Did my first race of the year last week. It was also my first masters 35+ race. It was also the first road race I've completed in almost two years! Lots of firsts, here.
They combined all the masters together, so about 50 guys. First hour was super boring. A few attacks, but never hard for more than a minute or two so everyone chasing back. Think I was averaging 188w and 22 mph. Finally after a climb, a false flat section, and a few efforts, guys started gapping a bit and were hesitant to respond. I attacked, got brought back, did a sitting sneak attack, got brought back, got countered, countered again, and then when a little gap opened to the guys that countered I jumped across and a group of four of us rode away. It was only a two hour race, but also about my 7th ride over 1 hour this year and it caught up to me surprisingly quickly. Had no snap for the final 200m uphill drag to the line and got third.
Did the p/1/2 crit and promptly missed both the initial break and the counter. Not because I couldn't tell immediately that those moves were the moves, but because I was totally gassed. and just couldn't go any faster at those two moments. Very frustrating (though not surprising given my lack of proper training hours). Aerobically I'm sorely lacking in regards to making big efforts over and over again. This race was probably a good boost to the system, but I've only got two weeks to really bolster some aerobic fitness before Sunny King where steady state isn't needed but the ability to do 100+ big surges is.
In the masters crit I broke my chain coming out of a 180 in a crit so flipped over the bars and made a mess of myself. Fortunately I was only going about 10 mph and there was no massive pile up or anything. I've never broken a chain, and that chain had about 2k miles on it, but this bike was on the trainer all winter and whatnot. I don't know. I usually swap out chains after 3k miles (Ultegra). Should have just done a new chain to start the season I guess. Most likely a fluke thing. Don't want to think about it happening again.