Getting up to a racing standard...

Crawlinguphills

As a recent disciple of road cycling I was looking for some advice on racing. I am currently overweight and slow, but see the winter as prime training time to drop 6-8kgs and get faster on the bike. Ideally I would like to enter some beginner races at the start of next season. What kind of training program should I be setting myself? What kind of exercises do I need to do to to increase speed, and more importantly at this stage endurance and fitness?

Any advice greatly appreciated.

Monty Dog

Easy, join a club now, ride lots over the winter. Riding with others will soon give you a measure of how your performance compares to other club riders and give you the pack-riding skills to equip yourself for racing.

There is no other way..

smidsy

That works right up to the point where your off the back and heaving in a ditch (after 10 miles) :-)

OP - you do not say how experienced you are or how much riding of any kind you have done to date, but if you are at ground zero the single best advice I was given and seems to hold true is to just get out there and put the miles in.

Do not worry about average speeds etc. until you can ride comfortable for several hours without stopping and do not need to get off and walk up the hills.

If this presumes a level significantly below your current one accept my apologies now.

dmclite-3.0

Ride lots, ride with a club and get good bunch riding discipline/etiquette. Have a good healthy diet, cut the crisps and fats, lots of water, knock the booze on the head and get lots of rest as well. When you are going better, dropped some weight start some interval training on your rides as well. Drink before you are thirsty and eat before you are hungry. Try and train with someone who is fitter than you if you can.

If you have trained well try a go race event or try a club 10 mile tt as a start, good indicators. Your first 4th cat road race will probably leave you reeling and if get to the finish without being dropped you will be doing bloody well.

Have fun.

Crawlinguphills

smidsy wrote:

That works right up to the point where your off the back and heaving in a ditch (after 10 miles) :-)

OP - you do not say how experienced you are or how much riding of any kind you have done to date, but if you are at ground zero the single best advice I was given and seems to hold true is to just get out there and put the miles in.

Do not worry about average speeds etc. until you can ride comfortable for several hours without stopping and do not need to get off and walk up the hills.

If this presumes a level significantly below your current one accept my apologies now.

Nope, that is about it. I ride about 150 miles a week currently, which is my commute then 40 miles on a Sat and 10 miles on a Sunday. I still struggle with hills but I think this is due to my weight.

I havent yet done 40 miles without several stops, and I stop once on my commute after a particular hill for two minutes, but this is to prevent a heart attack. I train with my girlfriend who is super fit, so we'll both start a hill and she will go up it 2-3 times while I am doing it once. Soul destroying! But it makes me determined.

I think my biggest problem is climbing and endurance. Coming across from mtb's I am used to having more gears, so will get half way up a hill and run out of gears.

smidsy

Right now we have a yard stick.

I started in Jan from ground zero after 20 years of nothing (active but no actual sport/fitness). I could not complete 8 miles without stopping and any kind of 'undulation' was a mountain. Last Sunday I did 75 miles with the club which I was either at the front or going back for straglers (slow group).

I only put this up to emphasise that no matter what you think now improvements do come by simply going out and pedalling. I have not had any specific training plan and simply did miles on the bike.

Now I am sure that if I had actually had a proper strategy I would be much better than I currently am but in 8 months I can see a huge improvement.

I would just do what you are doing and the fact you have a fit and supportive partner is a massive bonus (as long as she does not get bored and push you too quick too soon).

With regards to the hills specifically this is the single biggest thing I have struggled to improve significantly. If you are having to get off and walk my guess is you give too much in the early part of the climb. Best advice I was given was to pace it and just take a steady rythm from top to bottom. Keeping the cadence up is far more efficient long term than grinding a big gear. Try and stay seated too as it takes less out of you.

markos1963

The best thing is you are thinking of it now and not in March. This means you have enough time to get fit enough to at least contemplate racing. Definately join a club, bunch riding is so different to solo/duo riding that you must get used to it. If not you won't have the confidense to stay tight in the bunch and you'll get spate out of the pack. You need to work at the hills, if you have problems now just wait until your first race!

Crawlinguphills

markos1963 wrote:

The best thing is you are thinking of it now and not in March. This means you have enough time to get fit enough to at least contemplate racing. definitely join a club, bunch riding is so different to solo/duo riding that you must get used to it. If not you won't have the confidense to stay tight in the bunch and you'll get spate out of the pack. You need to work at the hills, if you have problems now just wait until your first race!

How close are you meant to ride off the wheel in order to 'draft?'

My girlfriend will go inches off my back wheel, but it terifys me in the reverse

Mikey41

To do it properly, a few inches, maybe a foot at the most?

markos1963

Crawlinguphills wrote:

markos1963 wrote:

The best thing is you are thinking of it now and not in March. This means you have enough time to get fit enough to at least contemplate racing. definitely join a club, bunch riding is so different to solo/duo riding that you must get used to it. If not you won't have the confidense to stay tight in the bunch and you'll get spate out of the pack. You need to work at the hills, if you have problems now just wait until your first race!

How close are you meant to ride off the wheel in order to 'draft?'

