Race Strategy and Tactics

© 2002 Andy Applegate

To the casual observer road racing looks like an individual sport. As riders and educated spectators, we know this is not the case at all. The sport is really like a complex chess game on wheels, in which attacks, blocks, and sacrifices are constantly being made right up until the finish line. The focus of this article is to give you some basic team strategy and tactic guidelines to think about for one-day road races and criteriums.

 Before the Race

Your team’s race strategy and possible tactics begin before you even arrive on the line. Here are suggestions to help you and your team roll to the line ready to have a good race.

· Develop good fitness. The most important weapon you can have for yourself and your team is fitness. One of the interesting components of bike racing is that it is not always the strongest rider who wins. However, with superior fitness you will have more success in executing team tactics and crossing the finish line first. If you and your teammates are not using a periodized, goal-driven training plan right now, you should consider starting immediately.

· Learn teammates’ strengths, weaknesses and goals. Before the season starts and intermittently during the season, you should get together with your teammates—off the bike—to discuss individual riders’ goals for the season as well as strengths and weaknesses. The better you know your teammates and what they are capable of, the better you will be able to work together as a unit to achieve results.

· Know the race course. Whenever possible preview the race course by riding it. Be on the lookout for spots with tactical value such as hills, cross winds, and tight turns.

· Know the competition. Make a note of the stronger riders in the field. If you don’t know, ask some of the other teams. Chances are they will be more than willing to tell you who to watch out for. If you race against the same riders often, you will know the other riders’ strengths and weaknesses. Capitalize on them when the time is right.

· Have a plan going in. Probably 90 percent of the time any plan you formulate before a race will not pan out. However, you should still have a plan going into the race. It will give you something to focus on and get your team started in the right direction. There are so many variables in a road race that it is almost impossible to predict exactly what is going to happen, but when your pre-race plan works it will give you and your team a huge amount of confidence.

 General Strategy Considerations

In laying out the team’s strategy before the race, there are several guidelines to consider. It’s a good idea for your team to meet and review these prior to warming up for the race. Once you get into it, such a pre-race meeting will only take a few minutes. This will be the most valuable time your team has when it comes to seeing results. At the meeting discuss how exactly each point below can be blended into a strategy for the race. Here are the guidelines.

 • Each rider on the team should have a designated role in the race, whether it be to attack early, cover the moves in the middle, sit in to sprint at the end, or some other assignment. These roles can be flexible once the race gets underway, but having a clear idea of what is expected will help each individual focus on the race objective.       

· Always have a man up the road. By being aggressive or by having team members cover most of the serious moves it will take the pressure off of the remaining team members in the field. They can sit in and be ready to attack when the peloton regroups or follow other moves when they occur.

· No more than one team member should work in the wind at a time. If you think of all the possible scenarios, none involve more than one person from a team working in the wind at any given instance. You can even strive to put your team in a situation where no one has to work! Consider this: you have a rider in the break, a rider in the chase, and several riders in the field. No team member is obliged to work until the chase catches the break. This will give you the two freshest riders in the break and set them up to start attacking as the finish approaches. If the break is absorbed, you will also have some of the most rested riders in the peloton, ready to contest the finish or launch another attack.

· Never do any work without a reason. Enough said.

· Follow your instincts—he who hesitates is lost. Often, when you see an attack, if you take the time to think about going with it, the chance will be gone. Go with your initial instincts and follow the move. You can always decide not to work with it later. Following attacks can be very painful, but sometimes you need to react immediately and worry about the consequences later. When you dig deep to follow a strong move the payoff can be the winning break.

· Attack in the right places. Good places to attack are climbs, before or immediately following technical turns, and headwind or crosswind sections. Good times to attack include just after the peloton has been going hard for an extended period of time, just as or after a break is caught, and any time in the closing miles of the race. Places that are usually less effective to attack include tailwind sections and descents.

· Don’t work any harder than anyone else in the break. Don’t let yourself be goaded into working by the other riders in the move if it does not serve the best interests of your team. If you have a teammate in a chase group or if you are obviously one of the weaker riders in the break, don’t be afraid to sit on. One of the worst things you can do for yourself and your team is to help drive a break away from the field, then get dropped, forcing your team to chase a break that you helped get away!

· Be aware of the magic halfway point. At the beginning of the race the favorites may not be seen, but they often suddenly appear near the front right around the halfway point. This is no accident. In general most races really start somewhere halfway in. That is not to say that an early break will not work, or that you should not be aggressive early, but once you get past halfway you really need to keep your eyes open for that race-winning move.

· Know when to attack the break. If you are lucky enough to have more than one teammate in a break you will probably want to start attacking as the finish approaches. Exactly where and when depends on the course and the competition. With more than one teammate you are in the perfect position to alternate attacks, wearing the other riders down by making them chase. With any luck they will eventually give up, leaving your rider to solo in for the win, while the other teammate sits on waiting to go for the second spot. If you only have one rider in the break, you have a couple of choices. If he is a good sprinter, he could wait for the finish. If not, he must choose a place to attack. The best time to attack in this situation is to wait until the strongest rider in the break has just finished his pull, then attack, preferably from near the back of the group.

· Keep a close eye on the race favorites. You can mark the favorites one-on-one, or use a “zone” coverage where each team member covers a certain area of the peloton. Avoid having all teammates riding close together in the field. Spread the team out in such a way that you will have a rider in position to cover a move coming from anywhere in the group.

· Never use dangerous aggressive blocking tactics. Any tactic that endangers the health of other riders is unacceptable. Passive blocking is generally the best method. Simply put a couple of riders near the front. If a serious chase gets underway, don’t interfere. Sit behind and force any riders that want to help chase to move around you.  This will also keep the same few riders ahead of you working hard and tiring themselves. Oftentimes, if the peloton is not in the mood to chase, you can set a false tempo at the front. By riding a little slower than you think the break is going, but fast enough to trick the field into thinking you are working, you can help the break establish a significant gap.

· Be prepared to chase. If your team gets in the position where you need to chase a breakaway, be sure it is clear which riders will do the work and which riders will continue to sit in. Don’t start to chase in earnest until you have all the riders designated to work at or near the front, otherwise you will make it difficult for them to get into position. Don’t let any single rider exhaust himself in one pull. It is better to spread the work evenly and consistently between several riders than to chase at full speed for just a few miles, then blow up. Try to enlist the help of other teams not represented in the break whenever possible.

· Practice the lead out. This is the tactic you hear talked about most often. Unfortunately, in amateur racing it is very rarely effectively executed. One of the reasons for this is that many riders fail to realize that in order to give a good lead out you will need to be as strong or even stronger than the sprinter! The designated sprinter needs to be the fastest over the final 200 meters. The lead out should be organized with the strongest rider or riders just ahead of the sprinter. The final lead out rider basically has to “sprint” with the finisher on his wheel, ideally dropping him off with 200 meters or less to the line. The sprinter should have verbal contact with the leadout riders, telling them when to go faster, or when to pull off. In the chaos of a bunch sprint, the organization of leadouts often doesn’t work properly, but when it does, it is like poetry on wheels.

While there is no way to guarantee good results in bike racing, adopting good, sound team tactics will increase your team’s chances of standing on the podium immensely.

 Andy Applegate is an elite-level road, cyclocross, and mountain bike racer. He is also a USA Cycling- and Ultrafit-certified coach. He may be reached at aapplegate@ultrafit.com.

 This article was originally published in VeloNews Sept 9, 2002 Vol 31 / No. 15