Bike Racing 101: Knowing Your Place

So, you wanna be a bike racer?

Let's assume you've been to the Early Birds and ridden in largish packs on group rides. You know how to draft, can pull through even in an echelon, and can hang even when the pace picks up to, say, this-hurts-a-bit on the speed-o-meter. Now you've got to figure out how to win...

The first thing you need to know if you want to win bike races is just where you fit into the group. Are you all choc full of fast twitch fibers that allow you to accelerate like a bat out of hell? Are you a slow twitch type that takes two months to get up to speed but can go like a freight train once you are there? Somewhere in between? Are you willing to sit elbow to elbow with Racer X at thirty miles an hour as things get twitchy towards the end of a race, or are you more likely to back down a bit and slide in behind him?

The answer to all of the above along with many more answers to many more questions will determine just how you race your bike. You don't have to accelerate like a rocket-sled-on-rails to be able to win a crit, nor do you have to be able to sit in the wind for hours to win a road race (although those attributes help, just a little). It is more improtant to know yourself as a rider.

Most beginning racers are scared of the front. I've watched time and again as 30 riders will come to the line together, everyone of them thinking they are gonna win the sprint. Unless you are absolutley sure that you are one of the fastest sprinters in the group (and I mean sure), you have no business coming to the line with 30 other guys. Instead, you need to do all that you can to break up the race into a more manageable group. That means riding aggressively until you are sure that you are the fastest finisher left.

Case in point: TK is by no means a fast twitch guy, especially if he is riding junior gears. But, he manages to win his share of crits in a season (usually the domain of the sprinter) because he doesn't wait until the last two laps to try to win. He is aggressive from the gun, riding to eliminate others chances to win. Each attack and subsequent attack narrows the field more and more until either he knows he can win in the sprint or he is solo off the front and has broken the will of the group to chase. While it is more complicated than this, and teamwork is invloved, TK used this tactic to win in the 2/3 race at Apple Pie, at Cal-Aggie in the juniors, at Land Park again in the juniors, and to take the GC at Valley of the Sun in 2007.

Say you are a sprinter. You still don't have a free ride to the finish. If everybody in the group knows you are the fastest finisher (and they should if they are worth their salt as a bike racer) that means everybody will be working to make sure that you are not in the group that comes to the line together. The sprinter's job is to read the race (more on this in Bike Racing 201) and make sure that he is in every significant move. In a nutshell, make sure that nothing goes up the road without you that has the possibity of staying away.

Case in point: When AWfoSho won his first state championship in the crit he did so because he managed to insert himself in a move with the two strongest riders in the race, Jake Allen and Collin Samaan. AWfoSho was by no means as strong as either rider, but he was faster than both of them in the finish. Jake and Collin repeatedly attacked eachother, dropping AWfoSho each time, but they wouldn't push home the advantage because they couldn't drop eachother. AWfoSho clawed tooth and nail to fight his way back to them each time. He was completely cooked when the three came to the line together, but he had more fast twitch then both of them and used it to his advantage. He had the fastest finish out of all the riders in the race, but he had to give everything he had to be able to use it.

Above are some over simplified examples, but the first rule to bike racing is to know yourself. Race according to your strength and race aggressively and that first win is sure to come.