Hi Huskies! With the first road races of 2024 just a few weeks away, I wanted to share some tips about getting ready for the season. I hope these are helpful for new racers — they are based on my own experience entering my first road races two seasons ago. My goal here is to list out some things you can do on your own, like when you’re out for an easy solo ride, that will help you be a better racer.

Figure Out Your Fueling

Staying fueled during a race is not the same as on a group ride, when there are usually plenty of opportunities to eat and drink while stopped. Even if you’re comfortable eating and drinking on the bike, it’s still more of a challenge in a race situation when speeds are higher and the group around you is more unpredictable. Especially as a beginner, you want to prioritize identifying some calorie sources that are easy to consume quickly on the go and make sure that your body gets along with them — and you don’t want to be testing that out on race day. Here are some tips:

Use a drink mix with plenty of carbs in it. It’s easier to find time to get a few sips of a drink than it is to eat something out of your pocket. In shorter races, you can probably get all the calories you need out of drink mix alone.
Experiment with gels and other quick-to-eat, easy-to-digest foods. As with drink mixes, you can try a few different brands (or make your own) and see what you like best.
Try out these new fuel sources not just on easy days, but during hard training sessions too. A gel that you thought you liked might not agree with your taste buds or stomach as much when you’re working hard.
Experiment with how much fuel you need to take in. 50-100g of carbohydrates per hour of racing is a good rule of thumb.
On race day, make sure to eat a good meal with plenty of carbs before your race, and consider having a quick snack like an energy bar or gel right before you head to the start line.

Work on Your Bike Handling

Practice Riding in the Drops

If you’re like me, you might spend 90% or more of your ride time with your hands resting on the hoods of your brake/shift levers. In race situations, though, you often want to be in the drops. Getting in the drops helps you to:

Generate as much power as possible when sprinting
Stay safe in a tight bunch (avoid hooking the ends of your bars on another rider, and assert your hold on the space around you)
Maximize traction and control when cornering
Stay low and aero when riding on the front

If you’re used to riding with your hands on the hoods, it can be uncomfortable to spend much time in the drops, so it’s good to acclimate to it. When you’re out on an easy ride, you can set a goal for yourself to spend, say, 10 minutes in the drops at some point in the ride. If you really struggle to be comfortable in the drops, you may want to adjust your bike fit. It also always helps to work on core strength and flexibility!

Practice Cornering

Some cornering practice comes automatically from just getting out on your bike and riding, but there are some things you can do to better prepare for taking fast corners smoothly and safely in races. First, read up a little bit on cornering technique and line choice — here’s an article from Liv on the basics. Pay attention to your line choice, body position, and braking patterns as you take corners on your rides. If there are some corners you find challenging on the routes you ride frequently, consider repeating them until you feel more comfortable.

Practice Taking Your Hands Off the Bars

When riding in a group, you should keep both hands on the bars. But there are times when you need to take one or both hands off (which, especially as a beginner, you should try to do only when at the back of the group) — for example, eating or drinking, or adjusting your clothing. If you’re a newer rider, this can sound intimidating, but it’s a skill anyone can develop with practice.

When you’re out riding solo, pick a flat, open section of road to practice on. You can start by just taking one hand at a time off the bars, finding your balance, and seeing how much pressure you can comfortable take off the hand that’s still on the bars. Work your way up to riding continuously without either hand on the bars, focusing on keeping your tires tracking as much of a straight line as you can. Again, make sure you’re picking a safe, open space to practice.

Another skill to work on is grabbing a drink without taking your eyes off the road in front of you. Get to know exactly where your bottles are located on your bike so that you can comfortably pull one out, have a few sips, and put it back securely (and carefully) while watching the road ahead of you. It’s important to be able to hydrate while watching what’s in front of you, but also making sure you don’t drop a bottle that could take out a rider behind you.

Riding with your hands off the bars is not just a useful skill for situations like putting on or taking off a layer of clothing on the bike. It also helps develop your overall bike handling by teaching you better balance and steering using your whole body, not just your hands on the bars. This can help you react to sudden issues — like a pothole you didn’t see coming.

