PIR Bike Race

Every Tuesday night here in Portland they have a bike race around the indy car speedway. This Tuesday it was 65 degrees and perfect blue sky and I knew I had to work 12-hour shifts from Wednesday through Sunday, so I went and raced. I am officially a bike racer now! Category 4 and 5 are combined for 6 laps around which equals 12 miles and I stayed with the group the whole way. Started with almost 50 people and since I can't ride inches away from someone- I always drive with 1 or 2 car lengths- I ended up at the back of the group. That's fine except you get whipsawed. By that I mean the group slows and bunches and then speeds up and you have to pedal like crazy to stay on. At one of the very sharp corners (2 straightaways and 2 S curves) I was able to coast in the group slipstream and do yoga breathing to relax- I look down and I'm going 22.5 MPH and that was resting speed! Stayed with the group until the last curve of lap 6 and some guy cut in front of me and slowed down. I could have come out of my lean and gone around, but I was on the inside off the turn and let it go. After the curve the mad dash for the finish line down a straightaway started and I couldn't catch the group, but I passed about 4 or 5 stragglers and finished about 30 yards behind the group with an average of 24.8 MPH. When I can do that kind of speed in a triathlon without 40+ people acting as a slipstream, that will be good. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my camera- sorry.
Then last night (Wednesday), my cousin called and she was visiting Portland so we went to a fantastic dinner at a really nice Italian restaurant- that was nice.