Road training workout durations

BullGod

yeah it wasn't easy. especially as you have to ride millimeters from the edge of the road, with trees, bollards, parked cars and spectators poking their noses out.

But here in Holland the wind decides everything. With tailwind and especially crosswind the race will go "aan de kant" (in the gutter) minutes after the end of neutralisation. The peloton gets strung out in a long line, and very quickly breaks up into "waaiers" (echelons). If you want to have a chance to win you need to be in the first waaier. If you want to finish the race you need to be in the 2nd or 3rd. There can often be 8 or more "waaiers", and the last ones are called the "Mongol Waaiers" - and these get pulled out of the race pretty early by the jury, so the cops can open the roads up for pointless sunday commuters again.

So the only thing to do is to get to the very front for the last moments of the neutralisation and go like hell for the first 20 minutes to get into one of the first echelons. As everyone wants to do this, it ain't easy, the roads can be narrow, with street "furniture" and there are often crashes. Get caught up in a crash, or have a mechanical, and you will never get back in the bunch unless you have protour speed. Once you're in an echelon the pace can be so high (especially in 1 and 2) that you can get shelled easily. Often the road is so narrow that there isn't room for everyone in the diagonal draft, and some guys are in single file in the gutter behind the protected riders in the diagonal line. These guys don't last long.

Racing in NL is tough. Much tougher than Belgium - that is more like a pro race - moderate tempo first hour and then cranking up for the finale, where it gets blown open. In NL the battle starts from the off. Plenty of talented foreign teams come over here with great palmares and not one of them even finishes. A Japanese pro showed up saturday and got nowhere. It's all about knowing what you're doing in the wind, and being strong and daring enough to get up front. Neutralisation is insane, guys all over the pavements and cycle lanes, grass verges, pushing and shoving, shouting. You can have 160 riders all riding in a space the size of a tennis court. I always start at the front and end up at the back by the official start ;-) Generally, at the moment I am severely lacking in speed, balls and experience....

Steve_B

So the field sprint comes at the beginning of the race, not at the end.

I'll stick to my desk job, thanks. Good luck!