When I first started riding seriously, I just rode increasing volume which got me through my initial goal- a metric century.

Then I decided to ride a few century rides of varying difficulty and I tried using canned plans from the Time Crunched Cyclist. It was better than nothing but I’m a woman in her 50s with an atypical schedule (limited time M-Th and only before dawn + essentially unlimited time Fr-Sun) and my goals did not involve mass start racing. The canned plans are most designed for men racing events of approx an hour in duration and they didn’t completely apply to me. But I didn’t have enough experience/knowledge to modify the plans or to figure out how to make them work with my schedule of weekend-intensive riding. I’m sure the canned plans were not ideal even if they were better than nothing.

Then I wanted to ride a double century and do well in some timed fondo like climbing endurance rides, so I hired a coach. He was worse than a canned training plan, in that it seemed after a few months that he was just providing a weird “canned plan” of his own illogical design that he applied to all “beginners”.

After 3 months, I left that coach and switched to my current coach who I’ve now been working with for 3.5 years. Suffice it to say, I’m very happy with him. Very engaging challenging workouts. A training plan optimized for me- taking into account my goals, my gender, my age, my physiology, my psychology, my life off the bike- preferences, desires, constraints. It’s the hugest luxury to just have a schedule and never have to think or worry about it. I’ve met all the goals I’ve set with him- finishing my double century, placing top 10 in my climbing fondo series, podiuming the State TT Championship in my first year of TTing and winning it my second. I get nothing but positives from this coaching relationship, zero complaints.

PS I’m always surprised when I hear people say that a coach should be a motivator or that a coach creates accountability. This is completely not the case for me, I’m 100% self motivated and accountable for my own actions. In fact, one of the things I like about my coach is that he doesn’t tell me what to do. He provides me with a training plan and advice that will help me meet my goals. It’s up to me to buy into the plan and to decide how seriously I want to take my own goals. No pressure from him. I’ve learned that the best route to achieving my goals is to follow the plan. But if I don’t want to or am not enjoying it or want to modify my goals, fine. All it takes is communicating what I’m thinking and we can modify and move on. No problemo.

“Back in the day” who taught these things? Bike Clubs, I presume.

The quickest easiest was for USAC to “fix” the declining sport of bike racing is to require a few things:
1. To race USAC sanctioned events, you must be a member of a USAC cycling club
2. To be a club, you must put on one race or racing clinic per year
3. To be a club, your membership must be comprised of 25% women, and 10% of men, 5% of women must be actively racing.
<4. Undecided as to whether there should be a further requirement that X% of the club must be juniors, in some ways I think juniors might thrive in junior-only clubs>
5. Promoters may still put on races but club events get priority when the race calendar is made(within reason, the idea is to ensure clubs have adequate opportunity to fulfill their obligation to put on a race or clinic annually).
6. Club races may offer prizes but are encouraged to roll some percentage of proceeds into their racing program and the rest into a local charity, to build love cal support.
7. Ideally races would have something of an educational mission and the public would be invited to spectate. It would be useful for USAC to provide posters and educational materials for curious cyclists.

This would result imo in more larger clubs and less small ones. You’d need a big pool of people to have enough volunteers to put on races, you’d incentivize inclusion of women, you’d incentivize racing people to interact with and accommodate non racing cyclists in the same club, and you’d prioritize racing. If you prioritize racing, there’s going to be teaching. Exposure to the sport is huge, even just being in a club that talks about racing will mean some people want to try. But not everyone is going to want to try and the club would need those volunteer bodies for races. My vision is that some other non-competitive contingent develops as well- an endurance group, or planning an annual tour locally, or mountain bike skills, or epic gravel races ridden just to finish or whatever.

A year or so ago, my fitter began offering a ride-along fit service (because he recognizes that fit when someone is out moving on the open road can be different from fit on a stationary trainer). He was telling me that he was surprised at how much these turned into little coaching sessions on “how to ride a bike”. A lot of triathletes especially- people would just ride straight into a pothole with no attempt to avoid it, or come to a hill and just keep pedaling in the same gear without shifting. Especially triathletes, sometimes not newbies either, pretty strong racers. He was surprised, he didn’t realize the extent to which a lot of them do their workouts on the trainer and almost exclusively ride solo, way less chance to learn from other people.

So I get it that you don’t always know what you don’t know. I’m sure I have stuff to learn on the road, I’ve not been riding that long, just 5 years. But I have ridden everything with my coach- road, TT, track and mtb. The only thing I’m racing right now is TT and that’s pretty straightforward. We for sure talk strategy on TTs all the time- I decide how I want to ride my splits based on where I am in training, the course and environmental conditions. Post race, I critique my effort, he gets that assessment in my notes attached to my data file. Then I get his take on it. If it’s an important race, we may go through strategy pre-race but I think letting me figure it out as much as possible is important.

I feel like if there’s something I’m glaringly doing wrong on any of the bikes, he’d have brought it up already based on the riding we’ve done. If he offered a weekend clinic, I’d go, I’m sure it would be valuable even if it’s some kind of racing I don’t do. But I wouldn’t ask him to do it, he already goes above and beyond. Besides I’m sure if I asked him, his response would just be to invite me up to his house for a weekend with the idea that we could work on whatever we want.

I noticed that he goes out of his way to try to see the people he coaches on a bike. I’m sure it’s so he can intervene and correct glaring mistakes, and to get an idea of how skilled or not you may be. I let him run the show entirely and trust him to make sure I get what I need. I also recognize that I’m not paying him enough that my cycling should become the center of his life.