Do I Need an Ultra-Cycling Coach?

If you’re already riding big miles, you probably know how to train.

You know how to ride your bike, how to put the hours in, and you probably even know what it feels like to be tired and keep going.

But ultra-cycling asks more of you than simply riding further.

As the distances get longer, the variables multiply. Training, recovery, nutrition, fuelling, sleep, pacing, equipment, race strategy and logistics all become part of the performance.

And at some point, the question becomes:

Do I need an ultra-cycling coach?

The answer isn’t necessarily yes.

But if you’re serious about what you want to achieve, there are some very good reasons to consider it.

You don’t need a coach to ride an ultra

There are plenty of ultra-cyclists who are perfectly capable of training themselves.

You may enjoy working it all out for yourself and have years of cycling experience behind you. You may already have a good understanding of training and know what works for you.

That’s great.

But there’s a difference between being able to train yourself and being able to make every training decision objectively, consistently and with the demands of your next race in mind.

And that’s where coaching can make a difference.

Ultra-cycling is more than accumulating miles

One of the biggest mistakes I see ultra-cyclists make is assuming that more volume will automatically produce a better ultra-cyclist.

It won’t.

More miles are only useful if they are the right miles, at the right time, for the right purpose.

Ultra-cycling requires specificity.

A climb after 100 miles of racing is not the same climb after 400 miles.

Riding into a headwind when you’re fresh is not the same as riding into one after a night without sleep.

And the demands of a 500-mile race are very different from those of a 200-mile event, even if both involve sitting on a bike for a very long time.

Your training needs to prepare you for the specific asks of the event you’re targeting.

That means understanding not just how much you can train, but what you need to train for.

Experience matters

I’m Joe Barr, and I’m an ultra-cyclist too.

I race, as well as coach. I’ve stood on a lot of podiums and learned a lot of lessons the hard way.

I’ve raced distances from 200 to more than 3,000 miles, across different terrains and in heat, cold, wind, rain and altitude.

I’ve experienced the physical and psychological obstacles that ultra-racing puts in your way.

And I’ve learned that the race is always the teacher.

That experience matters when you’re preparing for an ultra.

Not because I can predict exactly what will happen to you. I can’t.

But because I can help you prepare for the things you can control, recognise the things you can’t, and build a strategy that gives you the best chance of dealing with whatever the road throws at you.

So, do you need an ultra-cycling coach?

Maybe.

If you’re happy with your training, you’re progressing towards your goals and you enjoy managing the process yourself, you may not.

But coaching can be particularly useful if:

• you’re moving into a new distance
• you have a specific performance goal
• you’re struggling to balance training with work, family or other commitments
• you keep making the same mistakes in training or racing
• you’re not sure whether you’re doing enough — or too much
• you want your training to reflect the specific demands of your race
• you’ve reached a point where simply riding more miles isn’t moving you forward

Sometimes you don’t need more motivation.

You need a better plan.

What happens when you work with an ultra-cycling coach?

Coaching isn’t about handing you a training plan and telling you to get on with it.

At least, that’s not how I coach.

Your training needs to fit your life as well as your race goals.

We work together to understand where you are now, where you want to go and what the event is going to ask of you.

Then we build the training around that.

We look at the details that matter to an ultra-cyclist: training load, recovery, nutrition, fuelling, pacing, sleep, equipment and race strategy.

And we adjust as we learn.

Because no plan survives contact with the real world perfectly.

Work gets busy. Life happens. You get tired. Your training tells us something we didn’t expect.

The plan needs to respond.

You don’t need junk miles. You need purposeful miles.

Ultra-cycling already takes a huge amount of your most valuable resource: time.

So I’m not interested in filling your calendar with miles simply because we can.

Every session needs a reason.

Every block of training needs a purpose.

And every recovery period needs to earn its place too.

The goal isn’t simply to arrive at the start line having ridden more miles.

It’s to arrive prepared for what the race is going to ask of you.

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If you’re wondering whether an ultra-cycling coach could help you get more from your training, let’s talk.

You don’t have to commit to coaching to have a conversation.

Sometimes the most useful thing is simply to look at where you are, where you want to go, and work out what needs to happen between the two.

Email joe@barrultra.com and we’ll set up a Zoom call.