Originally Posted by
needmoreair
That makes no sense at all. What does it matter if you're sprinting against 10 or 100 if you're so gassed from silly attacks that you can't actually contest the sprint?
If you guys are serious about racing and serious about upgrading, then you have got to stop deluding yourself into thinking you're doing anything with these attacks but wearing yourself out and sabotaging your races.
Don't put your nose into the wind until the last 200 meters. That's how you place, that's how you get the points, that's how you upgrade. There are no points for leading the most laps or putting down the fastest attack. It's only about crossing the line. That's it.
There is no "culling the herd" to improve your odds. Again, that's just silly. You're just messing up your own race.
Remember it's all relative. In the ProTour, okay. In the 1s and 2s, it's different. In the 3s and 4s I think your advice is most pertinent. In the 5s it's less so.
The big thing to remember (I have to keep this in mind) is that not everyone can sprint. There's a local who placed 3rd at the Elite RR (2002?) after doing some massive work in the final (bridge minute gap solo, pulled the break to the finish, led them out, 2 guys beat him out of 4 others). He says he's never hit 1200w yet he can do repeated 500w 5min intervals (based on graphs I saw of his power).
Get me to the finish, get me there at less than 200w average, and I will do a massive sprint. I can't do 500w for much more than a minute (my record is 587w for 1m and that included a couple 1200-1400 jumps before blowing up) but 1250w is a normal peak jump for me. 1100w for the duration of the sprint, 18-19 seconds, is "good", 650w is pretty pitiful like I was braking and coasting, 800-1000 is normal. Not everyone has those numbers.
However if I average over 200w then my sprint basically fades to nothing. I struggle to pass just one or two riders. My jump doesn't break the elastic behind me. Etc.
So when I talk to people about tactics I have to put me in their place. When they jump do they immediately think they jumped on the wrong lap because no one else went? Do they think that they're committing a faux pas because it seems like no one else decided to contest the sprint? Do they beat their teammates in town line sprints by bike lengths? If that reflects their experience then theyr'e a candidate for going for a sprint finish.
However if when everyone jumps they go backward, if they jump only to find themselves simply staying on wheels... that's not a sprinter. Unless they happened to be totally redlined going into those sprints they're not going to get significantly better.
For those non-sprinting riders it's much more interesting to try and make the attack stick. They have a (remote) chance, better than if they saved it all for the sprint.
There's a local now-Cat 2. He kept attacking at the Bethel races as a 3. 10 laps out. 7 laps out. 5 laps out. 4 laps out. We'd catch him, at the bell, on the backstretch, at the bottom of the finishing hill, halfway up the hill, the last time about 20-40 feet from the line. A teammate, who'd been leading me out and therefore had been watching each week at the poor rider's efforts, asked me why the guy kept attacking when it wasn't working. I answered that he
has to attack. He can't sprint with the sprinters so he needs to go it alone (he commented privately on one of my videos "did you see how many riders he passed in the sprint?" and a teammate later showed me the comment). I said that in a crit like ours the sprinters win 90% of the time but I rely on luck, teammates, etc. If this guy's break sticks then he'll win guaranteed. My teammate seemed a bit skeptical but we had a good system down so we didn't mess with it.
The next week I caught him again 10 feet
after the line. He'd won his race and I was probably the second most psyched about his win (him being the most). I went into the sprint thinking that "oh, man, we are going to kill him again!" but he'd saved just enough to get to the line. I went blasting by him when I caught him but he'd won the race already. Impressive.
Related to that... if you attack you shouldn't kill yourself to stay out. If you can get into an uncomfortable level of effort and it seems to hold then fine, that means that the break is appropriate for your strengths/fitness/etc. But don't go way anaerobic just to stay out. I've gone out on the attack and been redlined within a minute. If the race averages 26 mph then doing 23 mph won't keep me away, but that's what I'm reduced to after a couple minutes effort. If I could do 25 mph at the same level of "blowed-up-ness" then it would be slightly different. If I could do 26 mph then I could win the race if things work out behind. If I could do 28 mph then yeah, I'd be a break specialist.
Relating to that 3rd at Elite RR guy. I've posted the story before but I'll repeat it again. He was in a P123 crit, basically flat. Couple strong pros there (Graeme Miller, Jeff Rutter), a slew of local crit hot shots, etc. He took off. He figured the race would average 28 mph. Therefore once he got a gap he held 28 mph. He knew the group would have to do 30-31 mph to bring him back. Therefore any time his gap dropped he'd do 31 mph, until the gap started to level off again. He knew that if he was going 31 mph the field would have to do 33-35 mph and that would require massive efforts, even for a pro or Cat 1.
He was away for something like 45 laps, 45 miles. He did maybe eight or ten 31 mph laps, including a few strung together. I was one of the guys giving him time gaps, no one on the backstretch, so he was making his speed decisions basically near the start/finish. Miller and Rutter both made massive moves, Miller I think closed something like 30 seconds in a lap and change, but he blew when he was only 15 seconds behind the EliteRR guy (who was doing a bunch of 31 mph laps). The EliteRR guy won his race by a minute and change.
To put things in perspective I tried to do a lap solo there. I did 28 mph and blew up after a lap. It was ridiculous. 28 mph, on the slow laps? 31 mph on the fast ones? For 90 minutes? What?