that is a load of BS....

Maybe for a triathlete. That counts as a masher in the road races I've been to - some local Elite racers can pull 105+rpm for a four-hour stage. I thought I was a masher, but the realities of a road race soon have you realizing that it's easier to respond to an attack at a higher cadence. Plus, don't know what cadence you use to pull off your peak 5-20s powers, but my peaks were all set above 120rpm for those efforts. Do you analyze your data beyond checking the peaks? My understanding of power is limited, but I've found the W' metric useful for analyzing "how deep I dug" during a ride. Pretty exact correlation between certain graph behaviour and complete and utter exhaution, and pretty good correlation with peak performances.

I second the advice of "learn how to race by making mistakes". Hell, it's a Cat 5 race, and for all the reasons named before you me you probably won't win it. Have fun. Be stupid. My first race was a four-day stage race. I blew up on the first stage, which was a basically a mass hillclimb with a bit of flat bits before and after. I got dropped the second stage when a seemingly minor surge near the end had me blacking out from the effort. Third stage I recovered well and started an echelon that proved to be the winning break (and then forgot about this whole "finish line" concept). By stage four I was comfortable cruising in the bunch, could anticipate attacks, form them, catch them, and, like everyone else, missed the solo break that made it. Best weekend I've ever had, and tons of good lessons learned for the future.

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ZONE3 - We Last Longer

Except in nats/NRCs/NCCs/big regional races where people are almost trying to crash out.

Local races are cool. Big pro/1 or pro/1/2 races can still have utter carnage. See Athens Twilight and some others.

carnage is great...as long as you're on the spectator side of the barrier. it's kind of like nascar, you're secretly rooting for a crash of some sort.
saw a womens crit last year and final lap the two leaders were well away from the pack. lead girl#1 tried pedaling round one of the final corners to get a bit of separation. You heard the pedal clip the pavement and then the whole bike and her bounce up and sideways. girl#2 behind went right into her as girl#1 in front was going down, girl #2 goes over bars. Was not a pretty sight or sound. they both DNF'd.

No, it's not.

It this is a Cat 5 road race then there probably won't be a "break". The most likely scenario is that there will be some parts of the race where selections happen. This could be a crosswind half way in or the 4th/5th punchy climb. People will start getting tired and being dropped at these times. Make sure you are near the front when these selections happen so you can avoid chasing back on if people start dropping wheels.

Given your 5s/1m powers you don't want to wait for a bunch gallop unless you fancy VERY crafty tactics and think you can roll someone on the line.

A good general tactic I read somewhere is... Narrow the odds, Narrow the odds, win the race.

Wut? This isn't exactly great advice. The whole point of cat 5 is to get people some experience riding in a group. Going solo off the front isn't helping anyone, but at least you're "safe" from the 5s, only to be that much more of a hazard to the 4s. However, when upgrading from 4 to 3 based on number of finishes USAC requires that they be with the group so this strategy is limited in its utility regardless.

Don't crash out. Try not to get spit out the back of the peloton.

That's it. Really. Those are your goals for your very first road race.

This topic is always an entertaining read.

I've only done a couple RR's in my short time as a triathlete.

The first was a mixed race, but I'm pretty sure nobody was stronger than Cat 3ish. Maybe not even. I was in great shape at just over 4 w/kg and just thought I'd try to stick it to them. I went way out off the front multiple times alone just holding FTP, but got chased down. I burned a lot of matches doing that. Finally with about 5 minutes to go I got 2 guys to come with me. When they got tired I was out alone again and made it to within 50 yards of the finish line before being chased down and finishing SEVENTH place....lol. I was completely spent only 50 yards from the finish! I learned a lot that day.

My next race I'll be racing Cat 4/5 at about 4.5 w/kg. There is a big hill (2 loop course) in this one so my strategy there will be to try to fry everyone on the hill. Or my strategy will be whatever Jackmott tells me :)

I'm also worthless at 5 sec and 1 minute like most triathletes I presume.

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24 Hour World TT Champs-American record holder
Fat Bike Worlds - Race Director
Insta: chris.s.apex

I'm aiming to do 3 races my first weekend.. 2on Saturday and 1 on Sunday, so I'll have a chance to practice different strategies. Saturday, don't crash, don't get dropped, don't make anyone else crash. Sunday, win.

This is what makes CAT 5 hard, some guys only do a couple races a year and are in great shape, so they own souls for those races and never cat up. My one and only RR adventure was getting dropped immediately in a 30mph cross wind then languishing way out back for 30 miles only to lay in a ditch with cramps and call my wife to come pick me up.

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Pactimo brand ambassador, ask me about promo codes

Last year in a 4/5 road race there was a guy nobody had seen before, he said it was his first cat 5 road race. The race was all 4's except for this guy and we where excited to introduce him to road racing. He dropped us all 20 miles in and crushed the field by 15 minutes.........found out later he was a cat 1 MTB and cat 1 cross :) point is until you get to the 3's you never know who is in your pack, it could be a cat 1 MTB rider, professional triathlete, or a weekend warrior who decided to give racing a try.

In a road race, one of the lowest percentage moves is riding at the front of an intact pack. You are vulnerable to attack and any move puts you in the position of dragging the pack up. So get off the front and wheel back 10 or 20 spots and make a hard attack. If you are slow on the jump, attack from further back, but go like you mean it and put your head down. Check back and see if you are clear, if not, wheel back 10 spots, cover any counter attacks and get ready to go again.

You want to be alone or in a small group, so you need to attack to either get clear or bridge to an existing group. If you sit in the group and wait for the sprint you will just lose.

