I’ve done a couple of races in the last few months (mainly the beastway series in east London) and have loved every exhausting minute of them.

I’ve really got the racing bug and would like to start doing some “semi serious” training. I understand a HRM is a good, if not vital, investment and have got my eye on a garmin forerunner 305 (I like the idea of being able to race yourself, which this allows)

Do you have an experience of the 305 or what other units should I look at.

And

Do you have any advice to take racing/training to the next level… ie from the first dripping your toe into racing to thinking about next year and taking it a little more seriously and actually start training rather than just turning up on race day

thanks …. ( maybe I should have changed the order of the questions around)

Are you a member of a club?

I think training with a local club that do similar races to the type that you want to do well in, with all the advice more experienced riders can offer will help you more than an HRM or Garmin.

A huge subject, but my simple tips would be:
[list]
[*]Read some books (e.g. Joe Friel)[/*]
[*]Try out your local clubs, join the one you like best and pick experienced people's brains for advice. A good club set up will also give you more training options.[/*]
[*]Get some coaching (through your club, hopefully)[/*]
[/list]

metcalfe is an excellent book.

Buy a training book, and use it!

Basics are: get a steady winter in, ramp up training intensity & cut down duration towards racing season (eg short intervals vs long styeady rides).
Watch for overtaining, particularly if you get into it now without having ramped up the miles.

Yeah clubs,I had been thinking about those… but thay seem to involve the darkside… and I'm not sure I like racing that much to go out on the road…. I will however make contact with the local club and see how I get on… good idea.

#1: Training: be realistic about how much time you've got to spend on your bike. Then make the most of it. Riding with faster people is one way of doing it, otherwise being disciplined enough to plan a specific session and do it yourself.

#2: Training aids: If you really want a GPS, have a look at the Edge series. personally, I use a polar HRM, but you need to be sure of your heart rate zones to make any use of it. (no point in just wearing a HRM if you don't know what intensity you're working at).

Ring your local university sports department and ask for a few baseline performance tests (expect to pay ~£150). Then read a few of the books mentioned above and set realistic and measurable goals. Then 6 months down the line, have another set of tests to see where you're at.

It's very hard to do meaningful training off road, if you really want to get fit and fast then the road is generally the answer.

The Joe Friel book is certainly very good, can recommend it!

if you don't want to ride on the road or turbo; coaches, HRMs, powermeters etc are pointless.

If you are quite new to it, you will find that long steady (offroad) winter rides decreasing in length and increasing in intensity as the season approaches as cynic-al says will probably help you improve quite a lot over a first season.

Just enjoy it, there are plenty of good sport cat racers who don't have training aids and plans, if you want to be as fast as possible though you'll have to buy a road bike at some point 8)

Freil book ordered

(Already got the Metcalfe… hence my limited knowladge of HRM)

Keep the tips coming please. I'm sure others are finding/will find this thread very usefully

Thank for all your thoughts… all good

Not defo say no to road in the future, I'm just not at that point of commitment/desire yet.

Going to keep racing my “virgin year” this year and plan to actually “train” for next year and then see what happens. I’m only ever going to be average, time/family will see to that, but as long as I’m trying and improving thats good enough for me. I just really love the competition. It adds a whole new angle to riding your bike

Which is why I mentioned the Garmin 305, I believe to allows you to race yourself around a course/your local loop that you have set into it…. Anyone got one, use this feature, what do you think?

Definitely Friel. You need to know the difference between base and speed training. And why going too fast on base rides is actually worse than going slow. It is NOT just a case of ride as hard as you can (although this is an important component).

+1 for all the above.

The 'racing yourself' feature is good for your speed training I suppose, yes. Although you might as well just use a stopwatch and give yourself split times.

The 305 is a great unit though for lots of other reasons 🙂

PS you can get pretty good with 6-8 hours of training per week.

There's another book called 'The Time Crunched Cyclist' or something which may be worth a look, it's about how to get fast without hours of training!

Seriously though, if you only want to ride off road you're pretty well wasting your money on an HRM, there's too many outside factors that influence it. Racing yourself isn't that useful either, as molgrips said you could just use a stopwatch, and trails change too much for that to be meaningful.

Seriously though, if you only want to ride off road you're pretty well wasting your money on an HRM

I don't own a road bike…

That's fine, and I know of riders quicker than both of us who do the majority of their riding off road, but if you want to get race fit then riding on the road is a better and quicker way to do it.

Do you never ride on the road then? I never said anything about needing a road bike.

in answer to your first question about the forerunner its a really good piece of kit, i have used the virtual race mode a couple of times, and it seems ok, shows how far in front or behind you are from the last time/whichever old track you used. being able to put routes in to it and follow them is handy (obviously you cant completely get rid of the map!) and means you dont need to keep stopping at junctions on new routes.

I think in order to understand where you can make the biggest improvement, look at the races you have done and analyse your performance in them:
Do you ride fast over everything flat, but slow right down for obstacles (spend some time learning how to ride techy bits faster)
Do you run out of energy after 20 mins (improve your fitness as people have discussed above)
Do you ride a 40lb downhill monster (buy a bike more suited to your riding)
Do you lose massive time whenever there's a hill (either up or down) (uphill – get fitter and stronger, downhill – remove brain and practice)

You can improve a massive amount by looking at where you are slow, and why, then focussing on that – and it's different for everyone

That's fine, and I know of riders quicker than both of us who do the majority of their riding off road, but if you want to get race fit then riding on the road is a better and quicker way to do it.

Do you never ride on the road then? I never said anything about needing a road bike.

I sometimes ride on the road, but I find it very boring! (short attention span).
Previous seasons I've done more road riding, and you're right that its the quickest and most effective way to get 'fit' however I found that it was inappropriate or unspecific to XC racing, and I had to spend a significant amount of time on my race bike to get race fit.

I have a feeling that our conversation is tangental to the original post however, so I'll stop there!

HRMs and Garmins and physiological tests will only show the effects of your training; it's the training itself that is important, not how you measure it.

Cheapest way of getting better is riding with faster people, or racing as much as you can; it's hard to duplicate the effort when by yourself.