Friday and Saturday were sort of a write-off as far as training goes because of family stuff, but otherwise had good solid sessions earlier in the week.
I went into the KW Classic with some trepidation, mostly thinking of the scenario where I get spit out the back of the field on the third lap and spend an hour slogging in the wind by myself, shedding bitter tears of regret and shame.
The first lap was a little nervous, and I had a tense moment going into a 90-degree right at the bottom of a hill almost locking up my front wheel, but things calmed down a little after that. I stayed mid-back of the field, moved up on the downhills and worked hard to stay with the group up the hills.
There was a nasty crash mid-race that took down two or three riders, and a bunch of near-misses as everyone negotiated around them.
After that, I focussed on recovering on the flats and downhills, preparing for the climbs (there were two) on each lap, which seemed to work out pretty well. I managed to stay up with the field up the climbs each lap, except the last one where I was seriously going backwards up the first steep climb, managed to catch back up to the group, then hung on through the final climb, and the sprint to the finish.
So as far as my first "real" road race goes, I had a good time, got a lot of work out of it, and managed to stay with the main field and not crash. Victory! :)
Edit: Results are up now -- 30th place, 1:31:30, 39.2km/h, +00' 05"
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