Through and Out

markos1963

Whilst out on a club ride in the howling wind on sunday me and two others had to stop to answer natures calling(its an age thing) We said we would catch up the others. The other two suggested riding through and out to make up time . I had read about it and thought I could do it ok but I had all sorts of problems catching on to the wheel of the guy riding past. I ended up having to sprint all the time and was knackered by the time we had caught the bunch. Is it me or is there more to it than I thought?

Chip \'oyler

Through and off (it's correct term) looks easy but does need some technique to get right.

Main thing is that the person coming through to take their turn doesn't suddenly accelerate (which can happen with eager riders). Ideally the rider should come through at the same speed, and if they want to accelerate should build up speed slowly. Through and off is all about smoothness.

fuzzynavel

Chip \'oyler wrote:

Through and off (it's correct term) looks easy but does need some technique to get right.

Main thing is that the person coming through to take their turn doesn't suddenly accelerate (which can happen with eager riders).

I got told off for doing that on my first club ride....newbie mistake...ended up out on my own at one point wondering why nobody was releiving my position at the front!

boybiker

The idea is that you should only be working when you are riding up the inside, once you get on the front you ease off and let the next guy take his place in front. When you do it right you find that although it doesn't feel like you are working hard your average speed increases dramatically, last time we did it over the new forest we were averaging 28.
Doing it in a road race is even better because once you are off the front and you get 4 or more in a chain gang nobody on their own has a chance of catching you.

Tom Butcher

If there are only 3 of you you can't really ride through and off - just take turns on the front depending on how strong you are feeling and then move over and drift to the back.

Garry H

fuzzynavel wrote:

I got told off for doing that on my first club ride....newbie mistake...ended up out on my own at one point wondering why nobody was releiving my position at the front!

Snap! I felt very anxious not to seem like some unfit plodder (which I am) and as a consequence would accelate off as soon as I got to the front. Started to get the hang of it after being shouted at a couple of times.

BTW Fuzzynavel, going by your location, we probably ride with the same club.

markos1963

I thought there was more to it than I imagined. I can hang pretty well with the fast boys in the pack and can take a turn at the front from time to time, but not having gone out with the chain gang caught me out a bit. The guy I was relieving seemed to come through very quick compared to the other. When we chatted about it afterwards I was told to cut out quickly as the guy comes around me when he was about half a bike past, but that seemed a bit scarey!

fuzzynavel

Garry H wrote:

fuzzynavel wrote:

I got told off for doing that on my first club ride....newbie mistake...ended up out on my own at one point wondering why nobody was releiving my position at the front!

Snap! I felt very anxious not to seem like some unfit plodder (which I am) and as a consequence would accelate off as soon as I got to the front. Started to get the hang of it after being shouted at a couple of times.

BTW Fuzzynavel, going by your location, we probably ride with the same club.

ERC? I usually go out on Saturdays...I'm in the newbie group at the moment but will move up to the 9:40's in the spring. Missed the ride this saturday but did the route out to Gullane and back on Sunday on my own. I'm usually the loon in the shorts and trainers on the SCR 1.5...got myself some bib tights now though.

andrewgturnbull

Hi there.

Here's a guide aimed at triathletes (i.e. an idiots guide)

http://www.stirlingtri.co.uk/Cycling/Ch ... fault.aspx

BoyBiker - don't ease up until you've pulled off the front!

Don't ease up too much though. If the line coming back is significantly slower than the one going forward then you have to put in a real jump to get back onto the wheel in front when you reach the back.

Fuzzy - ask santa for some clipless pedals and stiff-soled cycling shoes - it'll make things much easier!

Cheers, Andy

markos1963

andrewgturnbull wrote:

Hi there.

Here's a guide aimed at triathletes (i.e. an idiots guide)

http://www.stirlingtri.co.uk/Cycling/Ch ... fault.aspx

BoyBiker - don't ease up until you've pulled off the front!

Don't ease up too much though. If the line coming back is significantly slower than the one going forward then you have to put in a real jump to get back onto the wheel in front when you reach the back.

Fuzzy - ask santa for some clipless pedals and stiff-soled cycling shoes - it'll make things much easier!

Cheers, Andy

Thanks for that, I can now see why we kept getting faster!

LangerDan

andrewgturnbull wrote:

BoyBiker - don't ease up until you've pulled off the front!

Now there's a lesson for life, not just for cycling.
(You'll probably go blind in the process, though)

fuzzynavel

LangerDan wrote:

andrewgturnbull wrote:

BoyBiker - don't ease up until you've pulled off the front!

Now there's a lesson for life, not just for cycling.
(You'll probably go blind in the process, though)

Just make sure you don't pull it off entirely as that could be embarrassing explaining that in A&E

fuzzynavel

andrewgturnbull wrote:

Hi there.


Fuzzy - ask santa for some clipless pedals and stiff-soled cycling shoes - it'll make things much easier!

