Winter Park Race Series #1

So, I decided to race the Winter Park mountain bike series again this year. I want to try to race the entire series (or only miss one race) so I signed up for the whole series this year. I also want to try to compete for the series title in my category. I signed up to race in sport again and am still in the 25-29 age group.
The first race was on July 9th and was a hill climb starting at the base of the Winter Park resort and finishing on top of the resort at lunch rock. The course is about 5.1 miles long and gains a little over 2000 ft in elevation. There were about 13 riders in my category for this race and we started at 10:27 am. Kendra came with me and was waiting at the start line while I was warming up. I know you won't believe this since I am always on time, but I almost missed the start of my race! The clock on my bike computer is 4 minutes slow and I knew it, but while I was warming up that detail had slipped my mind for a little bit. Once I realized what time it really was I raced to the start line as fast as I could and got there with about 1 or 2 minutes to spare. I think the extended warm up right to the starting time worked out to my advantage though since the course starts out right into the climb and it doesn't let up until the top.
When the gun went off, I tried not to go out too fast, but just fell in the other guys at about 5th place. I wanted to see what the pace was going to be before taking off too fast and blowing up. I just followed the wheel in front of me and the other riders started to fall back. The guy who was way out front started to get reeled in very quickly. Shortly I was sitting in second, following the guy in first's wheel and realized that I wasn't working very hard. At that moment I decided to attack and went around the guy in first and opened up a small gap. I kept on pushing and the next time looked back the gap was pretty sizable. I just kept on pushing at my own pace and I didn't see any of them again until the top! I had actually won my first race! I finished in just over 46 mins. I'm excited to see how I will fare in the overall series rankings for my category...