Sooner or later, you’ll have another bad race. You can nail every training block, abide by every rest week, but just like eating a fusty peanut M&M or getting stuck in the subways when you have to pee, time bears it out.

My bad race came uncomfortably early this year, on the first Harlem Hill of the first lap of the first CRCA Park race of the season. The weather Sunday morning had me questioning everything, right past, “Should I throw another base layer on under this?” and down to the reason I’d moved to New York to begin with—this insane city where road season starts the first day in March, and where even the temperature of my apartment is dictated by an incomprehensible system of erratically-running radiators combatted by windows in varying states of closure.

In my flawed recollections, every race I ever finished back in Colorado blurred past in a montage of bluebird skies and hairpin climbs into the foothills.

The ride to the start line was cold, the wait to start was colder, and by the time we hit the halfway mark on Harlem Hill, I had dropped straight through the women’s development field and off the back, relegated to two-and-a-half very cold, very lonely Park laps.

Even if you’re finishing last, you have a choice in how you finish.

The men’s 1/2/3 field flew past, chasing an early Good Guys-Rockstar break, and I opted to TT the rest of the race. Even if I couldn’t catch the field, I could mitigate the time gap at the finish. As Kristina Grossman, Carolina Rabbat, and Christine De Witte set the pace for the women’s club field, I came through for my second Harlem Hill, catching another rider from the dev field and settling into a two-person paceline.

In the end, the men’s break held, with Good Guys, Rockstar, and Foundations setting a high, early-season bar.

Meanwhile, I tied for last place, drank some hot coffee, and decided it might be worth a try to ride my bike more than twice a week; a different kind of winning.

For all the cold fingers and frozen bottles, there’s something to be said for getting out to those early season races. If nothing else, you can lose feeling in your face with a few dozen cyclists in a low-stakes scenario, since no one in their right mind tapers and peaks for the first race of the season.

After some reflection, I remembered that Colorado road season historically kicks off in early February, with the aptly-named Frostbite Time Trial. Maybe summer racing isn’t as effortless as we remember, and maybe, just maybe, early-season racing isn’t as bad as we thought.

(P.S. Did anyone else notice that a spilled coffee at the base of Harlem Hill froze into a sheet of ice? If you, or anyone you know, has ever crashed out because of a spilled beverage, please share your story in the comments. We’d love to hear about it.)