What does it take to go from a casual “fast” rider to an enduranced and fast educated athlete?  For the normal population that has a few extra bucks to spent a month, it’s a well educated coach and training plan.  Step in 2013 and world class Mr. Tim Bolton.  Tim is the owner of Klimit Mountain and Road bike coaching (still have no idea what Klimit means, but maybe that’s the beauty of it) who is also an avid Pro classified mountain biker racer and cat 2 road biker.  His knowledge of racing and training spans almost my lifetime.

I first approached Tim after a brutal physical and mental race in Grand Junction, CO for the inaugural Epic Rides race.  Even though I placed 3rd in my class (7th overall) I felt the gap between my placement and 1st was just so insurmountable that if I wanted to continue to advance my riding I needed help.  Everything happened in that race from bonking, cramping and crashing.  I’ll have to admit, for me to ask for help is pretty huge, I’ve always had the mindset that with enough reading, learning and mistakes you can figure out things on your own.  However with limited time to spend “figuring things out” I choose to contact Tim anyways.  My prior dealings with Tim was very limited, I’d never met him in person and had only seen his killer climbing time occasionally on Strava.

Once completing his assessment and setting some goals we did an all out effort up lemon to get some baseline numbers.  Speaking of  numbers, ummmm numbers (engineer here, love numbers, data, analyzing), they were pretty slow.  Noticing him barely breathing behind me and me about ready to die, put things into perspective, I was slow.  With the road bike and lemon taking out any skill, it makes you focus on fitness and threshold.  I was in good shape relative to how much I was riding and where I had come from but boy did I have a long way to go.

With many ups and downs in only a years time, I have gone from your casual amateur to a strong and well balanced rider, with power to weight ratios that are in the top 1% of every rider on the planet..  Tim has put together weekly plans, sent normally on Sunday’s, that takes your allocated time and makes every interval and rest count.  No BS and everything is structured to benefit your long tern and short term goals.  Biggest thing I’ve taken away from riding with Tim over the last year, it takes alot of slow boring rides to become faster.  I’ll have more on this later too.

Little plug for Tim: http://www.klimitcoaching.com/