so i tried my hand at a road race this weekend. it was an eye opening experience.
for reference, i am in my fourth year of training, the bike is my strength, and last year saw a couple top 10 finishes on the bike split at oly distance; the season ended with my first ironman. blah blah blah…
my only exposure to road racing has been an occasional viewing on oln, and this weekend, i found myself signing up for a road race.
assuming anyone is interested, and i would like to hear about other experiences, the following are the major lessons learned:
heavy time trial training DOES NOT mean someone can march into a cat5 road race and win it.
participating as a member of a team increases the odds of a podium finish exponentially.
there is a possibility of hitting the pavement at 30mph due to someone else’s fault.
even if you are the best prepared cyclist AND on a team, it might take several attempts to win a race (some luck required).
if you have not trained your fast twitch fibers, they will laugh in your face if you try to recruit them on race day for the final sprint.
there is a whole new mixture of competitive juices in my system that racing exclusively against the clock did not draw on.
i can hardly believe how much fun i had, and i’m considering designing next years training to be competitive at it.
as for the results, i didn’t have a chance at participating in a crucial breakaway; it was a team move and i didn’t even realize what had happened until it was too late. if i knew that i can’t sprint, i would have tried to bridge the gap. when the main pack came in to finish, i ran out of sprint juice 100 meters early, and watched 4 or 5 guys come off my back wheel and blow by me.
Because of #3 I suggest not using your best equipment, particularly in a lower category race.
Don’t forget poor organization/course control. One of the first road races I did many years ago featured a car coming head on into the finishing sprint on what was supposed to be a closed road. It would have been nominated for best Comedy at the Redneck Academy Awards.
Your actual strength on the bike is only a marginal predictor of your racing success. When you use that strength, and how SMART you ride is a bigger determining factor.
Learn the safe and effective places to draft.
Never lead out the sprint if you have any aspirations of a good result.
Being the first out of the last corner in a crit only works if you (a) have a blazing sprint and you haven’t launched it yet, and (b) there’s less than 100m to the finish.
Being on a team helps, but the team still needs to know how to execute as a team (which is extremely rare on cat 4/5 teams).
Time trial training is of dubious value in road racing, as it’s the speed CHANGES that are crucial.
Some of my fondest memories of all the years spent training and racing are centered around road trips with friends and the bike team I spent 2 years racing for. You have to love Cat 5’s where a breakaway is somebody 4 bike lengths in front of the field. My team started as 5’s and we worked well together, 12 out of 14 races with somebody on the podium, sometimes more than 1 of us. Same thing when we moved to 4’s. It was a blast riding with 8 other guys, somedays being the stud and somedays being the whipping boy. I would encourage all triathletes to find a team or a bunch of buddies and go to a road race. It’s a whole new world. My TT times went down as well. You’ll also learn how to corner faster and handle your bike better which will improve your tri splits.
I have a lot of respect for road racing. It’s a thing of beauty and I’ll always admire their competitvene drive and enjoy the strategy, but I am a bit intimidated by it. I grew up watching the tour de france in grade school and remember watching Greg LeMond win his first tour. I’ve watched the euro pro scene since then and love everything about the sport. It’s beautiful and awesome to watch. I’d love to climb up those mountains but only like to watch them fly down them in pouring rain with ease and no brakes. Bikers are also tough! They can hurt like heck, recover and hurt some more and keep doing that until the end. That’s a different kind of pain.
But I’m a swimmer and runner and find the strength and handling skills to be a bit daunting. There isn’t anything scary about those two disciplines. No pizza elbow or helmets. Does anyone else feel this way? I raced in my college club, but was always a bit nervous in the pack, I felt like I was cheating, couldn’t concentrate to “stay on his wheel!” and couldn’t sprint at all. Ahhhh, the thrill of watching that rear wheel pull farther and farther away as I ride into the head wind! Plus, those handling skills! I thought every corner was a sandtrap of gravel. Maybe I just like to do my own thing and be tougher and don’t want the help of the pack in drafting. (PreFontaine would be so proud.) And the elitism!
