should i give it a try?



kjaf

New Member
May 28, 2010
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Hey, guys I am fairly new to cycling I got started late last year. I did some pretty fast group rides, and rode pretty frequently but when winter came i basically stopped riding. Now that summer is finally here I am back on the bike, but I am nowhere near what I was at prior to winter.

Basically I have been trying to ride around 1-2 hrs a day and been keeping track of my performance. I ride in Indiana not very hilly, but sometimes it does get windy and after each ride I have been taking my avg speed from my cyclometer (among other things) and its ussually around 16 mph. Now I am in stop and go traffic so that prolly lowers it a little, ussually when I look down when I am riding I try to stay around 17/18 mph, and when I did my group ride a little bit ago we were a little over 20 mph.

Now after all that basically my question is do you think by late July/august I will be good enough to enter myself into a CAT 5 race and stay with the pack. I have always been very athletic, but I just don't know if I will be able to get into peak condition for a race 2/3 months from now. I plan to keep riding at least 5/6 times a week, but I dont want to enter myself into a race and be made a fool of lol. SO i dont know if I should wait another year and this time keep training through winter, or should I just give it a go 3 months from now and see where I stack up.

Any help would be appreciated and if anyone has any tips or tools on how to get into peek shape in that amount of time I would love to hear it.

Thank you much!
 
Absolutely give it a go! Most people get dropped in their first race anyways. It is kind of like a right of passage. Give racing a shot becuase you can only get into race shape by racing and the more you do it the faster you will get.

Happy Riding:)
 
Intervals 3 times a week, endurance builders 2 times a week, easy ride once a week, one day of resting or another easy ride. Mix it up so that you are not doing back to back types of rides. Fairly flat terrain is good for intervals. It will take a week or so before you start to see any progress so be patient. Once you hit your stride, you should progress fairly well and be OK for a Cat 5 race later in the season.

Like hskip11 said, even if you are in peak condition, you will probably get dropped in a race until you get a little experience and meet some other competitors to work with. While conditioning is important, experience while riding with other people who want to beat you is paramount. It takes time.

Start saving now so that you can afford to purchase a trainer or rollers before the cold winter weather sets in. Also get yourself some warm riding gear so that you can ride when it is fairly dry and not dangerously cold. Also, get yourself south of Indy to practice climbing. Brown County State Park is excellent for this kind of workout. They have long, fairly steep hills that will test your stamina. And being a state park, the drivers tend to expect cyclists.
 
You can try, but you've got a long way to go. I wouldn't try anything fancy in your first race as you'll probably tire yourself out and get dropped. Try to stay with the pack and learn how to ride with it.

One thing you'll notice is that in Cat 5 racing, there's a lot more quick bursts of speed when someone attacks so you'll need to be able to maintain high power outputs for say, a minute or so, until the bunch gets back together. One thing about Cat 5 racing is that the pack rarely lets anyone off the front (unless someone is just WAY better) and they always try to chase down anyone who tries to get away.

Try not to stay in the back either. People in the back are more prone to "yo-yo-ing" and it'll waste a lot of your energy. Sometimes people in the back get dropped, and when that happens you'll have to leapfrog them to get back on. Also, try not to spend too much time at the very front, but you gotta be pretty close to the front. Don't spend too much time in the middle as you'll feel pretty squished.

So, the main difference between group rides and racing is the variation in effort (at least in Cat 5). In group rides the effort tends to be long and sustained, but in a short Cat 5 race you'll have a lot of quick bursts and slow downs as people try to get away and the pack regroups. For this reason, you will definitely need to do intervals. Average speeds can vary a lot too. On a pancake flat course the fastest I've averaged in a Cat 5 race was 23mph. On a more hilly course the average was like 18 mph, so it's kind of hard to gauge your ability strictly on average. Even people who can average something like 22mph alone might have some difficulty racing for the first time due to the nature of pack riding. So the best thing you can do from a first race is to learn to race, so have fun and good luck!
 
Commit to doing it, and train from now till then with the motivation of having a truly ambitious goal.
It'll be worth it if only for the training motivation.
Keep us updated. Reading about others' progress and struggles is great motivation for us too.

just my $0.02
 
yea will do. My plan atm is to do the 7 week beginner program out of the lance armstrong performance book just to get my body back into motion and get it accustomed to riding 5/6 times a week. After that I will start incorporating different workouts into the mix of my choosing to target specific week spots that I struggle with while also mixing in some workouts from Lance's book.


The brown county plan sounds also like a great idea im already planning to go do down there maybe every 2 weeks and ride for about 3 hours once I get my first 7 weeks done. I also hear the interval workouts are one of the best workout plans so def. going to incorporate that into my workout. I'll prolly give an update about a month before my first race to see how far along I have come, and then another after race day to see how I do.


THanks alot guys!