My goal was to ride this course in under 1 hour, which I managed to do.

Work more on leg strength this winter, more hill climbing, and train more specifically for bike racing. This year, I just wanted to test the waters and see if I liked bike racing before I invested a bunch of time into it, and so far it's been a lot of fun - certainly motivates me to improve my performance for next year and take it more seriously.

The group that started ahead of mine experienced a huge pile up that resulted in mangled bikes and injured riders. I can't understand why the race officials allowed the Cat 5 riders to start the race, when emergency vehicles were on-scene to deal with injuries. As a result of allowing us to start the race, the Cat 5 racers nearly had their own pile-up as the riders rounded a blind turn and immedidately found themselves feverishing tring to avoid hitting the back of a Park Ranger's patrol car which was parked on the race course. Not good!