My girlfriend will go inches off my back wheel, but it terifys me in the reverse

Definatly less than a foot and also how close you can go shoulder to shoulder as well

kleinstroker

There's a pdf floating around the interweb called "The Black Book" by Pete Read, it has everything you will ever want to know about preparing for a race season.

kleinstroker

Just did a search for the book myself and my own post came up! How the heck is that even possible?? Posted 1 minute ago

:shock:

muzmoz

kleinstroker wrote:

Just did a search for the book myself and my own post came up! How the heck is that even possible?? Posted 1 minute ago

:shock:

That is weird

t4tomo

dmclite-3.0 wrote:

Ride lots, ride with a club and get good bunch riding discipline/etiquette. Have a good healthy diet, cut the crisps and fats, lots of water, knock the booze on the head and get lots of rest as well. When you are going better, dropped some weight start some interval training on your rides as well. Drink before you are thirsty and eat before you are hungry. Try and train with someone who is fitter than you if you can.

If you have trained well try a go race event or try a club 10 mile tt as a start, good indicators. Your first 4th cat road race will probably leave you reeling and if get to the finish without being dropped you will be doing bloody well.

Have fun.

Something wrong here.

Crawlinguphills

Can I just cut down on booze rather than 'knocking it on the head?' I think even Wiggo just cut it down!

What exercise's should I be doing in the gym to improve core strength?

dmclite-3.0

t4tomo wrote:

dmclite-3.0 wrote:

Ride lots, ride with a club and get good bunch riding discipline/etiquette. Have a good healthy diet, cut the crisps and fats, lots of water, knock the booze on the head and get lots of rest as well. When you are going better, dropped some weight start some interval training on your rides as well. Drink before you are thirsty and eat before you are hungry. Try and train with someone who is fitter than you if you can.

If you have trained well try a go race event or try a club 10 mile tt as a start, good indicators. Your first 4th cat road race will probably leave you reeling and if get to the finish without being dropped you will be doing bloody well.

Take the pain.

Something wrong here.

Sorry, what was I thinking, fixed now.

lc1981

Crawlinguphills wrote:

I think my biggest problem is climbing and endurance. Coming across from mtb's I am used to having more gears, so will get half way up a hill and run out of gears.

Funny you should mention this, but recently I've been thinking how much easier it is climbing on my road bike compared to my mountain bike or hybrid, despite the latter two having lower gears. It must partly be the weight difference, but that can't explain all of the difference. Anyway, as you lose weight yourself, that will make the hill start to get easier.

Crawlinguphills wrote:

Can I just cut down on booze rather than 'knocking it on the head?' I think even Wiggo just cut it down!

You don't need to cut it out altogether. On the Cycle Show on ITV4 last week, Kristian House was preparing to ride the Stelvio with a glass of red wine the night before. Since I've become serious about cycling, I've cut down my alcohol intake a lot. It hasn't really been a deliberate choice (for one thing, I'm not drinking so much simply because I'm out on the bike a lot of evenings!), but I've felt the benefits.

Crawlinguphills

lc1981 wrote:

Crawlinguphills wrote:

I think my biggest problem is climbing and endurance. Coming across from mtb's I am used to having more gears, so will get half way up a hill and run out of gears.

Funny you should mention this, but recently I've been thinking how much easier it is climbing on my road bike compared to my mountain bike or hybrid, despite the latter two having lower gears. It must partly be the weight difference, but that can't explain all of the difference. Anyway, as you lose weight yourself, that will make the hill start to get easier.

Crawlinguphills wrote:

Can I just cut down on booze rather than 'knocking it on the head?' I think even Wiggo just cut it down!

You don't need to cut it out altogether. On the Cycle Show on ITV4 last week, Kristian House was preparing to ride the Stelvio with a glass of red wine the night before. Since I've become serious about cycling, I've cut down my alcohol intake a lot. It hasn't really been a deliberate choice (for one thing, I'm not drinking so much simply because I'm out on the bike a lot of evenings!), but I've felt the benefits.

Dont get me wrong, the pain is over quicker going up hills, as you are forced to attack them, so get up and over quicker. My problem comes is that if I go at anything that is 14% plus for more than 150ft or so I just dont seem to have the power or puff. Where as with a mountain bike I could still spin, even if I was only moving inchs with each rotation. Long climbs of a smaller gradient I shoot up and they are far better than the mountain bike.

I have one hill that is my nemisis, its is only .2 of a mile, but you get no run up to it, it goes from a dog leg corner immediately into 7% and then within 20 yards you are in 14% and the final run up to the top is 20%. I have done it once but quite literally thought I was going to have a heart attack at the top, more often than not I stop halfway up.

sim303

Crawlinguphills wrote:

...
I have one hill that is my nemisis, its is only .2 of a mile, but you get no run up to it, it goes from a dog leg corner immediately into 7% and then within 20 yards you are in 14% and the final run up to the top is 20%. I have done it once but quite literally thought I was going to have a heart attack at the top, more often than not I stop halfway up.

This is good, it means you have a benchmark to attack! I can certainly relate, it's only recently that I've started to "get" climbing as a sub-discipline in its own right and *shock* even as a potential source of enjoyment. Part of it is mindset, whereas I used to dread hard hills I now see them as a challenge, and as a opportunity to show myself how I've improved over time.

I'm also coming from the MTB world, where I was too ready to rely on the extreme low gears (26 front to 36 rear was there if I needed it!), until recently when I decided to use a more attacking style. In my defence this is a full-suspension bike with knobblies, so climbs are always going to be a challenge, but I know from my Strava segments that my times have dropped massively in just a few weeks (an hour a day, most days, one or two climbs en-route) and I hit the climbs with much more confidence, not being afraid to get out of the saddle, focusing on breathing and rhythm etc. So as others have said, just get out there, and push yourself (but don't have a heart-attack).

I found this video very helpful and inspirational (it's aimed at alpine climbs but still applies) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRFNKhNhhJQ

sim