Racing techniques??

[Thompson]

Hi, I have recently joined a third group who train up and enter races, I have always wanted to race but never had a chance. I was just wondering if there were any useful/helpful techniques I could try to help me improve. I'm only used to long distances and so when it comes to sprinting, well, lets just say a snail could over take. Any ideas/help?

Thanks.

 

[festival]

The first shock to the system will be how fast even a 4 cat race is from the start. Many beginners are blown out the back within the first few miles,so you have to be resilient and stick at it, come again and you will adapt.
Secondly you must train at a higher intensity to mimic race pace, long steady miles have a place but you have to adapt your body to the stress of riding hard and fast for prolonged periods.
Don't worry about sprinting, but you will have to be able to dig deep again & again to close gaps and react to the change of pace & terrain

 

[Will1985]

Last year my biggest weakness was sprinting out of corners (it still is to some extent). You can either do lots of short intervals on the turbo, but a more realistic approach might be to find a quiet loop of about 2km with some tight corners (business parks are good at the weekends).

You can treat it as a session in itself by doing lots of laps. Enter the corners at varying speeds (slowest is hardest, but more realistic if you are near the back of the pack) then sprint out of the saddle for a few seconds before sitting down and try to maintain that speed for another 30 seconds or so. Relax for a bit, then repeat.

 

[lukesdad]

Last year my biggest weakness was sprinting out of corners (it still is to some extent). You can either do lots of short intervals on the turbo, but a more realistic approach might be to find a quiet loop of about 2km with some tight corners (business parks are good at the weekends).

You can treat it as a session in itself by doing lots of laps. Enter the corners at varying speeds (slowest is hardest, but more realistic if you are near the back of the pack) then sprint out of the saddle for a few seconds before sitting down and try to maintain that speed for another 30 seconds or so. Relax for a bit, then repeat.

Other ways to train for Wills example (change of pace) are short sprints into head winds or inclines. Or both together is even better.