Road racing tactics question

Eden

Yeah that can happen, but often there are a few people from various teams in any break - it is really hard to do a solo break -which is why they usually make a big deal of it when someone wins like that. None of those teams will participate in chasing that break unless they have a really good reason to want to bring the race together again - say they have the leader in a stage race and the break is too far out for comfort. In a pro race where they can communicate a rider up ahead may just sit in and not help the break so that if someone can bridge then they will be fresh to help that person. Sometimes a team will intentionally send someone up with the idea that they will be caught later. Usually you'll see this on a mountain stage. A break will go early while its still fairly flat and start the climb before the peleton. When everthing starts to split the rider who is the climber will bridge up and then has a team mate to help make the pace for a while. They use that team mate until he/she's tired and falls off then go out on their own.

Teams usually have different strengths too - sprinters teams usually will try to wait to chase down a break until the last minute. They want the race to come back together so close to the finish that there is no chance for someone to launch another attack. Its pretty amazing how well they can time it.

But of course this is all in the realm of the pros. Down at my level - it usually is a series of attacks. In general one of them will work eventually, though this year the teams have been better orgainized and seem to be coming in with more tactics than just ride as hard as you can.... People do seem to be making fewer tactical errors too - less chasing of ones own team mates and more thought about who is in the race, who on your team stands the best chance of winning and who you need to watch on other teams. My last few races its been my team and one other pretty well controlling the races - mainly because we have the numbers to do it. (when you are there alone or with only one or two team mates, unless you are very strong your best bet is to sit in and just try to cover breaks, hopefully you'll get into a successful one) One team has a very strong sprinter, but the rest of the team is not so strong, so they have been doing a lot of sitting in. It's hard on them when my team and the other large team launch a lot of attacks so we've been doing just that. If we can keep the pace high we can wear down the strong sprinter and probably get someone off the front, rather than having to go head to head in a sprint. It's been working good so far. We're going to be getting into hillier races though and she won't be a threat anymore. She's big and strong, but can't climb at all.