Category: 5
Result: Back of pack

German, and I got to the race early and had an excellent warm-up. There was a moderate wind picking up, and I felt a bit uneasy because I knew that if I fell off the pack it'd be over. At the start of the race I picked off a couple of riders, but it didn't matter because I wanted to be near the rear for a while.

The turns were nice and wide; couple that with a field of 29ish and the race would be relatively safe. The field, however, had some irregular accelerations off of corners. During some corners the field would accelerate strongly and keep going, but on others the field would accelerate strongly for 5 seconds and then stop. The whole rear of the field had to brake or move to the outside. I had a feeling the people up front didn't want to stay there for extended periods.

With four or five laps go I meet up with German and he tells me he's doing great. Coming on the main straight on the second to last lap the field started slowing down, probably because there was no use chasing the breakaway rider of 40 seconds, and it'd be better to slow down a whole lap before the finish. The pack is crawling down the straight, so I come up to the front, and when there was about 70 meters to turn 1 I attack and string out the field. I didn't plan on winning, but I was hoping that the attack would tire out whoever was behind me.

Coming to the back straight I popped and the whole field zipped by me, with German now at the front. He placed sixth, which wasn't bad, but I think that if I could have held the front until 70 meters before turn 3, German would have then passed and had a better chance at the sprint. Overall, a good race; no crashes, one flat, the wind wasn't so scary, and being ahead of the pack is a good feeling, even if it was only for 30 seconds.

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