I started racing bikes this year, at 46, mostly as a way to stay motivated while losing weight. It's turned into a whole thing. This weekend was GFNY Maryland- 92 miles on the Eastern Shore, about 500 feet of total climbing, and somewhere around 600 people on the start line.

The name makes it sound like a gran fondo, a big charity-ride kind of event. It isn't. It's a real mass-start road race, fully timed, with age group awards. And I went in with a plan, because I'd done my homework.

The Homework

The last two editions both ended in bunch sprints. In 2024 about 80 riders came to the line together. In 2025 a lead group of around 120 formed early, a multi-time champion went solo at the halfway point and opened up almost three minutes... and got caught inside the last 2km. On a course this flat, breakaways just don't survive.

So the plan was simple:

• Get into the lead group and stay there. Getting dropped on a flat course means riding alone into the wind for hours.
• Don't pull, don't chase, don't join breaks. Let the teams do the work.
• Close small gaps immediately, before they become big ones.
• Eat and drink on a schedule. 14 scoops of Tailwind, between two bottles and a hydration pack, no stops.
• Sprint late. A flat finish favors absolute watts, and that's the one thing I've got going for me at my size.

I followed maybe half of it.

What Actually Happened

The start was in the dark, in the rain, on narrow roads, with hundreds of people I didn't know. I was scared enough that I'd pretty much decided I wasn't racing, so I rode the first few miles carefully near the back. This turned out to be the most expensive decision of the day. More on that in a minute.

When we turned onto a main road I got more confident and started riding. I passed a ton of people- closing a gap, bridging to the next group, closing the next gap. Eventually I caught what I thought was the front group, and sat in.

For a while, anyway. The pace felt slow and I got frustrated, so I started pulling. Then pulling more. Every time I went to the front, the group would string out and break apart down to a few guys behind me, and then I'd ease up and let them come back. Felt great! Was dumb.

About 47 minutes in, we came around a turn and I saw a big group way up the road. That's when I figured it out: the real front of the race had split off in those first few kilometers while I was being careful, and I'd been leading the chase group for half an hour. I pushed harder, looked back, and realized I'd dropped my own group. So I went for it alone.

The chart tells the story better than I can. For the first 29km, I'm doing 37-40km/h on 150-190 watts- that's what riding in a group feels like. After km 29 the power goes up and the speed goes down. That's what riding alone into a headwind feels like.

It was brutal. I caught a few guys who'd been dropped from the front, and they figured there were maybe 20 riders up the road. None of them could work with me, so I kept going solo. Later in the race I timed the gap to some other dropped riders, and the front group had probably been 3-4 minutes ahead the whole time. I was never closing that.

Then I got a flat. The good news- I plugged a tubeless tire for the first time ever, mid-race, and it held. The bad news- I'd never done it before, and the plugs and CO2 were buried in my bag, so it was not fast.

While I was getting going again, a group of about 15 caught me. This was the best thing that had happened all day! I sat on the back doing 140 watts at times. But I really had to pee, and I was a bit demoralized, and when I'd pulled them earlier at 220W they had strung right out... so I figured I'd stop, go, and catch back on.

I never saw them again. Turns out 15 people sharing the work are a lot faster than one person, even when they're cruising. I picked up 5-10 other stragglers over the last 50km, but mostly it was me, the wind, and a steadily dropping power number.

The funny part- I never once got passed on the road all day. And still didn't get a good result lol.

The Numbers

• Time: 4:24 moving, 4:31 total
• Normalized power: 217W, about 78% of my FTP, for four and a half hours
• Stops: about 5 minutes for the flat, about a minute and a half for the pee

The one bright spot in the data is that I pushed my power curve up past the 1-hour mark:

Four hours at 204 watts, mostly without a draft, is a big day for me. My biggest limiter over the past year has been durability- I can hold my threshold for about 20 minutes, and things fall apart over longer efforts. So this one felt like progress, even if the result didn't.

What I Learned

This is the second race in a row where I've come away thinking "the legs were fine, the decisions weren't." Which is actually good news, because fitness takes years, and decisions are something I can fix by next weekend.

1. The race happened in the first few kilometers. I spent the start being careful, and that's exactly when the real front group left. Next time I line up at the front of my corral and hold my position through the opening miles, even if I'm nervous. Being near the front is actually safer than the accordion at the back.
2. Don't pull a group that isn't the front out of frustration. Every hard pull burned a match I needed later, and broke up the group that was supposed to be protecting me. If you're not in the front group, either get people organized into a real chase or sit in and wait.
3. Measure the gap before you bridge. Count the seconds from when the group ahead passes a landmark until you get there. On a flat road into a headwind, much more than 30-60 seconds is not something you close alone.
4. Never leave a group voluntarily. Pee before the start, learn to pee on the bike, or wait until the whole group stops. A group of 15 at 140 watts is free speed, and I threw it away.
5. Flat kit goes in your jersey pocket, not your bag.

Overall

I'm happy with it. For the first 45 minutes I was riding at the front of a decent group, and I finished 92 miles in some pretty rough conditions, alone in the wind for most of it, with a flat in the middle. The fitness is clearly there. The race craft isn't yet.

Cyclocross season starts next weekend, which is basically a crash course in positioning, starts, and decisions under pressure. Seems like good timing.