Cycling coaching

I've been debating for a while whether to get a coach/Personal trainer or not. Well, reality has set in and I'm not as flush as I thought I am. I still need to save for the upcoming bike ride - meals and so on - so I'm taking it the easy way.

I ordered a few books...Oh dear, I can hear you say...and will be trying this on my own. Well, it is a journey, isn't it?

Without taking anything away from any other good books there might be out there, I thought I will share with you what I found. I ordered four:

1. Weight Training for cyclists by Ken Doyle and Eric Schmitz
2. The Long distance cyclists' handbook (second edition) by Simon Doughty
3. The time-crunched cyclits - Fit, fast and Powerful in six hours a week by Chris Carmichael and Jim Rutberg
4. Bicycling magazine's Training Techniques for cyclists edited by Ben Hewitt

I found all of them useful in some sort of way, particularly the first two and have now devised a training programme consisting of weight training and distance cycling for the next 9.5 weeks till the Big Ride.

I'm happy to share it and will be posting it here if I can work out how to paste an excel spreadsheet so that it still looks the part!! I will try and scan it as a picture, hopefully that will work.

The programme is an ideal so I will strive to get this done as it is set down but if I can't make it on a day due to work commitments I'm not going to sulk about it, but try to catch up later.

I have set up power, strength and core weight training programmes from the first book which complements the actual cycling done in a week, again happy to share those individual programmes if you want.

Ok!! Here we go above, it seems to have worked. Now to get the cycling going...

To coach or NOT to coach!?

I'm seriously thinking about getting a proper coach. This is a massive challenge and I want to do the best I can to make it successful including the BEST prep.

Although I've ordered some good books on cycle training, especially endurance training, I feel I need to sign up to a good coach. Reading in a Cycling mag very recently I came across an article on coaching and that everyone could benefit from a coaching session. There are a couple of coaches quite close to where I live and maybe I should knock on their doors. I know it won't come cheap but a proper cycling coach will be better than a 'normal' PT coach...what do you think? Comments SERIOUSLY invited!