This race was held on the Blackhawk Farms Raceway, a 2 mi motor racing circuit. Wide corners, rumble strips instead of curbs, and no elevation change to speak of. There were about 60 entrants in the cat-3 race, with no team presences large enough to dictate the race. This usually means breaks are doomed to fail a minute after they start, and this race was no exception. Despite knowing this going in, I still tried going off the front once with ~4 other guys. The legs felt good and it would be a shame to just sit in for 45 minutes and do nothing. But of course as soon as one guy refused to pull through, we were caught and back to sucking wheels.

The finishing straight was 300-400m, maybe 0.5-1% uphill. I got boxed out of the good positions in the last lap, and squeezed in the last corner forcing me to touch the brakes, but I got to put in a decent sprint to move from mid-pack to 14th at the line. As the first race of the year, I was happy to get through without incident (early season races are scary sometimes). The race felt easy, which was a positive indication for my form, and the sprint was still strong so this was encouraging for my upcoming races and rest of the season.