But enough preliminaries -- on to the racing! The night started with a 1 lap~500 m tt. Having gotten there late and having had to help a team mate change his gear, the tt was essentially my warm up. This is not a practice I recommend! My time put me squarely in the "B" races, which was fine by me because I wasn't sure what to expect. First mass start race was a Miss-n-out, one of my favorites. There's a sprint every other lap in which the last rider is eliminated until only half the field is left (sometimes it's taken down to the last 2 or 3, but with 3 fields needing to race, the officials used the shortened format), and then it's a 2 lap race. One of my team mates attacked immediately after the final sprint and was gone. I marked all moves, but no one would bridge to him so I just sat in and took the field sprint for 2nd. The 2nd race was a Scratch race -- essentially a 10-15 lap crit. Here again, all moves were nullified, but on this one I made the mistake of trying a flyer with 3 laps left, didn't quite make it and was still recovering when the final sprint began. Rather than being 2nd or 3rd wheel, I was 6th or 7th and couldn't quite catch the leader, having to settle for 2nd again. (at this point my coach rolled by muttering something about "Raymond Poulidor..." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Poulidor.
Last race of the night was a 9 lap points race -- a sprint every 3rd lap for points, rider with the most points wins the overall. I took the first sprint, was second in the third, and won the final -- the last one was especially sweet because I was able to look around and see that the only rider close to me was a team mate and was able to ease up before the line. So I ended the night on a high note, and may have discovered my calling as a bike racer. Of course, I'll have to move up to the A's soon, and I suspect I won't have nearly as easy a time against the Cat 1s and local pros who frequent those races, but for now, I'll just enjoy the results and my hitherto unexperienced status as a "sandbagger."
