Alaska Mike

My local road racing sanctioning body, the Arctic Bike Club Road Division, is not affiliated with USAC and hasn't been for well over a decade. Some people in the club travel to the Lower 48 to race, but they're all established racers. Obviously, the travel expenses make it less appealing to other riders.

As with just about every road racing organization, we're looking for ways to grow participation- especially in the Junior and Women's categories. Part of this is through rider development.

Anyone have any good resources/systems/programs for developing racing skills? Are USAC's coaching references any good for this purpose? I'm trying to make the introduction somewhat less intimidating for the newcomer and provide a framework they can grow in. We don't have a strong group ride culture in the area, and people unfortunately learn pack skills as they race. Even a clinic or two would be better than what we have at the moment.

Thanks.

topflightpro

I'm not exactly familiar with what it consists of, but I believe USAC's Beginner Racer Program is designed to do this.

And I think it is based of some of the stuff done in California to introduce folks to racing.

Alaska Mike

Watched the video of the presentation, which was less than informative. It was mainly the guy addressing why people couldn't connect and like 2 slides with any actual content. I don't think you can access any of the content without attending a series of clinics or becoming a certified instructor- both non-starters for us. The expense to "pass the bill so we can find out what's in the bill" is prohibitive.

I did look at the NCNCA site the program is based on and there are some basic points there.

I'd prefer to have something with some structure and progression, instead of a loose collection of tips thrown out randomly. A lot of the race clinics I've done have been that way.