First Try

[Buzzaro]

So I've had a DSLR for about a year now and it's first camera beyond a P&S. Definitely the first time I've learned and tried anything beyond the full auto mode. A couple of friends of mine were doing some bicycle racing that I wasn't going to be riding in. I thought it would be fun to try my hand at some actual "sports photography". I've been shooting mostly indoor sports photography for the last year, which really means I've got a new toddler and I've been getting as many pictures as I can.
So I read a little bit more on some beginner guides and must know guides to see if there was anything major I was missing. In my head, I think everything was fairly clear. I just needed to get out there, try some things, and see how it came out. As an added bonus, it was scheduled to rain heavily during the race.....and it did. I've got a Canon T2i and I chose to use my 50/1.8. The 50 doesn't have zoom which would have been nice, but it's my best lens. Maybe one of the two kit lenses I have would have worked well for these shots, but whenever I take comparison shots between the lenses the 50 is just so much better. So I headed out to the event, and got set up where I wanted to take the shots. I decided to use full manual mode because I felt I needed a higher shutter speed to capture the action, as well as a wider aperture to separate the subject from the background a little. I thought the pictures would be too confusing if the background was totally in focus. This is an area where there is a lot going on. At the same time, I wanted to use the lowest ISO I could to keep the noise down. I turned on the histogram display mode and took a few shots to get the settings dialed. I don't know much about the histogram except that as far as I know you want it to look like a bell curve towards the center.
So here are a few of what I think are the better shots. I don't really know much about photoshop, so nothing has been done to these except cropping.
Looking forward to the feedback, both good and bad.
I also had to reduce the image size to post them here