Cycling: It is a process

Leading up to this race my shoulder had been progressing well. I had been training and racing for the past 2 weeks. The local results were not that great, but I was training hard going into them to see if my shoulder could take the racing. The shoulder was sore after the efforts, but nothing too bad. I was well rested going into the weekend and felt fresh.
When I registered for the New York race I was very excited. I have never been to Long Island or the “Hamptons”. I knew that this would be an excellent early season test. This would be part of the process to get fast for nationals in December. The competition was as hard as it could get: the World Cyclocross Champion was flying in from Belgium to race.
The warm up went well. I arrived early on Saturday and rode 4 warm-up laps to get used to the circuit. After this I went and ate some lunch. I got back to the race site in time to warm up for an hour and get another lap on the circuit. During warm-up my legs and shoulder felt good. The course was fast and rough. The weather was hot and dry.
The start is where things went wrong for my race. I was in the 3rd row, which was good. At the start I clipped in clean and started my sprint when my chain skipped and jerked my shoulder hard. I knew right away that something was not right. I had a sharp pain in my back. I kept going for 3 laps but I could not pull up on the bar to sprint out of the corners. I pulled out.
After I pulled out, I watched the world champion win the race in a sprint. I knew after the race that I would not be able to race on Sunday because of the pain in my back. Looking back I was pushing too hard to do this race. I need to follow the process and get my shoulder back to 100% before racing against world-class competition. The next step in the process is to rest and heal.