It wasn’t an easy decision to choose the winner, actually it was a very close race. One of the reasons it was so difficult was that it is different what kind of tips a beginner needs and most beginners can benefit from a majority of the tips participating in the competition. But I have announced that I will choose one winner and I decided the following comment from Ian, Australia to be the best comment (winning $25):

When someone starts cycling I usually suggest a few group rides that are good for beginners or get them to do one of the longer challenge rides.

Getting in a well paced bunch teaches them alot about cycling, gives them friends to ride with and makes the starting process alot more fun.

The challenge ride, like around the bay in a day, set them an achievable goal which encourages them to go beyond what they thought their limits were. I am currently trying to get my 60year old mother to register for a 100k ride with the offer of doing it with her.

But Ian wasn’t the only person to come up with great tips for beginners. Thus, I will highly recommend beginners to visit the thread with cycling tips for beginners.

There is currently a competition going on at Training4cyclists.com. You can win $25 to your Paypal account by entering your best beginner cycling tips here. If you don’t want to win these money, you can still get some really useful tips from the participants. So far there are 5 entries to this little competition and I guess there are more to come. The winner will be chosen on June 5th.

I often get questions about cycling tips from beginners looking for fast improvements. I introduce them to the basic training principles and basic rules for optimal training I know. Training consistently for a long period is a cornerstone in every cyclist’s success and using some principles for recovery accelerates the progress.

Nevertheless, it can be a good idea to hear what you readers say to your friends when they ask you about beginner cycling tips.

Best comment on this post wins $25
The winner will be chosen on June 5th and the prize can be paid to PayPal accounts only. Training4cyclists.com is allowed to present tips entered in this competition in future posts.

Now it is time for competition: What are your best beginner cycling tips?

I will try to make an update of my link section soon. I want to make my link section to a high quality page with a lots of powerful links to the best cycling resources in the world. Thus, if you have some links that you will like to share, please write a comment in this post.

I’m looking for:

• Cycling coaches
• Personal pages (Rider diaries/blogs)
• Resources (News, forums etc.)
• Other

You’re welcome to include a link to your own blog if you believe it belongs to this link section.

Training and Racing with a Power Meter is written by Hunter Allen and Andrew Coggan as an introduction to power meter training and analyzing. It is easy-to-read language throughout the book and if you already know a thing or two about using a power meter, you will finish this book fast.

There is a detailed description on the different power meters on the market helping you decide which power meter is the right for you. I think this presentation is objective and quite useful for beginners. Thus, there are some pages you might skip if you already own a power meter. There is also a short intro to the main advantages by using a power meter. I agree with most of the words in these chapters.

There are some examples of workouts you can do with a power meter. The testing procedure to make a power profile and training programs are different from the ones I prefer, but it would be boring if all coaches ended up with the same training programs. There are some good basic principles in these programs and just like all other programs they should be modified individually. The major advantage is that it clearly shows beginners how to train with a power meter and also underlines the importance of post-training and post–races analysis.

The authors work closely together with TrainingPeaks which means that most analyzing refers to features in this software. This is logic but sometimes the book looks more like an extra manual to the software. When you look beside this, there is a great description of the features that TrainingPeaks offers.

Conclusion
This is a great introductory book about training and racing with a power meter for beginners. It is also a nice book for coaches who haven’t yet had the pleasure to work with athletes using SRM Cranks or PowerTaps, but want to know what power meter training is all about. This book shows you why power meters are getting so popular and gives you the initial tools to getting started racing and training with a power meter.

Cycling training should not be made more difficult than it already is. Consider how many cyclists who have won great races, championships and honour without knowing anything significant about cycling training principles, nutrition or training planning (not to mention heart rate monitors, power meters etc.) There are a lot athletes having success, because they have talent and do a lot of clever things without knowing it: They train hard, they rest and they eat proper amounts of food.

Thus, they make above 95% of their potential performance by doing these things right. Advanced training methods can only add a few watts to this, but in tough competitions these can be crucial. But for a beginning it can be valuable to read these articles to avoid the most common mistakes and understand the basic principles of high quality cycling training:

Recovery Tips for Cyclists

Basic Principles of Cycling Training

Heart Rate Monitor Training Mistakes

Strength Training Mistakes