Get Your Bike Race-Ready

Maintenance

It doesn’t get much more disappointing that traveling to a race only to not finish because of a preventable mechanical. Getting your bike tuned now will help reduce the risk of any problems and probably save you some watts as well. Every bike needs regular maintenance, especially when riding through Seattle winters, and most of us are probably due for a refresh by now.

Our awesome new sponsor Cascade Bicycle Studio offers major discounts on all repairs to our members. Now would be a great time to take advantage of that. They’ve got a list of all our paid members, so you just need to come in to the shop and give them your name.

Tires

You don’t need an expensive superbike to win races, but there are some affordable upgrades that can make a big difference in how your bike performs. Nothing is more important than tires. A pair of high-quality racing tires will save you effort with decreased rolling resistance and offer better cornering grip in all conditions, letting you lay off the brakes and confidently carry more speed around turns. While they don’t come super cheap, they are a far more cost-effective upgrade than something like a fancy carbon wheelset.

Tire Models

By far the most popular tire choice for road racers is the Continental Grand Prix 5000. These have great rolling resistance and grip, and good enough puncture resistance that you can use them as everyday training tires as well (at least outside of winter). Vittoria Corsa and Specialized Turbo are also common choices, and just about every major tire manufacturer has a racing tire in both tubed and tubeless formats. Just about anything that is marketed as a racing/performance tire will be a big upgrade over cheaper training-oriented tires (or anything that prioritizes durability over all else, like Gatorskins). When in doubt, I’d say go with the GP5000s since they are so ubiquitously popular.

Tire Widths

For decades, the conventional thinking was that skinnier tires were faster. 23mm was the de facto standard road tire width. Modern testing has shown that this is not the case, and racing tires have gotten wider in recent years. Wider tires offer more comfort without much penalty in weight or rolling resistance. Nowadays it seems to me like 28mm is the most common choice of racing tire size, with most racers going with something in the range of 25-30mm. Note that many older bikes, especially those with rim brakes, were designed around a maximum tire size of 25mm. The actual tire width depends on the width of your rims and may end up larger or smaller than advertised, and you should always have a few mm of clearance on each side of the tire to avoid rubbing the frame or getting any debris caught in there. For most people I’d suggest 28mm or 25 if that’s all they can fit, but this is also largely a personal preference.

Tire Types

There are three main categories of tires with confusingly similar names: tube type, tubeless and tubular. Tube type is the standard most people are familiar with, in which a separate inner tube fits between the tire and rim to hold air. Tubeless tires are a relatively recent addition that eliminate the tube entirely and use a sealant liquid that can fill small punctures on its own. These are ubiquitous on off-road bikes at this point, but haven’t won over all road riders. They are meant to be used only on “tubeless-ready” or “tubeless-compatible” rims, which not all bikes have. Tubular tires feature a tube that is sewn into the tire itself and are glued to the rim. They are generally high-performance racing tires, but have fallen out of favor because they are a big pain in the butt and tubeless tires offer some of the same benefits without requiring glue.

It’s up to you what style of tire to use. When in doubt, tubes are the most tried and true, most universal, and least expensive. They come with a bit of a weight and rolling resistance penalty, but you can also mitigate this by using lightweight latex or TPU tubes if you’re worried about it.

Tire Pressure

Tire pressure will also influence comfort, grip, and speed. As with tire width, the old thought was that the highest possible pressure was fastest, regardless of the discomfort that led to. Now we know that lower pressures do not come with that kind of penalty and offer much improved comfort and grip, especially in wet conditions. It’s worth experimenting with your tire pressure a bit to find out what works best for you. To get a good starting point, Silca’s tire pressure calculator is a great tool.

Wrapping Up

Doing well in a road race involves a lot more than just fitness. There are some simple things you can do to make sure you and your bike are ready to perform at a high level, and keeping these in mind over the coming weeks can help you go into racing season feeling confident that you’re ready to race safely and successfully.

In this post, I only tried to cover things you can do on your own, which is just one piece of the puzzle. There’s no substitute for getting comfortable riding fast in a group. We’ll continue working on this and getting into some team tactics at our weekly Saturday group rides, so please join us for those!

Getting Ready for Road Races