Working in a chasing group.

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Simple question for racers. If you are in the second group on the road and your team mate is in the break, would you work or sit on? This situation arose for me yesterday when I was in the break and 2 of my team mates were in a chasing group working hard to pull us back.

The question may be simple but to me the answer is complex. Who else is in the break, are they stonger than you and expected to maintain to the finish?
Are you able to stay with the break or is one or all of your team mates stronger?
What is the gap and how far to the finish?

Simple question for racers. If you are in the second group on the road and your team mate is in the break, would you work or sit on? ....Like jhuskey said, it depends. What are the odds of your group staying away, how competitive are you going to be relative to the other folks in your break. How big is the second group and how does it change the finish dynamics(you'd have 3 riders in the finishing group, how would the other teams look regarding leadouts etc.) how far back is the main field and will your team mates coming up help or hurt the chances of a group staying away.

But even assuming they totally blew it by chasing you down, what category are you racing and how organized is your team? Below cat II it's pretty typical for team mates and even best friends to chase you down. Sure they always say they'll work for you before the race starts but funny it rarely works that way on club teams without strong coaching. Yeah it sucks, but it seems to happen week after week so you've either got to expect it or move to a team with better coaching and more structure.

-Dave

Simple question for racers. If you are in the second group on the road and your team mate is in the break, would you work or sit on? This situation arose for me yesterday when I was in the break and 2 of my team mates were in a chasing group working hard to pull us back.
If your buddies have the same experience than you, maybe they didn't know what they where doing and they need to ask (just like you are doing right now).

Jhuskey and Dave are 100% right, all depends of the race and team situation, supposing that there is a strategy, but in a beginners field, the chaos is the rule to follow.

Maybe you are ready to move to another category, or to a more mature team, or maybe it’s you who didn’t understand the team’s tactics and that stronger riders where following you.

Don’t worry, if you get in a stage race, the thing turns much more complicated …

Keep enjoying it!!!