Tour of Walkersville road race

Masters cat 5: Jittery and the coffee didn't help. The rolling start also didn't help. Mainly because I didn't know what a rolling start was. Halfway through the first loop we were not going fast enough to get away from my gastro butterflies. Like the hiccups, I didn't even notice when the see-saw physio-mental equilibrium reset and a faux-confidence settled into the spinning rhythm. Maybe it was the crash that started when a sketchy Evo rider on a cannondale swerved past me & I heard metal on metal as dominoes fell behind me.
I went in fully expecting to get smoked & unceremoniously pushed off the back of the train. I found my self near the front most of the race and even popped off the front on the "hilly" section when I tried to pull the pelaton through the blocking ABRT team. Their rider in the 3-man break was safely away. I assumed everyone was behind me only to peek back and see a 200 yard gap. There was no way I was going solo in my first race & I let my legs revert to a soft-pedal. Twenty minutes later, I was in the front again with a mile to go. I had no idea where the finish line might be so I just pulled until the surge. At the sprint I never even got out of the saddle. I swerved around an upside down face-plant sprinter who had been jockeying for 15th and I coasted across the finish. This is definitively fun.