Sulis - this will be my third season of racing, and last year I upgraded from a Cat 4 to Cat 3 with a successful beginning of the season. All of this was without a coach, and without any formal training plan.

I would first suggest seeing if you have any racing clinics in your area. This is something that our club offers, and it is a great way to learn the basics of pacelining, cornering, incidental contact, race tactics, etc. If you can find one local to you, sign up!

Second, I used Joe Friel's book The Cyclists Training Bible to figure out the basics of what I SHOULD be doing. Did I follow it? No. But, I went out and rode my bike, a lot, increasing my fitness and skills.

My point here is that I don't think you NEED to have a coach to race. There are lots of online resources available to you to help, and there is always this forum .

All that said, though, this year, I am going to try a coach and see what the results are. Of course, I am now racing at the Elite level and want to really focus on TT and Cyclocross at those levels.

Hope this helped!

SheFly