But I admire your ability to tackle the road race. I hope you do and represent us well. You’ll improve much better than I will on the bike. (I’ll try and catch up on the run.)
Been thinking about it. A few of the guys in our roadie group are racers and have been encouraging me to give it try. It would would have to be in a lower tier event in the older guys group which suits me fine as then #3 is probably less of a possibility.
I have done quite a few road races & love it. In triathlon, my bike split is usually amng the top 20 percent in my AG - but in bike racing, I am at best a middle of the pack rider in Cat 4, the second-to-easiest category for men. Although its nice to want to win, I suggest that anyone who wants to bike race should concentrate on finishing and honing pack-riding skills in the first few races. If you don’t already regularly ride with roadies, go out and start doing that first, to get a feel for pack riding. No offense, but groups of triathletes riding together (even on road bikes) simply don’t ride the way road racers do, which is what any aspiring racer needs to learn.
In regard to your comment about riding with the “older guys’ group” - Be advised of the following: If you don’t already have a USCF racing license, you will only be permitted to race in Category 5 races (Cat 4 for females) or your age category if over 30 or 35 - BUT…the youngest masters age categories (i.e 35+, 45+) are NOT novice groups - they are generally comparable to Cat 2 - which is almost pro-calibre racing. Some races may offer a Age 35+ Cat 4/5 race, which would be doable for a novice, but if it is open 35+, I wouldn’t recommend it. In other words, despite the risk of riding in the completely “open” category, you most likely should start with a Cat 5 race. After 10 races of a minimal field size, you can upgrade to Cat 4, which is slightly faster, but also slightly safer due to the experience of the field. Good luck.
Isn’t it an eye-opener to do real racing? If you are too slow you watch the pack disappear in the distance and you ride by yourself to the finish? Bike racing is the hardest sport around IMHO. Running and tri are simply time trials and you just pick a pace and try to keep it. You learn pretty fast in bike racing that average speed means nothing and power is everything. Lactate threshhold has a whole new meaning - that yours is way too low! A team may or may not help - depends on whether the team is simply a collection of people with the same jersey, or a group with a plan, and people willing to sacrifice for one of their own. Bike racing will take your time trialling to a level you couldn’t imagine without doing it. It forces you to put everything you have into short, intense efforts that make your pitiful excuse for interval training seem easy. And then there’s the tactics…
based on what i saw this weekend… i would say proceed with caution with the ‘older’ guys. masters was 35+, and they were flying.
a buddy of mine that has raced on several occasions opted to race masters for the first time and wished he had raced cat5. he was dropped from the main pack, part of it due to poor positioning at the wrong time, but he could have easily been in control of his race in 4/5.
i agree completely, quite often the ‘easiest’ road races are the fastest ones, since the pace doesn’t change as much. I normally feel wasted after a “slow” race, as there are normally a lot of people who may think that they have a chance to get in a breakaway.
Usually the strongest rider does not win (with certain exceptions), as they are so heavily marked that getting away from the field is impossible.
Road racing teaches you a lot of things, including patience, and also to understand that it hurts, but it hurts everyone, so grin and bear it and have faith that eventually Team Quadzilla will stop driving the train at 50+ kmh.
A good friend of mine was a pro in Europe for a couple of seasons. He was telling a story about one race he did, the pace was so fast, and the bunch was so strung out, that he actually heard one of the riders in there crying. Later on, he realized that he was the one who was crying. True story.
