Enthusiastic but no idea! How on earth do I start racing!?

[midlife]

There's always that guys "black book" on what to do every day for a year but his name has gone completely out of my head.....

Shaun
Just remembered. Pete Read wrote all the boks, think his club is Team Swift...........

 

[2IT]

Hi!

I really want to start racing on the road over the next couple years. I only started training a few months ago but I've read an awful lot of training material and I've tried to take it on board but the results I'm seeing aren't exactly what I want. I've heard that as a ballpark figure 4th cat races are 40kph. I guess therefore then being able to hold on in a chaingang at that speed is what I'm aiming for.

Currently I can ride for a couple hours on rolling terrain at 28kph and I do a changing for an hour that is 31kph. I realise this is pretty slow. I haven't had a go at a 10m TT but I guess I'd be looking at 31:00 which is unbelievably slow.

Basically how I do I get to a level where I can race?

Currently I train hard for 3 weeks and take a week easy. I do VO2 Max intervals once a week, a changing at about 31kph once a week, a sweetspot/threshold session (I do struggle with this), an endurance ride and then a longer endurance ride (4hours). So I train for about 10hours a week. I train based on feel normally because heart rate doesn't work for me (my zones just don't correspond to effort at all and my threshold seems pretty close to my max heart rate)

I could probably up this a bit to 12/13 hours.

I want you guys to give me some advice really. I guess, being young (under 20), I'm just being impatient but I really want to be able to keep up with the faster guys as soon as! I use a turbo trainer for my VO2 max intervals and threshold intervals but I do the longer and endurance rides on the road.
I'd also like to my first century and improve my climbing.

(I say I'd like to race, its probably more that I want to be a better cyclist all around rather than just be able to sprint repeatedly in a crit).

Thanks!!!

Having raced years ago, the biggest shock to me was riding at my top speed in a group. It was unnerving.

Two ways to deal with this:

Your top speed and fitness needs to be better than the group. It's hard to handle your bike well if you are struggling.

Bike handling is the key to racing unless all you do is time trial. People who could corner or descend better than I were always putting pressure on me due to my lack of ability.

Plus the father of an Olympian told me that good riders don't have nearly as many problems with their bikes. Sure sign that you are in over your head is a crash.