Cities to live in for training/racing

[jhuskey]

East Tennessee or Western North Carolina are great for climbing training. Lance boy trained a lot in NC and the climate is generally good except it has rained way too much this year. You can get work if you don't mind the tourist industry.

 

[joroshiba]

I applied to a bunch of jobs, heard back from a few and then ultimately decided to stay where I am, haha. I'm staying in Austin because at the end of it all I can't really afford the cost of moving and have an awesome support network here, and rent is cheap (but not free) thanks to parents. Not the great climbing I wanted, but staying here I'm saving money and can use that to pay for and travel to bigger races and such. I'll start a thread in 'cycling training' about stuff other than location (progress in training and the whole year of training and racing adventure).

 

[oldbobcat]

The network is more important than most of us would acknowledge. If you have a good school, a good club in school or local, and half-decent roads to train on, you're ahead of the game. Good luck.

 

[cyclightning]

Ideally riding in the countryside is much better than in the city where you have a severe risk of collision with cars and pedestrians and traffic lights make it difficult to ride continuously.. So, a small city with a good road network that has few cars and few intersections is good. Europe is better than North America for cyclists. Cars tend to drive more carefully around cyclists.

If riding on the streets or roads is too difficult, then a gym bike or rollers for a road bike are good substitutes.

 

[alienator]

I'd argue that gym bikes and indoor trainers are depressing substitutes for riding outside.

 

[cyclightning]

Yes, of course they are boring but an interval session done on rollers/gym bike taking about 35 - 45 minutes are a good substitute to crashing into a car door /car pulling out / car pulling u-turn or pedestrian on city streets at 50+ km/hr. City streets are not the place to ride fast, you have to get into the countryside.