I’m also fascinated by road racing. I watched the sprint at the end of the first stage of the Tour of Georgia a couple weeks ago; this was the first time I had ever seen a “real” road race. I was amazed! I’ve been wanting to race for some time now, but I haven’t bit just yet. Watching the Tour of Georgia really lit those fires again. There was a crit last weekend about 100 miles from home, and I almost entered. However, I have my first A race of the year coming up in a few short weeks and I didn’t want to get in the Cat 5 ranks and take a spill, so I opted out. My plan is to do some road racing after this A race. I’m hesitant to do it, and more than a little nervous. But I think it would be a blast. I also had my first crash about two weeks ago. I was on a training ride, and went down hard at over 20 mph. No damage to the bike, very little road rash and minimal bruising. Now that the I’ve become acquainted with the pavement and come through relatively unscathed, I feel a little braver. May have to give it a try. Everybody talks about how much fun it is.
My hat is off to you guys that do a real road race. I would probably be dropped in the first 10 or so. That is 10 or so meters, not kilometers. I would probably just use my tri bike since I would be off the back in no time anyway. I don’t have any acceleration, but I make up for it by not being able to climb either. If I actually were in the pack, I would probably bump wheels and take half of them down anyway.
I did my first road race about a month ago and thought it was a blast. I am a total newbie, and only started riding last fall. Being in Wisconsin, that meant most of my rides were done indoors prior to this race. About 80-85% of my training over the winter was aerobic Z2, with a little Z3 tempo, short z4 intervals, and a 30 min TT once a month. BTW, I ride a 20 year old Trek 1000 with downtube shifters. The race I did was a cat 4/5 citizens with 60 racers. I was one of 5 that weren’t on a team and felt a little out of place (someone said I had guts for riding that bike in a race!). I started in the back of the pack (first mistake) and got blown out, along with about 2/3 of the field, about a mile from the start at the first of 2 big hills (5 laps of a 6 mile course). I worked the rest of the race with 2 or 3 other riders and while we never caught the pack (which later split in two) we finished in the top half. I was really surprised at the pace from the start, and I was at or above LTHR for a good portion of the race. I don’t know if I would have the motivation to hurt that much during training, but during a race it didn’t seem as bad. I had a great time and hope to do some more as they fit in my schedule. I would think this type of training would be more beneficial for sprint/oly distance, or early season long course, rather than specific training for IM.
first off, i wouldn’t recommend a crit as anyone’s first race, instead find a weekly training series and get your feet wet there(a cat5 RR will be less crowded too). experienced riders can spot a newbie like a dog smells fear, and they will avoid you at all costs. so dont jump in until you are comfortable eating/drinking/blowing your nose/NOT touching your brakes every 10 seconds in a group.
I agree about doing the first race as a road race and not a crit. Other things that I thought helped my handling: work with a roadie on proper etiquite, drafting, pack riding tips (my wife rides on a women’s club and offered me tons of tips/critisizms), smooth out your stroke and maintain proper upper body position (I rode mostly rollers this winter; many, many hours on rollers- drinking, using the remote control, changing hand positions, etc) which in turn helped maintain a straight line while riding, drinking, etc. Also agree with no brakes- it will cause people to become very irritated, and recommend getting very comfortable riding at a higher cadence (triathletes have a really bad rep about riding in big gears with low cadence) to handle the accelerations by the pack. In my race I was confident, smooth, and safe despite not ever riding in a pack (though, if I could do it again I would have done a group ride first).
Since I grew up racing in Wisconsin, I was curious which road race you did. BTW, as many of us older bikers might mumble, back in the day, we all had downtube shifters and it was not a major problem to find and change gears, even in the pre-index shifting friction days. Of course, it was easier to spot newbies back then by the sound of their deraileurs grinding as they tried to fine tune the shifter in the right gear.
As a side note, it does not hurt to shift less and train your legs to be a bit more supple. By that I mean that you rhsould feel comfortable riding at 80 rpm or at 100 rpm. Instead of hunting for a gear that keeps you in a sweet spot of cadence, train to be able to ride smoothly at different cadences. I even have done the first half of some of the Capital Square crits in Madison in the small chain ring, tucked into the peloton.
