Becoming a pro cyclist

Question
Would it be possible to become a pro cyclist starting out at the age of 21 with no prior experience or am I just dreaming. Nothing would be greater than me being a pro cyclist but I'm just worried I have started too late. Thanks for your help.

Answer
Matt,

It is entirely possible.  However, becoming a pro takes a lot of dedication to training very frequently with purpose.  You need to eat, sleep and live for biking, because there is a lot of strategy and lifestyle habits you need to absorb in addition to just being fit.  

For starters, if you are really interested, you need to find a team in your area with which to train.  You can train alone to get incredible fitness, but you also need to learn to ride in a pack and you can only learn about pack riding with other riders.  

In order to make the most of every minute of training, I definitely recommend finding a coach.  I spent most of my mountain biking career self-training, but when I wanted to get really good at triathlons I found a coach who set up a training schedule.  There are a ton of cycling coaches available through the USA Cycling website or through Training Peaks (http://www.trainingpeaks.com/coachdirectory/).  Another option is one of the large coaching sites, such as Carmichael Training Systems (http://www.trainright.com/folders.asp?uid=1).  Search the web, there are tons out there.  Or, of course, you could use the local team's coach.

I assume you have done some riding already and you may already ride with a team.  If so, let me know what Category you are and what your experience is thus far: I can give you more specific ideas about what to do next.

Good luck!  As I have found, it's never too late to get serious about athletics.

Graeme