After little bike training I decided to throw myself into a weekend of racing. Got down to West Lafayette with an hour of extra time after checking into the hotel, or so I thought. Hadn't eaten on the way down, so I ran acrossed the road to Subway. While in line I get a call from my frantic wife: "Dan it's 2:45, not 1:45, we forgot the time change. Your race is at 3:15." SHIT!!!!!

So I run back to the room throw my biking gear on, get in the car get to the parking lot of the race, throw bike together, ride to registration, it's 3:05. Get my number pinned on, roll back to the lot to make sure wife and kid are ok, sprint back to line. First crit ever, Cat 4/5 field, no warmup, no clue what the course looks like, 35 min race. This should be fun.

We go off, I have no clue what to expect, try to stay mid pack. Course is under 1k, with a very steep hill in the middle, followed by a steep downhill and a tight turn since the course was not completely closed. The first 10 minutes I was on edge. Then right in front of me a guy touched wheels with another dude, and they both went down right in front of me. I rolled over one guy and flipped over the bars. Rode back around for a free lap, got my breath and got back in it.

When I got back in it the group had dwindled considerably, started with 47, probably down to 20 at that point. Stayed towards the top ten the whole time. Didn't really pay attention to where I needed to be on the last lap, the race was really for the top of the hill on the last lap since the last turn was so tight. Should have sprinted the hill, instead of waiting for the sprint.
Ended up 10th, not bad for the first crit.

Numbers:
Time: 37:45
Avg Pwr: 287w
Norm Pwr: 330w