Road Bike Racing - first race in one month

my first race is in one month, ive only been riding since last summer, and only have 600 miles so far this season. there is a crit, a time trial, and a road race that i plan on signing up for, cat 5 of course.. what should i be doing to get ready for it? and what should i expect, like will i be dropped on the first lap.. or what?! thanks guys

Got a racer friend who just won the local "B" series there. Send me you email and I'll put you two in touch.

dmotoguy. Delete your email and send it in a private message. Not a good idea to post on a forum unless you want tons of spam. As for what you should be doing, try to find some fast group rides, and go mix it up with the local racers/ fast guys.

The best training for the TT, will be a little different than the best for the crit. For the TT, you want to do longer efforts at lactate threhold. In otherwords, 10-15 minute intervals at 8/10ths perceived effort. For the crit, you'll want to do shorter all out efforts, at high RPM, such as sets of 1 minute on 1 minute off for 5 repeats. I would try to do a group ride, a steady state workout and a power interval workout each week for the next month, and 2 recovery rides in between. Given that you don't have a huge base, I'd gradually work up the number of power intervals starting with just a couple at first.

The CTS Criterium DVD workout is a lot of "fun"....in a nutshell, this is what it is:

10 minute warmup, including 2 one minute sprints at 100 rpms

7x 2 minute PowerIntervals @ 90 rpms, with 1 minute recovery

5 minute recovery @ 85-90 rpms

3x 2 minute steady SteadyState/PowerIntervals @ 90 rpms (30 seconds SS, 30 seconds PI, 30 seconds SS, 30 seconds PI), with 2 minute recovery

5 minute recovery @ 85-90 rpms

5x 1 minute PowerIntervals @ 90 rpms, with 30 seconds recovery in between

8 minute cooldown

With the PowerIntervals, you're essentially going as hard as you can go while being able to maintain the effort for the period of time you're working at. You don't really want to start off insanely hard, and by the end be dragging ass and letting up the effort....you want a fairly consistent level of power output. Same goes with the Steady State intervals, but they're done at an intensity of about 10% less than the PowerIntervals, so you're still going hard, but it's not too bad. Get a heartrate monitor if you don't already have one.

thank you guys for all your help :)