Ok, so the cat is out of the bag. The announcement has been made that I’ll be working with Chain Therapy as I plan and train for my entry in to the world of Road Cycling, and more specifically Crit racing.

Before we get started, I’d better introduce myself. I’m 26 years old, and have been cycling in one form or another now for 12 of them. That said, I am not and have never been a competitive road rider. I come from an MTB background, and raced Downhill at a regional and national level, with a couple of attempts at events like the Megavalanche out in Europe.

 

I guess that begs the question of what is this blog series actually going to contain if I’m not bringing experience to the party. Well, my background is Sport Science based with a degree completed 6 or so years ago. Unfortunately though, my current day job doesn’t have anything to do with this.

 

I have spent the last 4 years racing a classic motorcycle having built my own bike. Due to unforeseen circumstances I have, however, had to call time on this racing for a few years at least. When I made the decision, I found myself needing something else to focus on. I’m that sort of person.

 

I’ve been road cycling for training for the last 18 months and have been taking it more and more seriously so it seemed to be an obvious choice. A conversation later with the guys at Chain Therapy, and it was decided.

 

As my riding has got more serious I’ve been garnering advice and opinion from a lot of people I know who work or have worked in the cycling trade, as well as following plenty of other blogs and vlogs. The likes of GCN give a lot of useful information, but these guys are primarily ex pro’s with years of experience. It led me to think, why not do a “fly on the wall” record of what it’s like to actually get started.

 

As well as charting my training and progress I’ll be drawing on some of the many sources of training advice and doing articles on as many as I can, giving some detail and explanation as well as some of my own opinions.

 

I won’t be using laboratories or anything out of the ordinary. As things stand I don’t have a power meter or any facilities for indoor training. So my efforts will be recorded on an iPhone using Strava with a Polar heart rate monitor. A fairly “standard” set up. I also work full time, so a fair amount of my training kilometres will be commuting particularly throughout winter to get in “base mileage”.

 

The next post will be my starting stats and an equipment run through.

 

I hope you all enjoy it, feel free to get in touch with me  by email to rootesracing@gmail.com