Road racing - need tips from a woman's perspective

[pkq]

Work on cornering fast. If you are uncomfortable with taking curves fast, work on those first and graduate with fast cornering.

Work on bike handling skills for close pack riding and drafting with local racers or fastest riders. You'll need good paceline skills.

As you learn to paceline, don't be afraid to take your pull as it will make you stronger and you'll earn respect from the others. If you get spit off the back, don't get frustrated, too much, and work to stay as close to the group as you can. If you keep at this, you will get better each week. Someone should drop back to help you catch the group.

Don't forget to ride solo and push yourself. You have to make those higher speeds yours. It is easy to put in a 25 mile ride with an average speed of 24 mph by drafting the whole ride. It is much harder to do 25 miles and average 20 mph solo. If most of your riding becomes club riding and you don't get enough pulling time, figure out ways to ride with them but not draft so much to make those higher speeds yours.

Your top end sprint should be at least 34 mph. At my age, 45, I can still do that but younger women, in your age group, beat me now. Your comfortable cruising speed in a paceline should be 28ish mph. I needed that in a RR last year to come in 3rd, only 20 seconds behind the top lady. She is a competitive tri-gal and very strong. It was a 20 mile race and I averaged 20 mph. The course had two decent hills and one was very steep.

If you have significant hills nearby, climb them. Find the worst one and do hill repeats on it, do those until you are tired. That is a good way to gain significant strength on the bike. You will notice the difference.

Get with a team and work with them. If you don't have a team nearby, find a strong group of riders at the race and stick with them. The lady who beat me last year was nestled in a strong group of male riders the whole race. The number two lady was in the same group. I rode most of the first lap solo until a paceline caught me. I was pulling 26 while they were pulling 28. I lost them on the 2nd hill and waited for them because I knew I'd need them on the 2nd lap. During the 2nd lap, I dropped them on the 2nd hill again. They were so far back, I had to go on. I would have lost too much time by waiting again. We were close enough to the finish, too, I deemed it OK to drop them.

If you ride with a group of strangers and find you are the strongest rider, don't pull all the time. Make others pull, too. They may be sandbagging and letting you deplete your energy stores to beat you at the end. Don't let that happen regardless of how pumped or fresh you feel. A sustained effort like that will take its toll on your legs and you will die at the end. You will find your sprint sprang.

Be aware of who's around you. Tactics are important in racing. Some people may be silent riders just waiting for a chance to come around. If I can, I do that on club rides. It's fun to catch people unaware that an attack is coming. I will repeatedly attack, especially the guys, to wear them down during the ride only to beat them at the end. My attacks are false attacks but their's are not. Evil but it works. Sometimes guys just have to strut their stuff. On the last club ride, one of the guys was finally doing that to me. I watch for him because he's real strong so I was aware of his positioning and he didn't quite catch me as surprised as he wanted.

I did one race this year and averaged 17.6 mph over a very hilly 32 miles and a really nasty grade very close to the finish. What were they thinking??? Wind was strong that day and I didn't like the course. The start was "different" and chaotic so I lost my pals and rode solo the whole time. I had not done enough climbing this year to really perform well in that race.

Use psychological tactics, too. They work. I dropped a young woman on a nasty grade by letting her know she was trying to beat a 44 year old woman. Little did I know just how much that would demoralize her. She admitted at the end she tried desperately to catch me but just couldn't.

Learn how to use the big muscle groups from your butt on down. If your butt doesn't tone up, you aren't using it. Use it! Same for the quads. You should begin to see some real definition in those gams, if you are pushing hard.

Learn how to tuck as low as possible for good aerodynamics. When things get heated, you will also provide very little slipstream for others in a tight tuck.

Learn how to ride with your forearms resting on the top of the handlebars. You can get a decent aero position without the added weight of the aerobars.

Become a smooth, fluid cycling machine from the hips down. You don't want to rock back and forth or pump up and down. Watch the pros to see how smooth you want to be.

There is an excellent racing thread on bikejournal.com. You can pick up a lot of tips from those guys. If you want, I'll bump it for you.

[Yasmin]

Work on cornering fast. If you are uncomfortable with taking curves fast, work on those first and graduate with fast cornering.

Work on bike handling skills for close pack riding and drafting with local racers or fastest riders. You'll need good paceline skills.

As you learn to paceline, don't be afraid to take your pull as it will make you stronger and you'll earn respect from the others. If you get spit off the back, don't get frustrated, too much, and work to stay as close to the group as you can. If you keep at this, you will get better each week. Someone should drop back to help you catch the group.

Don't forget to ride solo and push yourself. You have to make those higher speeds yours. It is easy to put in a 25 mile ride with an average speed of 24 mph by drafting the whole ride. It is much harder to do 25 miles and average 20 mph solo. If most of your riding becomes club riding and you don't get enough pulling time, figure out ways to ride with them but not draft so much to make those higher speeds yours.

Your top end sprint should be at least 34 mph. At my age, 45, I can still do that but younger women, in your age group, beat me now. Your comfortable cruising speed in a paceline should be 28ish mph. I needed that in a RR last year to come in 3rd, only 20 seconds behind the top lady. She is a competitive tri-gal and very strong. It was a 20 mile race and I averaged 20 mph. The course had two decent hills and one was very steep.

If you have significant hills nearby, climb them. Find the worst one and do hill repeats on it, do those until you are tired. That is a good way to gain significant strength on the bike. You will notice the difference.

