finding a coach/ mentor

[beardking]

I've been thinking about getting a coach or mentor to try and help me take my cycling to the next level. I spend a lot of time training and racing and take it pretty seriously and while I think I'm doing a pretty good job of improving myself I'm sure some expert help would be beneficial.

background -
I've been cycling just over a year and i started racing this year. I'm 24 years old 5' 11, 75ish kg
I ride and train with a power meter
over winter and during spring i was doing 12-15 hours training a week, now I have weekly races and time trials I'm doing about 10.
i work as a lift engineer and have to do breakdowns or travel so i'm not guaranteed a finish time every night so i have to work around this

what i think i'm after-
not sure if I'd want a fully bespoke fixed training program, one where i was told the type of training i should be doing on any day (eg. threshold work or vo2 max intervals or sprint training) and was given a few options that i could fit around my time frame would be ideal. or one where i could change days of the week round myself.
or even just someone to look at what I'm doing and give me some advice..........

there don't seem to be a lot of coaching services available in the uk so i was wondering if anyone knew of anyone who could provide this possibly online? or if anyone here could provide this?

thanks

[me]

Try Ric Stern here

http://www.rstsport.com/?event=training ... an=compare

There are several options if you want an actual coach or you can have them write you a one-off plan if you're comfortable with swapping days/workouts yourself.

I bought one of the one-off plans about 2 years ago, I just needed some direction in my training. I filled out a questionaire about time available, goals/target events and past training (I logged all my rides in a spreadsheet and just sent that) Then Alex wrote a plan for me. I also got access to their athletes forum so if I had any questions I could ask them there (the forum was monitored by the coaches, not sure if they still do this).

In the end I was happy with the plan, I made a few on the fly adjustments I felt would help me (I changed one day to include VO2 max intervals as I was struggling in races with this kind of effort, in fairness I did not list this as one of my goals on the questionaire) but nothing major, and instead of the weekend workouts I would just race if there was one on otherwise I would do what was specified or similar.

I'm not sure with how comfortable you are with writing your own plan but you could maybe sign up for a 3 month coaching period and have a chat to the coach to see if you are on the right track, then take that feedback and construct your own plan.

At the moment I am looking a buying one of the training peaks plans also.

Hope that helps

[GramStrong]

2nd vote for RST!