Road racing - need tips from a woman's perspective

[kaian]

Does anyone here do racing or competing seriously or for fun? I think I might like to try a duathlon as well as some road races this year - something on the short side (20-25 miles). I am looking for training tips from a woman's perspective and also some goals to set for myself so that I know when I am ready. For example, how fast should I be able to go and for how long to determine if I will do well in a beginner category for a 30-34 age group? What would be a good time for a 20 mile race?

I've been cycling for two seasons, but am still learning. Any info or tips would be helpful. I do have the Cyclist Training Bible, but I want to know what speeds/times are reasonable for a beginner female. Thanks!

[SadieKate]

I don't do anything but time trials so I can't tell you much about training. For speed, search for results of the races in your area. They are posted a great deal of the time. Do the math. You'll be able to figure out the average speed. Then, remember that in a road race they are in pacelines so the average speed is high.

One other thing, good road racers can put in bursts of speed to catch or stay with a breakaway. A skill a lot of us don't work on.

[runnergirl]

I race somewhat seriously, I think it's a blast! My understanding of duathalons is that they are like tri's without swimming, ie, no drafting. It doesn't really matter how fast you can go since it's you against the clock. Speed matters more in a crit or road race where you dont' want to be shelled out of the pack.

[CR400]

In my limited racing I have found that it is best just to pick a race and see how well you do. My first race was a Crit, I came in second but the woman who beat me stayed with the men's pack, they ave 24+mph. In my only RR this season it had like 12 of the 20 miles were climbing. I managed to beat a few people but got beat by most. The top woman completed that in an hour seven minuets if I remember right. So go into your first season of racing with an attitude to learn as much as you can and don't worry about placing and winning. Because unless you are super talented you won't even win the CAT 4 races.

As far as training get your heart rate above 90% as often as you can for as long as you can. Don't be afraide to push it but be carful as well.Because that's where it will be in a race. Work on improving your maximum sustainable watts and your sprinting. Work on your anarobic threshold and recovery from that effort. Racing in the pack may seem easier because you have a draft but remember you are usually going 24+mph, which isn't easy for most. Of course speeds may be slower in the lower CATs but don't count on it. I had the ability to sprint into the low 30's at times but was still dropped over the long haul.

[Nanci]

When I want to find out if I am running/biking/swimming reasonable times for a particular event, I look at the past years results for my age group- then I have a ballpark figure of where I need to be for that particular course.

Nanci

[RoadRaven]

Just going to pretty much agree with what has been said.
The best thing is to go to results of local club races and look for the length of races you are looking at.

Some of these may be listed by distance only, but it will give you an idea of womens times albeit in unknown age groups.

If you go to club champs results, or nationals, they will be listed in age categories and will give you an idea of what to aspire to.

The goals you set yourself and the speed you want to do will really depend on the skill level of the riders you ride with and the terrain of the various rides/races.

I suggest you go along to the next meeting of your local club and have a chat to either some of the women there, or to some of the male riders aged in the 30's/40's and older... they will give you a good idea of where and how to begin. (I say males of that age because they have got over their self-importance, and are genuinely interested in you as an aspiring cyclist first rather than as a woman)

Without knowing your skill level, I suggest you start in the lowest grade and get a feel for it... these are the novices and newbies and those who are not there to ride more competitively. If that is easy, ride up a grade the next time.

The advantage of club riding is that it will also teach you race and pelaton protocols too

[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

[pkq]

I've seen one all female crit race in Texas and they didn't drop the pace that low. That does seem odd. Maybe it's part of their strategy to see who will lead off. The other RR/crits, the women have been in mass starts with the men. I suppose because there are so few female racers.