A Triathlete does a Road Race...

andrewgturnbull

Hi folks.

A quick race report on my blog from my first road race in 2 years!

http://www.andyturnbull.co.uk/2008/Falk ... y2008.html

Cheers, Andy

Toks

Good work Andy - I felt like I was on your throughout the race. Excellent report

Bronzie

Good report and congrats on mixing it with the big boys............my attempts at this never seem to go anywhere near as well :oops:

You say you messed up your tactics - for yourself maybe, but at least your team mates benefitted from you protecting their lead - takes a cool head to ride for another's benefit I think so chapeau for that

andrewgturnbull

Hi folks.

Thanks toks - I thought you were on my wheel, maybe you could come through a do a spelll next time, hmm?

Bronzie, the bit about messing up the tactics referred to the previous road race I did, when I was in a similar position, with 3 of us from the same team in a similarly sized break. What we did wrong was this:

We all attacked at the same time... It seemed a good idea at the time, and managing to prise all 3 of us of the front simultaneoulsy took some doing. When we were away, we looked at each other and though "yes, lets do this" so we put our heads down and went for it.

Obviously the guys behind chased - 5 of them, and they chased hard. It must have been a hard chase, but it was 5 against 3, so eventually we were reeled in. At that point we were knackered, and so were the 5 chasers.

However there was one guy who had his thinking head on. The 6th man in the break knew exactly what would happen. He knew everyone else would chase 3 men from the same team, and he knew that 5 would triumph over 3. So he sat at the back.

As soon as we were caught he counter-attacked, and not one of the other 8 had any strength left to chase. One man on his own walked away with the race!

So you live and you learn - last night the tactics worked out perfectly. It's much easier to execute a plan when you've got a teammate telling you exactly what to do!

Cheers, Andy

Bronzie

andrewgturnbull wrote:

the bit about messing up the tactics referred to the previous road race I did

Where's my reading glasses? (searches top of head) :roll:

Just goes to show that there's a hell of a lot more to winning road races than just being the strongest (well sometimes anyway).