Get with a team and work with them. If you don't have a team nearby, find a strong group of riders at the race and stick with them. The lady who beat me last year was nestled in a strong group of male riders the whole race. The number two lady was in the same group. I rode most of the first lap solo until a paceline caught me. I was pulling 26 while they were pulling 28. I lost them on the 2nd hill and waited for them because I knew I'd need them on the 2nd lap. During the 2nd lap, I dropped them on the 2nd hill again. They were so far back, I had to go on. I would have lost too much time by waiting again. We were close enough to the finish, too, I deemed it OK to drop them.

If you ride with a group of strangers and find you are the strongest rider, don't pull all the time. Make others pull, too. They may be sandbagging and letting you deplete your energy stores to beat you at the end. Don't let that happen regardless of how pumped or fresh you feel. A sustained effort like that will take its toll on your legs and you will die at the end. You will find your sprint sprang.

Be aware of who's around you. Tactics are important in racing. Some people may be silent riders just waiting for a chance to come around. If I can, I do that on club rides. It's fun to catch people unaware that an attack is coming. I will repeatedly attack, especially the guys, to wear them down during the ride only to beat them at the end. My attacks are false attacks but their's are not. Evil but it works. Sometimes guys just have to strut their stuff. On the last club ride, one of the guys was finally doing that to me. I watch for him because he's real strong so I was aware of his positioning and he didn't quite catch me as surprised as he wanted.

I did one race this year and averaged 17.6 mph over a very hilly 32 miles and a really nasty grade very close to the finish. What were they thinking??? Wind was strong that day and I didn't like the course. The start was "different" and chaotic so I lost my pals and rode solo the whole time. I had not done enough climbing this year to really perform well in that race.

Use psychological tactics, too. They work. I dropped a young woman on a nasty grade by letting her know she was trying to beat a 44 year old woman. Little did I know just how much that would demoralize her. She admitted at the end she tried desperately to catch me but just couldn't.

Learn how to use the big muscle groups from your butt on down. If your butt doesn't tone up, you aren't using it. Use it! Same for the quads. You should begin to see some real definition in those gams, if you are pushing hard.

Learn how to tuck as low as possible for good aerodynamics. When things get heated, you will also provide very little slipstream for others in a tight tuck.

Learn how to ride with your forearms resting on the top of the handlebars. You can get a decent aero position without the added weight of the aerobars.

Become a smooth, fluid cycling machine from the hips down. You don't want to rock back and forth or pump up and down. Watch the pros to see how smooth you want to be.

There is an excellent racing thread on bikejournal.com. You can pick up a lot of tips from those guys. If you want, I'll bump it for you.

Wow!!! You get top marks from me for this A+ grade info. Fabulous stuff. I don't ride professionally but do ride with 42 men & usually 1, sometimes 2 women. I'm petite & 49 yrs old. Isn't it curious how the guys really take it personally when you beat them? I love 'em dearly, but they don't like it when a chick's up front.

[pkq]

Thanks Yasmin. It is interesting to watch guys. They are a competitive lot. I, too, love them dearly and really enjoy riding with them. They are real characters. The group I ride with has more than a few that really like to be the first cresting each hill or mountain. Since you ride with 42 men, I bet you get some great workouts. You have probably picked up on bike handling skills from them, too.

I'm 5'7" and have ridden with two women about your height. They kick my butt everywhere. Well, one does. One wants to.

[runnergirl]

pkg, yasmin, you might be able to answer this for me,

Why do women "block" (slow the peleton to 12mph for long periods of time)? Why don't they race like guys? It's sooo confusing after training with all men and learning how they race, and to then be thrown into a womens race where the rules seem to be TOTALLY different. Mixed races are less problematic (except for all the juniors with no bike handling skills!).

[pkq]

To let their heart rates come back down some. Men do it, too, but don't slow down that much. I've not seen women slow to 12 mph though.

I've done rides/races where men do "brake checks" but the true intent is to throw people off the back with the yo-yo effect it creates. Being at the back of the pack is a tough place to hang on.

[Yasmin]

Actually, since riding at this level I've only ridden with blokes so am unsure how women ride. You've enlightened me pkq. It would probably take me a few tries to ride with the girls until I got it right.
PS- I would love to ride with the girls, but got no invite. It was the blokes who asked me to join after they knew I was doing 100's of miles alone.

[runnergirl]

I know that the pace should yo-yos some, it would be nuts to hold 27+ for long when the race is over 40 miles. I've only done 5 races, 1 road race and 4 crits, but in all of them the lead women droped the pace under 15, once down to 8, it's actually hard to ride that slow in a pack. There's not a lot of good racing here for women. Most races don't even count toward an upgrade because there are hardly ever 10 women (even when they combine all cats). It's 3-9 hours each direction every weekend come March!

[BikeMomma]

This is a thread from earlier this year. Hope it helps.
http://forums.teamestrogen.com/showthread.php?t=2407

[bluerider]

Your top end sprint should be at least 34 mph.

Crikey that is FAST. I'm an aspiring racer and that just put a dent in my aspirations pretty quickly. Do you mean is when you are racing with a pack or on your own?

Nonetheless, this post was fantastic and extraordinarily helpful.

Thanks

[BikeMomma]

Do you mean is when you are racing with a pack or on your own? Nonetheless, this post was fantastic and extraordinarily helpful.

Bluerider - she means your fastest standing-up-in-the-pedals finish line type speed....34mph is quick, yes, but the guys go over 40!!

I agree, pkq's post was great. Lots of good info there. Thanks from me, as well, pkq.

Speed Rules...
-BikeMomma