Quote Originally Posted by ehirsch83 View Post
Do you girls all race in an all women's field or are you racing with the men?

Down here in South Fl I have to race with the men, and I am not strong enough to keep up- so it is discouraging me from racing again, yet I will race and I will try not to get lapped to soon!

When I was in Albuquerque, we had enough women to fill a field(well us + juniors).

If any of you do race with the men, what do you do to get stronger?(I have to race with the 45+ and they average between 25-27 mph for a 45 min+3 lap crit)
I've raced in women's fields, but I did a lot of training races this summer where I was the only girl.
Keep riding with the men. Do some fast group rides and hang on for dear life. Learn to be a good wheelsucker and to jump on the surges. You'll still get dropped a lot at first, but you'll be able to hang on longer and longer. Supplement the sufferfests with some of your regular training rides, but spend more time focusing on technique, accelerating out of corners, and improving all skills, especially the stuff you're already pretty decent doing.

I raced collegiate women's B this year (my first year riding), and my sprints (which did well enough) hardly got up to 27mph. After doing some of those tough training races that sound like your masters races, I could hang for half of a flat road race course with the 26mph average (road races are the hardest for me, and this was much better than I expected), the 19-22mph rides became "normal" instead of "fast," and I could hang on for several crit laps drafting behind a cat 2 and 3 guys. Sure, I wasn't any closer to winning one of those, but I definitely improved and I learned a lot. Of course, in training, I might've gotten more tips from the others than you'll get in a real race, but still, just keep at it. If anything, it can help you break out of your current plateau by pushing you farther out of your comfort zone than you thought you could go.