Maybe interested in racing?

[Eden]

Doing the Cascade rides is a great way to keep and improve your fitness, even if you aren't getting a whole lot of true paceline experience in them. Keeping riding with them and working your way up through the groups would be a fine way to prepare to join a team in the fall.

If you really want to tailor what you are doing, keep in mind that beginning women's races aren't super long - generally 24 to 36 miles. Some long steady riding, is good for your fitness and good for base building, but it isn't the same as a shorter more strenuous ride. Where beginners usually fall behind are during surges and on hills, so practicing doing intervals and hill climbing on some of your rides is never a bad idea.


Don't forget to take breaks! Lots of beginners come in so gung-ho that they forget to take a rest every now and again. Racers usually take a month or so where they don't do any riding that isn't purely for fun because they feel like it - my October/November is generally like that, then I get back into getting slow, steady base miles come December.

While it certainly helps to come into fall with some group ride and some pacelining, but we get plenty of people who have neither, who do just fine. We have a number of people on the team who are coaches or otherwise just have a ton of experience and we will teach you pretty much everything you need (not all teams will do this though!) If you want a jump on it, Cycle U (http://www.cycleu.com/services/classes/roadClasses.html) does some classes - Road 101 goes over the basics and they have a few others that get into specifics like cornering and climbing.

As far as watching races goes, all of the races that happen close in to Seattle proper are criteriums - which is only one of the types of "road" racing (road races, criteriums, circuit races and time trials). They are probably the most fun to watch because the courses are short and there's always a lot of action going on to see. All of the others tend to happen a bit more out in the country - mainly because that's where there are roads that we can use that don't have a lot of traffic and a lot of hassle involved in closing them down (even if it is just a rolling enclosure). Road racing isn't really that much of a spectator sport anyway though - unless you are in a car or the race is big enough to have cameras following it, if you are just on the side of the road, its there and gone in an instant....

Races that are easy to watch - There are Thursday night training races at Seward park that will start up probably in March or April. They occur on the upper loop from (I think) 5:30 on. That will be mostly men - women can jump in with the guys if they want to, but there is no women only field. Throughout the year on weekend days there will be crits at Volunteer Park, Boat Street (in front of Recycled Cycles) in Ballard, in Woodinville, Fremont, Redmond and a few others. They are all listed on the WSBA web sites calendar.