Hi!
I've been wanting to try a bike race for years now and I finally did it! My first race ever was the Northampton Cyclocross race! It's funny- what I thought was going to be hard was relatively easy (like dismounting, mounting) and what was easy ended up being really hard. I thought riding for 40 minutes was going to be no problem because I'm relatively fit and feel comfortable on the road, but riding at my maximum aerobic threshold level for that long seemed impossible! I kept wondering when the recovery was going to come and it never did! But the course was great! I was super nervous about riding with so many riders since we had a huge field, but it ended up being the easy part I thought.
It was a great learning experience and I definitely took away a couple battle scars. I now know that I need to train differently before the next race. If you have any training suggestions, I would love to hear them. I can't wait to get back in there (and not get my butt kicked, I hope)!