race which is a good thing. We finally heard the bell lap and I gave it my all trying to stay on the wheel in front of me and I ended up somewhere around the 12th position. In the results they give points up to 8 places and someone told me all names listed after that are in no particular order.

I don't think I would have done anything differently as I didn't know any better. But next race I might be a little more aggressive.

We averaged just under 25 mph for 40 minutes and given I could only suck wheel for part of it I'm feeling pretty good about my performance. I'm just a guy who loves triathlon trying something different so I'm not taking this too seriously.

Rode easy for about 12 minutes, put a dry shirt on, drank some chocolate milk, at a banana then went and signed up for the Cat 5 race.