At practice races I think it's perfectly acceptable to chase teammates. For example, when breaks got 1/2 lap up the road at the local East Hartford Tues Night Worlds, guys in the field would say, "okay, let's chase". And everyone would work, even those with teammates up the road. Now, okay, maybe some of the teammates in the field would skip a pull or two and then try and bridge hard when the gap came down. But everyone chased.

To me "negative racing" is racing passively. This would mean sitting on, whether sitting on a chase or chasing an attack and then not pulling through. That may be okay for launching a break with a teammate, but, again, after the teammate got 30 seconds up the road the I'd be perfectly fine chasing the teammate down. It's like a club ride - you eventually chase a teammate because they're ALL your teammates.

Having said that, dangerous moves are absolutely idiotic and people who pull them intentionally ought to be banned, like immediately and for a long, long time. I was taken out by a guy in a Tues Night race when he intentionally swerved about 5-7 feet sideways at 28-30 mph. Out of about a 15 rider "field", maybe 6-8 went down. I broke my pelvis in two places, really screwed up my shoulder. Another guy broke 4 or 5 ribs. The guy that took me out? He posed for pictures with me in the background. Yeah. Nice.

Two years prior, in the same series, he did the same move. Crashed a lot of people. Suspended for 20 days. Returned promptly and raced it more. The guys he took out - most of them didn't return because "training races" aren't worth broken bikes and bones.

Incidentally he took out much of the front end of the field 9 days prior to that Tues Night race, in the Nutmeg State Games. I know because I had to go off road to avoid the carnage. My WHOLE team decided not to do crits because of this bozo - he's too dangerous for them and since he can't climb, they focused on road races. They're all Cat 2s now.

So anyway... you practice ALL elements of teamwork at a race. Attack, chase. Leave gaps etc when helping with attacks. Then when the attack succeeds, chase it with a vengeance.

For me I'll try different things. Bridging gaps is a biggie for me. Another is chasing, another is leading out (if I can).

cdr