1st ever cycling race

airscotty

Signing up4 my 1st ever cycling race next weekend - A4 cat 55ish km on the flat.

What should I expect? Will it just be a case of wheeling around with a sprint finish or are there usually break aways? any other tips would be great!

There will almost certainly be breaks, but they may not necessarily stay away till the end.

It's a tough enough time of year to start racing as most of the competition will have most of a season's racing in their legs. I am painfully familiar with this after coming back from 7 weeks in Africa and discovering that at my club's league race which I normally find fairly easy I was really struggling, partly because I got slower, and partly because everyone else got faster!

Here is a great (and humorous) guide to the art of pass/fail racing. It's mostly just for laughs but he makes some good points!

chakattack

If you haven't raced before, you should try a few league races first if possible. They will probably be harder/faster but the groups will be smaller making for a safer learning ground.

Beasty

chakattack wrote: »

If you haven't raced before, you should try a few league races first if possible. They will probably be harder/faster but the groups will be smaller making for a safer learning ground.

+1

Club league races cover a wide range of abilities, and very importantly, everyone tends to know there may be novice racers and are more likely to make allowance for it. Turn up to an A4 race and no-one would know beforehand what your experience is. You could find yourself in a large group with absolutely no idea of what's going on and other riders not looking out for you

airscotty

Thanks for the link JamesL85! Very insightful!