If you can't get a break to work, then you have to do a hail mary attack from a couple k to go and try to ride clear and bank on people dithering before the sprint, it occasionally works.

Bike racing is about division, not subtraction. Don't waster time riding weak riders off your wheel, attack and make the group smaller then attack again when your group is well clear.

And practice sprinting so you can have a more balanced approach on race day.

Cat 5 races rarely see breakaways. People get dropped and then there is a sprint. So don't get dropped and don't chase breakaways. If you can sprint cleanly with 2-300 meters to go, that is all you can hope for. Don't get in the wind before that.

I have watched a lot of Cat 4 and 5 races, and tri dudes I know with way better w/kg than you cannot drop those fields. Even if it feels ez, wait for the sprint.

it all depends. What's the wind condition? What's the weather forecast? How technical is the course? How much climbing per lap and how much rest do you get between the climbs, etc. etc.? It's a no brainer that any uphill climb over 2-3 minutes should not end in a mass group gallop, but what about other situations? The wind-exposed races are ripe for echelons, though cat-4 and 5's usually don't know how to use it to their advantage. It's a lot easier to get away in a technical crit as you can be out of sight and have better choices of lines to take. That 2 mile circuit race with a minute long power climb per lap? You bet a break is much more likely to succeed there.

This is the one thing they don't teach you about bike racing: mental preparations re: the course and the competition is quite important. Perhaps some of your competitors have raced before. How well did they do in the past?

Even if it ends in a sprint, knowing those things still help as you arrive fresher for your sprint. If the course is rectangular withe the long legs of the course running north/south and you have a 12mph wind coming from the west, it'd behoove you to make sure you are always to the east of someone to save your energy.

But all that should be secondary to learning how to ride safely in a tight space.

If I had listened to that advice...I never would have had my best finish (2nd) in a true road race (i.e. non-crit)...just sayin' ;-)

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http://bikeblather.blogspot.com/

The best comment said to me after my one and only Cat 4 crit win: "Man Tom...I didn't even know you were in the race."

2nd best comment was: "There are kids out here in this race with dreams of racing pro...and they all just got schooled by a guy who's almost 50, is married, has kids, a mortgage, and a full-time job." :-)

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http://bikeblather.blogspot.com/

You should have pulled a Seinfeld and never raced again. The legend would have grown forever...

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http://bikeblather.blogspot.com/

The one thing that wasn't mentioned is having patience and staying calm when attacks occur and gaps form. Everyone knows not to waste their energy on the front, but most inexperienced racers don't realize how much energy they can burn when they are not in the front and caught behind a gap that has formed.

As already mentioned...there is going to be a lot of easy riding...and a lot of attacks. The inexperienced racer immediately freaks out and jumps out of the saddle thinking that it could be game over. The savy racer waits for that guy to make the jump and gets on his wheel. Or they simply stay calm and use their numbers still in the peloton to reel the break back in. Of course you have to know which breaks are really race defining breaks and which ones are not...that usually comes with knowing your competition as well as the course profile.

These attacks and gaps will happen over and over again...so it will offer ample opportunity for the strongest rider to burn all their matches early while a slightly weaker rider can save a lot of energy and be stronger at the end. While riding in the top 10 positions, but not at the front is very good advice, riding in the 6-10 position often puts you right at the front of the chase pack when an attack happens and you're left with a front row decision whether or not you are going to chase it down or not. So don't freak out when you constantly see gaps in front of you. Stay calm...know your competition, and use your matches accordingly.

not enough hills on that race :D

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The entire event (IM) is like "death by 1000 cuts" and the best race is minimizing all those cuts and losing less blood than the other guy. - Dev

In terms of knowing the competition, one tip for new racers is to make use of the USA Cycling "Race Predictor." Assuming the entries are being handled through USA Cycling, which most races are, as entries come in, the entry website will list the entries and, more importantly, if you click on "show race predictor" it will rank the riders in the race based on their points. It has some limits since it does not have day off registrations and, in especially in Cat 5, you do get guys who are fast but only race occasionally so they don't have a lot of points. But it will give you a quick insight into who you'll be racing against and who you might want to be keeping an eye on. If you want to go one step further, you can check out people's results. That might help you find the guy who has only done 3 races in 5 years but is a stud or the MTB champ who is doing his first road race . . . .

Actually...just the perfect amount.

It's not MY fault the lead group with all the skinny climber guys who crested the short hill with ~7 miles of ~2-3% descent to the finish didn't know how to keep pushing the pace to make sure guys like me who were dropped didn't get back on ;-)

Of course, it also helped I was riding my Soloist and Jet 90s in that race too :-)

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http://bikeblather.blogspot.com/

In a road race it's all about managing the change in power.
Average power tends to be very low but NP can be very high.

The better riders try to make sure there are as few people contesting the sprint as possible.

they do this by:
1/ Accelerating HARD out of corners.
2/ Putting extremely hard efforts at the foot of each climb.
3/ Varying pace on the longer climbs.

Train for that by simulating that.

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really it is better to have someone else do that for you. =0

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
Aeroweenie.com -Compendium of Aero Data and Knowledge
Freelance sports & outdoors writer Kathryn Hunter

Very few races have registration handled by USAC, at least in my area. Around here, and in many parts of the country, they are handled by bikereg.com. The equivalent "race predictor" function is on road-results.com.

Cat5's also have no points system. Only finishes count. It doesn't matter where you finish as long as your finish as recorded. Always check the results within 15 minutes of posting, and if you are not listed as a finisher, go to the Chief Judge and lodge a protest. After 15 minutes all results are final.