I got my points in hilly road races and stage races.

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over/under work. if you can't active recover you are doomed in RR and crits. your body needs to learn what it feels like to recover at 85%-90% of FTP after doing 135-150% for a short duration right before. The lower cats the surging is certainly worse because EVERYTHING that moves off the front is the breakaway that is going to get away, or at least thats how people treat it. All it does it cause the pack to super surge to close the gap and then it goes back to the giant swarm until someone does it again.

I remember my first RR in cat5. 88km relatively flat, was around farm fields so you could literally see almost the entire way around the course from any point on it. 600m or so into the race two guys try and take off. Some idiot from mid-pack is screaming "THATS THE BREAK GET IT!!". All of a sudden im pushing 600w trying to keep up with the massive acceleration for 10s to bring these two idiots back.

Not that it doesn't happen in cat1/2/3, but its certainly a little more strategic in nature, and people are smart enough to let two guys go off the front and burn themselves out.

I think this is really good advice. After upgrading from 5 to 4 last year, I did a couple of M35+ races this year that had plenty of depth. Learned a ton from those races, particularly one where I managed to find the wheel of a very experienced guy that I recognized in the last 1k and followed his wheel as he surfed through most of the field for a top 10 finish while at the same time getting a pretty good first hand view of how the race was won. I'd guess that if you were trying to be an early leadout guy, you'd never really see how the race was actually won up close.

I must say this is quite an ironic question. Cat 5 = chaos all over the place since nobody has experience. That also means that you shouldn't even remotely consider team tactics before you have established yourself in terms of how good / bad you are, and the same for your team mates. Who says your 'sprinter' is in fact a sprinter and that he's gonna be any good towards the end of the race? He may have zero group riding skills and sitting in the wind the whole time and be tired at the end.

Also, it's cat 5 racing, so just forget about team tactics and just race to have fun! You're not gonna become a pro by winning a cat 5 race; at best you get to go to cat 4 sooner. I don't understand the need for team tactics at that level. But that said, I grew up in Europe where, in smaller races, team tactics weren't even allowed. So everyone races for themselves and have to establish their own reputation and develop their own skills. Those were the rules at the time; only formal 'club' races (where a club appoints 6 riders of a team to do a bigger race) allowed (and really used) team tactics. Those races would also have team cars etc in the race.

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