The Group Chase (Skillz and Drillz – February 22)

After last week’s work on riding in a paceline, we moved on to the next step of utilizing that skill, working as a group to chase.  When a small number of riders escape off the front, it is usually too difficult for one person to pull back the move once it is established.  To accomplish this task, a rider must work with other willing members of his/her group to close the gap and retain enough energy to contest the finish.

Here is a full video of the class:

During the usual 1.5 W/kg warm-up, we went through our standard practice of moving around the group.  Only, this week it was a little more imperative to get in some good practice, as the day’s class is largely based on the tenet that all riders can maintain their positions within the group.  The basic concept for today was that a group of riders could chase down an individual or small group, expending less energy individually while going faster as a group if the riders collaborate.  This is basically the cycling version of the prisoners dilemma; riders must chose to cooperate to have a greater overall gain, although less of a relative gain or defect for a possible greater relative gain but little to no overall gain.  This week’s class showed that cooperation at times can be hugely beneficial, delaying the defect decision to much later in the race.

(If you need a great example of this, watch the last 30 kms of the Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne from 26 February 2017.  A small group of five riders, including Peter Sagan, escaped and began working together, almost in a team time trial format.  The much larger group behind continued to lose ground, despite multiple teams having multiple riders, because they refused to collaborate.  That decision to defect cost Greg Van Avermaet from BMC the chance to pull off the Saturday-Sunday double.)

During the class, we performed three iterations of the chase, assisted by riders who went off the front of the group by accident.  For the first iteration, I sat at the front at 2.0-2.5 W/kg (terrain dependent) and had the group work through the rotation of the paceline.  Riders in the middle and back were able to hold 1.5-1.8 W/kg while still going the speed of the group leaders, and everyone took turns at the front.  In no time, the gap to our lone leader plummeted, and we were back together.

After a brief slow to let the group bunch up again, we ran into the steeper sections of the Richmond UCI course.  I instructed riders to stay as close as possible to 2.5, knowing that we would still be strung out after two climbs.  At the top of 23r     d Street, I moved to the back and instructed all riders ahead to stay at 1.5 until I passed.  At that point they were to join the group and begin rotating through.  As the group swelled, the pace continued to pick up, and we eventually swept up all of the riders in front.  We repeated that same exercise a second time, as the rolling terrain gave us a great opportunity.

The key takeaway from this class is the benefit of working together in a group, when appropriate.  If everyone takes some time at the front, the larger, coordinated group can generally pull back an individual or small group, assuming that the strength of the individuals is relatively similar.  Let’s be honest.  We could have 40 of us taking turns pulling hard, and we wouldn’t pull back Tony Martin riding hard tempo.  But, within your categories, it is possible to pull back that one marginally stronger rider if you work as a team until you need to not do so.

On the same note, it is important to recognize when that cooperation is happening.  If your teammate is up the road, you need to identify that collaboration and try to disrupt it.  That is for another day, though.  Next week, we will be working on the sprint, but we will look at it from the time we stop cooperating to jump our former collaborators.  Thanks again for all of those who participated in SDR this week.  Until next time, RideOn!