Overview of Competitive Cycling

Series Summary

The bicycle is a bi-pedal, human powered vehicle that is the principle means of transportation in many regions. Numbering over one billion worldwide, bicycles are used in a range of fields including, toys, fitness, courier services, police work, and sports. In some places, the bicycle has taken on a romanticism and aesthetic akin to that of the automobile, and the vintage and classic bikes are considered collectors items. In other fields, e.g. cycling for sport and mountain biking, bicycle technology is advancing rapidly from its humble start in the 19th century.

In this free video series, our expert Sal Collura will teach you how to train and compete in competitive cycling. Sal will show you how to train on all the different days of the week, leading up to how to train and eat the days before and the day of your bike race. Mr. Collura will tell you how to train for several different types of bicycle races including, time trial, criterium, and road races. He will even tell a bit about nutrition and conditioning.

Video Transcript

"SAL COLLURA: Hi. I'm Sal Collura, the host of Velo Television, and I've been a competitive cyclist for about 20 years now. What we're going to talk about today is how to train as a cyclist, specifically for bike racing, with regard to diet, training regimen, that sort of thing. So, in general, one of the things I'd like to say about bike racing as a sport is that it does combine some aspects of, say, like running, there's sprinting aspect, and then there's also the endurance aspect. So it is kinda tricky to train for cycling because you have to be good at so many different things. Also, it's an individual sport but it's also a team sport, and there are some tactics that go into it. And that's actually one of the things I like about it is it pulls together all those different aspects of athletics into one sport. And it's really hard because the bike holds you up, so you can take yourself to a deeper level--a deeper level of pain, let's say. And also there's some skill involved with racing, and training too. So we're going to cover some of those things today and let's start with base miles."