Originally Posted by
Idioteque
how do you exactly move through the pack? i remember my last race, for a whole lap, i was just completely boxed in the middle. Maybe i was simply too scared to make a move but i don't know.. same people were kinda sitting around me and it was a 70 person field with tight roads. Only way i ever stayed up front in that race was from pushing through the wind on the side, not very efficient. I just wonder what the fine line is between being an a hole and putting people in danger and swiftly moving through the insides of the pack.
I really want to go to one of those clinics and bump into people all day until im comfortable bumping them
It's a matter of getting comfortable moving in the field.
You have to get used to passing someone, and by passing i mean getting most of your front wheel ahead of theirs, and just drifting over. If you're on the left hand side, and it's two wide, coming up to a left hander, you get your bars ahead of theirs. Then, you just move over, firmly but gently. You don't want to take anyone down, and they don't want to go down, so more than likely they'll back off a bit, or move over to the right a bit, the guy to their right will move back or to the right, and things will reshuffle like that. In the field, that will happen
thousands of times in a race.
"If you ain't movin' forward, yer movin' backwards."-How a friend put it, with regards to the shuffle.