Racers - with or without a coach

[SheFly]

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

[Andrea]

I'd also recommend joining a club or team that has people who race/have raced and going to group rides with people who have raced. You can learn a lot from the experience and knowledge of others!

Nothing beats personal experience, though. Go back and think about what went wrong (and right) at your first race and think of how to change it. It may take a few races before you get into the swing of things.