Books
| The Cyclist's Training Bible |
 ~$20 on Amazon |
When I started riding on the road (previously was mountain biking), a good friend of mine and former category 2 racer gave me The Cyclist's Training Bible as a birthday gift. At the time I was only riding on the weekends and only for fun while I recovered from a mountain bike spill. The Training Bible encouraged me to create goals in the sport and create a training plan to attain those goals. Joe Friel does a fantastic job of outlining the steps one should take to become a strong, faster cyclist. This book is great for both racers and non-racers, with or without power meters. If you only have one training book for cycling, in my opinion this is the one to have.
| Training and Racing with a Power Meter |
~$20 on Amazon |
After reading The Cyclist's Training Bible and talking with other riders I started seriously considering getting a power meter. The Training Bible includes explanations on how to train with a power meter but there are many additional insights, as well as additional power-based workouts provided in Training and Racing with a Power Meter. This book also has fatigue testing and match-burning insight not available from other sources. For training with a power meter, this book is a must-have.
| The Power Meter Handbook |
~$15 on Amazon |
The Power Meter Handbook includes setting up power zones, how to train with those zones, some discussion no match-burning, and how to use your power meter for periodization and tapering/peaking for races. It also has sections devoted to road races, time trials, triathletes, and century riders. It's a short read and does help a rider understand more about how the power meter can assist training, but I'd recommend Training and Racing with a Power Meter over the Power Meter Handbook if you were only looking to buy one.
| Tom Danielson's Core Advantage |
~$15 on Amazon |
After my accident (which resulted in a few fractured vertebrate), the racer with the Fuji (aka Evan) recommended I read Tom Danielson's Core Advantage and consider trying the workouts during my recovery. I've not yet started physical therapy and so I haven't been able to try any of the workouts yet, but I have read the book and it is filled with information about the advantages of (and how to) strengthen your core. If you are recovering from an injury, have any muscle pains from cycling, experience issues due to poor posture, or just want to develop a stronger core for riding your bike, I highly recommend you read this book.
Magazines
| Road Bike Action http://www.roadbikeaction.com |
~$15 / year |
I subscribed to Bicycling Magazine for a year and never really found useful information in it. There were too many articles about commuter bikes, reviews on fenders, and guides on how to air up your tires. Road Bike Action is a much better magazine for cyclists interested in training and racing. Their reviews are in-depth and appear to be honest, the content-to-advertisement ratio seems quite high compared to other magazines, and I find that almost every article aligns with my interests. The Chris Carmichael tips section of the magazine isn't that great, but it's only a page or two and is better than anything Bicycling had to offer.
Websites
| Sprinter Della Casa's Blog http://sprinterdellacasa.blogspot.com |
A category 3 sprint-specialist with a fantastic blog, Aki provides tons of knowledge and insight into how to race in criteriums. His race videos contain running dialog throughout, providing the viewer with incredible race experience. His blog posts also contain product reviews, how-to guides, training tips, as well as life stories. He keeps his blog well-organized with labels so finding specific topics is fairly easy. He is a fantastic sprinter, humble, and happy to share his knowledge with other racers. If you need to work on drafting in order to save energy for the sprint finish in a crit, he's the guy to learn from.
| Joe Friel's Blog http://joefriel.typepad.com |
Some of the information Joe posts on his blog is copied from his books, but he usually adds additional updated information making his posts more than just excellent reminders. If you don't have the Training Bible you can glean a lot of information from Joe's blog and he answers just about every question asked of him in the comments section. You can e-mail him specific in-depth questions as well and he is diligent to answer them (as well as fairly thorough). His blog posts mostly deal with training and nutrition, with some product reviews mixed in. When I performed my first FTP test I e-mailed him the results and he responded with his thoughts on my results. Joe is extremely friendly and more than happy to share his knowledge with the cyclists.
| DC Rainmaker's Blog http://www.dcrainmaker.com |
He may be a tri-geek, but man does he do some fantastic in-depth, unbiased reviews. His blog also includes a tips & tricks section and how-to guides for most everything cycling-related. You will have to weed through the running- and swimming-based articles but the majority of his content is dedicated to the bike. He lives in Paris and provided some pretty neat blog posts when he watched some stages of the Tour de France. He has some race reports as well but they are mostly marathons and triathlons. If nothing else, check out his product reviews -- particularly the ones he's posted for power meters and computers.
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