Beginner to road biking/want to start racing!

[abarensfeld7]

Hi everyone,
New here! And new on a road bike. Been mountain biking for years, on and off. I randomly decided to do a century on September 10, so I had to get a road bike to train! Now I'm hooked, obviously. It was only a matter of time, I guess, before I finally got a road bike -- I've always had a clunker for getting around campuses and town before, besides my mountain bike -- and I've always enjoyed following road racing and all.
Anyhoo! Here I am with my new Trek 1000 (WSD), which I'm happy with, except I've already realized the limitations of the Tiagra grouppo (definitely a source of frustration). Now I need a race!
A couple questions -- hope you all don't mind.

-- I can't seem to find any races! There seem to be few races that include Cat 4 (women's beginner, right?) and what I can find tend to be on the West Coast, or elsewhere on the East Coast. Does anyone have a recommendation for finding road races? I know there must be more, I'm just not searching correctly. It seems like most of the races I turn up are more professional-type, with a variety of men's categories, but mostly only "pro" for the women.

-- If, and when, I do find a race...I wonder how much more serious training I'll need to do. I'm a fit 21-year old (play rugby in college) and for the past two weeks (since I bought my bike) I've been doing short rides a few times a a week (12, 16 miles etc) at a decent pace (about 18-21mph avg on flats, 9mph on the hills, wildly approximating since I don't look at my bike computer enough!) and then about once a week some longer rides (25, 30 miles). Need to definitely build miles and speed. As an indicator: last week I went 31 miles in 2 hours 5 minutes. I wasn't pushing myself to go fast, but I wasn't just sight-seeing either. Is that terribly slow?

OK phew! Thanks for any and all suggestions!