I AM TERRIFIED!!!

Okay, terrified is a bit of an exaggeration, and all caps and multiple exclamation points is probably a bit dramatic, but here's the deal:

As 2010 will be my first full season of racing -  my introduction to racing was with cyclocross last fall - mostly everything I'll be doing this year will be either completely new to me, or at least will have some unfamiliar components.I've scheduled myself (tentatively of course - everything is tentative) for a few criteriums this year. I raced cyclocross last fall, I'll be doing Barry-Roubaix and several road races, but for some reason I'm particularly nervous about the criteriums.

Illustration via Devin Oishi

It's not performance I'm concerned about. Obviously, I'll be starting with the Cat 5s, so everyone else will most likely be clueless and sort of terrible too. Of course, I'd like to avoid getting dropped, and especially to avoid getting lapped, but that's not something I can worry about too much. It will either happen, or it won't.

And it's not fear of injury. Well, of course I'd like to avoid getting injured, but it's not my major major concern.

For some reason, knowing what the hell to do is my main concern. I've attended crits as a spectator, I've read up as much as I can, but I still feel like my first race (or two or three) I'll spend in a state of utter confusion.

Which I guess leads to being afraid that not knowing what I'm doing will lead to poor performance or injury. And although I'm not really afraid of either, I actually really am, a little. But I'm more afraid of feeling like a complete idiot for an hour and walking away not feeling like I understand any of it any better.

Naturally, I'll be working with my team to starting gaining skills and experience, and I've been chatting with them about it on our team forum, but because I am neurotic, I need to have as much information, and as many opinions, and as much input as possible.

So I'm wondering if anyone has any tips for preparing specifically for a criterium, and exactly what I should try to do during the actual race, other than ride as fast as I can until someone tells me to stop.

Because obviously there's more to it than that. Right?