YMCA

Please give me your best "on the road" games:
-Team pursuits
-5k little pack races
-steady paceline with last guy jumping to front, then the next last guy jumping to front and so on
-leadouts
-small gear races
-etc.....

I do NOT need the bumping in grass drills and such, only on-the-road games.
Thnx!

gsteinb

Are you planning our camp?

YMCA

if I did, prepare to be vetted one and all

Doge

Races:
Sitting on the toptube/butt below and in front of the seat.

One legged

Slow races aka - track standing - https://coastaltrails.org/wp-content/...Rules-2014.pdf

No hands

No hands and one legged for the few

shovelhd

Motorpace session with sprints off the front

mattm

Eat a bunch of burritos, see who has the worst farts.

The main that should come out of a team training camp is nicknames after all!

gsteinb

YMCA

ha mattm, these training days are for a bunch of white collar old guys who wannabe racers, fart contests were many moons ago

yes shovelhd, that'd be good for fitness, but the majority of these doods are in need of everything else (racer stuff)

mattm

In that case: comparisons of the best doo-rags, knee braces, and which bikes have the tallest headtubes? (i.e. masters stuff)

Seriously though, it's a good question; the only "training camp" I did just involved unstructured long rides, but it got the job done. It was mostly about bonding, and not really training. New team is doing a training camp this year down in SLO, not sure what to expect.

hack

probably unstructured long rides

or see how many people you can bungee to Fudgy and have him pull them up hills

Enthalpic

Doing 5km race simulations interspersed throughout a longer endurance ride has taught me a lot over the years and they are so much fun. The rest of the stuff we have tried ends up just being fitness intervals or crash avoidance/mayhem.

At the very least you get good at predicting good places/situations to pick on your friends and/or where you need to improve.

MDcatV

pacelines, pacelines, and more pacelines. small ring, riding together. double pacelines pulling correctly through the middle while front riders peel off to the outside; single pacelines; rotating echelons with correct wind management; working the back of a paceline; staying tight through turns/uphills (are there any in FL?). not sexy but doing this kind of stuff was more helpful to me as a cyclist than anything else I've done.

shovelhd

Motorpacing is paceline work on 11. It's also a pretty accurate simulation of what happens on the front when all hell breaks loose. It's way more than fitness. You may not want the liability though.

carpediemracing 

I think pace lines would be good. Double pace line for the most part. Talk a bit, learn how others ride, etc. When I headed down to Gainesville for training we did some long rides out into the surrounding areas, 4 of us (2 locals, 2 of us). We typically rode 2x2 instead of 1x4, although if we were tired the one Cat 1 (local, so he knew where to go) would pull and we'd sit on and grovel. We did some shorter rides, when our legs were shattered, and some longer ones when not. You learn about yourself and others when extremely fatigued, and if everyone gets along after a long ride then you're doing well.

I think chalk talk is more important than practice, meaning talking when off the bike. You can cover racing tactics at dinner or whatever. To actually practice them won't be super useful unless you are doing group rides with non-teammates. At that point you might be able to do some practice racing type stuff without making the rest of the group ride too mad, but if the team stuff is too disruptive then it's not good.

However I think that building the team, discussing theory, those should be primary. Get them psyched to work together at the first race.

You'll want to do some stuff to figure out what people can do. Slow roll 53x12 jumps to max speed (or a line) would be good to see how "jumpy" some riders are. Town line sprints are good (in Gainesville we also sprinted for county lines for 5x points and for creek and other name type signs for 1/2 points). If you're lucky enough to get a strong left-side crosswind (so protection is to the right) you can challenge everyone to try and ride the others off their wheel. The strong riders should bury the weaker ones.

carpediemracing 

Oh and if they're newer racers then practice lead outs. Good lead outs are really effective in the lower categories.

Short lead out. Max speed for each person, like a sprint-pull if you will. Goal should be 35 mph leadout, maybe faster if the wind is kind. The sprint should be a formality.

If you're riding with them try to move up next to them during the final part of the leadout, meaning you sit on their wheels and try to move up. If you can advance they're going too slow. Tell them to pick it up.

YMCA

All good advice guys. I've done plenty of cat1 training camps and we do a lot of pacelines and motorpacing and 2x2's and etc.

But these guys (about 16 of them) need technique work and tactical knowledge. They are mostly just getting to cat3, although a couple are new cat2's. Aged 35-55.

I just remembered another good game. Put a $20 bill on your seat and try to stay away from others as they try to grab it. Forces you to accelerate seated and the chasers have a blast.

I will def work on leadouts. It's an art and is f'ed up way more than it should be by squads at all levels. Guys dump their sprinter off to far out, mostly because they go to fast in the lead-up. Only go as fast as needed to hold the front, or good position. That simple!

Ygduf

that is like, literally a game of grab ass.

Andy STi

I love our team training camps. We all have so much going on that they're usually no longer than 3 days or so but we always have fun. Just a bunch of masters so we get up early, go to bed early and take our geritol, and ice our knees before before we ride. Then we go out and pile on massive miles and just have fun. Lot's of pee breaks because of our BPH. We've all been racing for many years and we don't need any practice messing up our leadouts, we do that just fine.

MDcatV

wait, we're teammates?

mattm

I like this idea!

Except, what kind of money do you guys have over on the east coast??

The stuff we use over here would probably tear if I yanked out from under somone. I guess if they were just barely sitting on it it could work.

Fudgy we're totally doing this at camp, get ready!

Ygduf

I'll find my oldest most see-through bibs!

YMCA

courtesy of Steve Bauer circa way-back-when

Doge

I love the game. But I keep thinking about the seated acceleration part. Is that better? Why?

YMCA

according to Bauer, it was learning the ability to attack before anyone knew you were attacking

most attacks are full flight out of the saddle showy show tunes, this is more subtle and rarely used

Ygduf

I would also think that it's just good practice for crits and surges in RRs where you don't want to be standing up eating more wind out of every corner.

so stipulated, if I go to my teams training camp and we waste a bunch of time playing grab-ass games, I'm going to be annoyed.