Perry Damn Race - first win of the year :-)

First race of the year is always interesting. No exception here. At least the weather was decent, albet brisk, and not much wind to deal with. The Masters race was short, only 3 5-mile laps. That's about 45 minutes. Only 12 guys in our group and that was several age groups combined. First lap rolled along with nothing really happening. Everything stayed together the first time up the hill, just spun up it. On the 2nd lap, on the lower road after crossing the dam, we came across a couple of the cat 5 guys laying in the road. They had went down on their first lap. They were being attended to already, and we were neutralized through the scene and resumed our race. 2nd trip up the hill, I gave it a little big-ring effort. This caused a split. coming across the dam, we could see that the race was being stopped down on the lower road so we just sat up and the group came back together. We arrived at the wreck site to find that the cat 5 field was stopped as the 2 riders were being attended to. Me and the other 11 guys just walked around the scene in the grass and continued on course. We weren't really sure what was going to happen since this was 2 miles before the finish. We sort of rolled up the last hill, somewhat sprinting it out. I really couldn't do much after sitting that long, legs got too heavy. The decision was made to restart the last lap over for all the Masters - in one big group. We rolled on out and across the dam, trying to keep the age groups straight. It was all together with 1km to go. I tried a little move on the run-in before the last right turn onto the climb. It split things up but all of my group was still on my wheel. I led up the climb for a long way but the legs were too loaded-up and the snap wasn't there. I was happy to just get some of the cobwebs blown out.