Calabogie Classic 2012

I signed up for the M3 category. It is a little confusing having a Quebec license and racing a lot in Ontario as Quebec is aged based and Ontario seems to be a mix of age plus ability based. Since I don't do much road racing and they say you need 10 points to move up to M2 I don't see a real need for me to move up and I will need much improvement to be anywhere close to a sandbagger in this category.
I was wondering if I would have problems staying with the group once I saw the rider list. I new a few guys and  new that I had trouble not going a lap down during cross season. But road racing is a different animal.
I really really like doing this race as it is on a closed course race track. No cars, curbs or potholes. The track is very smooth and has lots of tiny rollers and corners.
We also had a pretty good turnout of Euro-sport guys for our class. At least 9 of us I believe. Most of us don't race together so we could have really used a team pre-race meeting, but most of us were here for fun.
I felt unusually calm for the start of this race. I was pretty sure that I could hang in the draft as I managed to stay on the last time I did this race and I have actually started training this year so I should have improved.
Once the race started  I was feeling like straying with the pack was going to be a walk in the park.
It certainly was a dicey group and with 20 corners it stayed that way for most of the race. People had trouble holding their lines in a lot of corners. It was also quite windy so that didn't help the situation.
There seemed to be quite a few attacks but nothing went far at all. The group really slowed on a couple of the very short hills and this caused most of the attack to come from the back. I even gave it a shot on one of the early laps. I gave a big dig on the bottom of the longest climbs, which was probably less than 30 seconds, and pulled a nice gap. I kept looking back to see if anyone would come and no one did. I was hoping to pull a couple of guys out to come help me as I knew for sure I could not last 2/3's of the race out on my own. It was fun to try and a good learning experience.
There was a bit of confusion within the team and we made a very bad rookie mistake and miscounted the laps. We did not realize we were on the lead lap. I saw a couple guys off the front, but not too far, about what the other attacks maxed out at, maybe 500 meters. This was with about 1 minute to go in the lap. It was at this time that a crash happened and about 7 teammates got stuck in or behind this crash. I managed to avoid hitting the falling bodies in front of me and came to a stop beside a teammate and checked on him. He told me to go ahead but the pack was long gone and in full flight. So a few of us finished off the back. I think I was a minute back.
So all in all it was a good race. I was starting to feel a bit fatigued but still had jump in my legs. I think I would have had some fun in the sprint.
Looking forward to next year :)

Cheers,
Paul