Originally Posted by
nvrgvup
Hey everyone,
I'm brand new to cycling, just started about 3 months ago.
Awesome! Welcome to the club.
Originally Posted by
nvrgvup
I'm looking to race in a circuit race for the Sea Otter Classic at Laguna Seca in April. Obviously this would be my first race and I would be a cat 5. What kind of pace should I expect?
Thinking in terms of "pace" is totally wrong. This will not be a steady-state effort. If you want that particular kind of thing look at time trialing.
Originally Posted by
nvrgvup
It's a 50 minute race. Figured that waiting to do a race, primarily for fun, until April would give me enough time to gain some experience and get my legs conditioned. So, what do you guys think about for the pace and what type of training do you guys do for a circuit race?
Since you have a lot of time I would do a lot of JRA right now (JRA=just riding around) in order to become "one" with the bike. After a solid month of that (about 1000 miles) I would start longer intervals and then progress to shorter intervals. Intervals will be the key thing. Going out and riding "as hard as you can for as long as you can" is a training dead end.
Also find some group ride that are much faster than you can ride. Do those every time even though you get dropped. Trust me on this: those guys only laugh at the people that show up once and are never seen again. They respect the folks that keep showing up because they all were "that guy" at one time.