Bike Races

I tried my hand at pure cycling this weekend with a 25 mile road race Saturday at Mizzou, and a crit today at Lindenwood University, about 30 miles from SLU. It was quite an experience. Bike races are much different than running road races, or triathlons. There is no timing. It doesn't matter how fast or slow you ride, everything is relative to your position. There isn't really a concept of a PR, except maybe your best finish. You work along with other racers much more than in tris or running. The pace changes so much. You can be coasting in the pack one second, and the next second sprinting to avoid getting dropped. It was a very different experience, but really pretty enjoyable.
Anyway, here are some 'race reports':

Road Race:
Saturday was really cold. About 22 degrees at race time. It was my first race, so I rode collegiate 'D' level - the equivalent of Cat 5, probably. There were about 70 riders for the D's. Registration was super slow, and no one got a chance to warm up. The first 5 miles or so ended up being a warm up. At about 6 miles, there were two really steep hills (walls) with about 1/2 mile of false flat (A section of road that looks level, but is actually slightly uphill) after that. I was about 20 riders back at this point. The first ten picked up the pace on the hills/false flat, and most of the ten riders in front of my dropped. I got through the hills fine, but found myself alone trying to bridge ~30 meters up to the lead group on the false flat. I wasn't able to catch them, and coasted to pick up 4 riders behind me (including a teammate). We formed a pace line and put a gap between us and another group behind us, but didn't make up much ground on the lead pack. Our group of 5 broke up on the hills on the next lap, and my teammate and I worked together the last 6 miles or so to finish 15 and 16 overall. I was pretty happy with the finish. It was pretty hard, I had never biked like that before.

Crit:
Sunday was about 10 degrees warmer than Saturday, but still pretty cold. The field was a lot smaller, about 40 riders. The field spread out a ton right off the start. There are a lot of inexperienced riders (myself included) and it was hard to stay with the lead group through the many riders and turns for the first few laps. I again found myself with about 5 other riders for the majority of the 30 minutes + 5 (1 mile) lap race. It took a while for me to warm up and get some of the soreness out of my legs, but I really rode hard and picked off 8-9 riders the last 5 laps to finish 13th. I was pretty spent and felt like I left everything on the road/ I was happy with my finish, considering I am in no shape for crits. I have been doing only long, slow rides all spring. A crit involves a ton of sprinting. I felt like I had trained for a marathon to show up for a 5k. I am not a very good rider technically, usually losing speed on turns (that I made up for on the 1/3 mile hill on the topside of the course).
The rest of the team did really well- our C riders took 1 and 2 in the road race, and the road race champion repeated in the crit today in a photo finish.