Congrats on going out there and doing it! Sounds like you had fun and have lots to look forward to in the future:-)

Only thing I want to say is this.. be careful about cutting your warm up to short. The shorter the race, the longer the warm up. And if you want to ride around the course with the others DO IT just do it in your small ring spinning. In your warm up, make sure to include a few hard efforts. The reason for this is that in crits, unlike road races, the pace starts off really high to see who is going to hang and who is going to fall off. Because of this, you need a good warm up with a few hard efforts so you are ready to go. Now in a road race, the warm up is a lot less important because people take longer to get going since the race is usually 2-3 times longer then a crit(say 30-90 miles vs. 45 minutes +3 laps).
My advice would be, if you ride to the race, which is great to do!! Spin the whole way there, once you get there put in a few hard efforts, then keep spinning if you can. Keep the legs moving :-)

Have fun!! It sounds like you enjoyed yourself