Early Bird Race #3

On January 18th the third Early Bird race kicked off. I was going to race Elite 3/4, but I was very nervous. The last Early Bird, there were three crashes, one of them was on the left of me.
The race was at 8:30 in the morning, and I had one teammate with me in the race, David Benkoski . At the start gun, one guy attacked. David followed and stayed close behind him, leaving both of us at the front of the pack. I stayed in the top 15, to avoid crashes. Less than halfway into the race. A guy in a white jersey went wide and attacked. After a few seconds, the guy had more than 10 bike lengths ahead of the pack. I attacked and broke away, but was unable to catch him. About halfway through the race, there was an attack and David followed and then went around him. I stayed back as David was getting a lead on the field. About less than half a lap, David caught up with the guy up the road. I stayed in the pack and sometimes went to the front to slow the pack down or I didn't work in the pace line.
When there was three laps to go the pack was pushing it. There were also several attacks after another. I stayed up to the front in the top 10 of the pack with two laps to go. I saw they were ganging on the breakway. They took turn two at high speed and some guy cut me off. When there was one lap to go, David and the other guy were only about less than 5 bike lengths. I followed this big guy to front of the pack. On the first turn, the pack caught the break and big guy, I was behind sped up through the turn and I passed the break. The next two turns I was trapped and had to go narrow. In the final sprint, I went as close as I could go to the sidewalk and sprinted to the finish line. I ended up finishing in the top 15 out of 40-50 people who started the crit In all, this was my best crit I had done so far.