LVRC races

rookieroadie

Anybody have any experience with the LVRC races as i have entered my 1st ever race in an LVRC race in August so i was wondering if any of you guys has any words of advice or what i should expect in these races.

The race is a 8 mile loop and its 7 laps ending with quite a climb on each lap.

My main aim is not to get dropped and to try to finish the race in 1 piece as ive heard they can be a bit fast and quite dangerous?

I have been riding for 2 1/2yrs and have a good fitness level.Ive done time trials from 10 miles up to 30 miles,not quick but at a decent ish pace,27 mins for 10m and 1hr 28 for an undulating 30.

Ive done numerous sportives up to 107 miles so plenty of miles in the legs,just want to try racing out and see how it goes to start.

What sort of training should i be doing?

Your comments/advise will be much appreciated.

BeaconRuth

Have you got any experience of fast, competitive group-riding e.g. training bashes or chaingangs with other experienced road riders? If not then you need to find such a group and spend as much time riding with them as you can. I'm afraid that a 27-minute 10 and a 100-mile sportive are not really going to stand you in good stead for an LVRC road race as they're poles apart in terms of style of riding. The first priority is to be sure you're safe and competent riding in a competitive bunch and the second is to work on your changes of pace, accelerations out of corners, hill-climbing, ability to recover from hard efforts, sprint etc.

I recommend asking the organiser if he will allow you to race down a group for your first event - i.e ride with an older age group. You don't say your age, but the 'youngsters' in the LVRC world (the 40-50 year olds) are very experienced (expect a few former pros) and likely to be roughly the standard of 2nd-cats so I wouldn't rate your chances of keeping up I'm afraid. (There'll possibly be former pros at all age levels.) Given your 10-mile time I suggest starting off with the E, F, G group - that is, the over-60s. Even then I think you might find your first race very hard - but give it a go, you never know until you try!

Ruth

rookieroadie

Ruth,
Thanks for your reply.
Im a member of a club but we dont ride at race pace,the odd chain gang yeah but not very often.
We do put the hammer down whenever possible and im upping the pace on my training rides now with my mate.
Im 46 and the LVRC do recommend you start in a lower category,my age gives me b cat,gulp,so yes i will definately drop down the categories.

VaVaVeteran

Ruth is entirely correct. For a bit more colour, I've been blogging about veteran road-racing for a few years now at http://www.vavaveteran.co.uk and if you type LVRC in the search box a few articles of the type you'll find insightful will come up.

In particular you might want to read http://bit.ly/LVRCPatience and http://bit.ly/TTvRR

As Ruth said, try it! Do your anaerobic interval training first though.

Toks

As an initial raster you might be better off doing a 4th cat only circuit race before riding with experienced vet riders. In my experience 4th cat races were always slower than LVRC races. As Ruth says getting in some practice with some fast group riding is definitely to be recommended. Although your 10mile TT time (assuming it's on the flat) isn't amazing if your good at sitting on wheels and staying out of the wind you should be ok with the lower category VET groups. Good luck

Thick Tester

Depending on how 'young' you are within the LVRC catergories you may well come up against the likes of former pro's and Milk Race riders who can still turn it out and dish it out harder than anything you'll come up against in a 4th cat race.

Monty Dog

At 46 you'll be in a cat A/B or A/B/C race, with riders between 40 and 49, or 54. Depending on what region you're riding but the top guys are typically at Cat 2 level, races are often a bit faster and twice the distance of a Cat 4 RR. The good thing is though is that most have been riding for 20 years plus and so tend not to be so nervous and crashes a lot less frequent. Sportives and club rides will give you good, base fitness, but you really need to be thinking about training at threshold i.e. high intensity intervals in order to cope with regular surges in speed - once you lose the bunch, it's almost impossible to get back on. Depending on how you feel, maybe starting in a C/D race will give you a feel for racing - the objective of your first race is simply to finish with the bunch.