Cheers, Andy

I know what you mean. I have been looking around but diverted funds towards altura waterproof, full length bibs, gloves and thermal baselayer. I can still ride without proper shoes and pedals but it is hard to ride when you are freezing your ass off. I'm a road riding newbie so have to accumulate stuff as I go.
I am not struggling for performance yet with flats and nike air trainers but there is a lot of room for improvement as the weight drops off and my power and fitness rise!

chriskempton

One final point for through and off/bit and bit/chaingang newbies is that when you are switching from the slower to the faster line, you need to start gradually increasing your effort in good time, or you'll risk missing the wheel and leaving a big gap that is difficult to recover. If you get this transition right, it saves a lot of energy that you'll probably need when you take your turn at the front.

shockedsoshocked

boybiker wrote:

The idea is that you should only be working when you are riding up the inside, once you get on the front you ease off and let the next guy take his place in front.

Erm, I don't know if it's just me, but it sounds like you're doing it wrong. If you have to come from the back, pedal your way to the front (past the line and into the wind) and get into position infront of the lead man you're wasting your time drafting in the first place. Plus, going balls out to get to the front then easing off once you're there sounds like a good way to cause people to sit up behind you, which inevitably leads to breaks in the line (and sometimes collisions if people aren't paying attention).

I have ridden in lines like how you describe (usually with tri-clubs, they love it for some reason) but ultimately it leads to you expending more energy than you need to. Plus if you have weaker riders in the line the effort of hauling themselves up to the front is sometimes too much, which leads to them being knackered before they've even taken their turn in the lead, which makes more work for everyone else.

It's much easier to take your turn at the front and swing off when you've reached your limit. That way you can ease off while the line passes you get back onto the back of the line with relative ease.

(I hope i've described it well enough and that i haven't completely misread your post)

boybiker

It depends which way round you go, some people swing one way and others the other way, some people go both ways.

shockedsoshocked

boybiker wrote:

It depends which way round you go, some people swing one way and others the other way, some people go both ways.

True, it's all preference. I always find it makes the whole process very confusing if you have to come from the back. You never know how long the guy at the front wants to hold that position.

aracer

Hmm - at least two different things being discussed here. Main discussion is on the double line approach where you have 2 lines continuously rotating the riders. You should have approximately equal numbers in each line, and convention in the UK is for the left line to move a bit faster than the right line. To make it as easy as possible, you really shouldn't ease off much at all when you swing from the left line to the right line (which you do as soon as you've cleared the front wheel of rider at the head of the right line) - means you don't then have to accelerate significantly when you're swapping back to the left line. Definitely don't accelerate at all significantly when the rider in front of you in the left line pulls right.

The alternative way of riding is the single line approach. Here you ride as a single line and the rider at the front does as long a turn as he feels like before swinging off to the right and then catching back on at the rear of the group. Here you shouldn't accelerate AT ALL when the rider in front pulls off until they have joined back on - at which point a very gentle acceleration is allowable if you really are stronger than the chap who's just pulled off.

If you check the TdF team time trials, all the fastest teams now seem to use the second approach, which I'd suggest is as good evidence as any that it's faster for up to 9 riders. For 3 riders, or even 4 I'd suggest it's the only reasonable approach.

There is a 3rd method, commonly seen being used in Sportives. Here the rider on the front keeps going and going, gradually getting a bit slower until somebody from behind decides they'll take over at which point they sprint to the front, usually requiring everybody else to accelerate to get on. Even if done "properly" with the rider coming through gently I'd suggest this isn't a good way to do things - you should pull off as soon as you start slowing down a bit. Unfortunately in my experience it's what seems to predominate even if I make an attempt to start type 2 by pulling off the front when I've done my turn.

Chip \'oyler

boybiker wrote:

It depends which way round you go, some people swing one way and others the other way, some people go both ways.

The movement of lines and swinging off direction depends on the wind direction.

andrewgturnbull

aracer wrote:

Hmm - at least two different things being discussed here. Main discussion is on the double line approach where you have 2 lines continuously rotating the riders. You should have approximately equal numbers in each line, and convention in the UK is for the left line to move a bit faster than the right line. To make it as easy as possible, you really shouldn't ease off much at all when you swing from the left line to the right line (which you do as soon as you've cleared the front wheel of rider at the head of the right line) - means you don't then have to accelerate significantly when you're swapping back to the left line. Definitely don't accelerate at all significantly when the rider in front of you in the left line pulls right.

The alternative way of riding is the single line approach. Here you ride as a single line and the rider at the front does as long a turn as he feels like before swinging off to the right and then catching back on at the rear of the group. Here you shouldn't accelerate AT ALL when the rider in front pulls off until they have joined back on - at which point a very gentle acceleration is allowable if you really are stronger than the chap who's just pulled off.

If you check the TdF team time trials, all the fastest teams now seem to use the second approach, which I'd suggest is as good evidence as any that it's faster for up to 9 riders. For 3 riders, or even 4 I'd suggest it's the only reasonable approach.

Hi there.

Strangely all the groups I've ever ridden with have the right hand line moving faster than the left! We only swap round if theres a strong crosswind, in which case the faster line goes on the sheltered side.

Single lines are great for team time trials with 4 riders, or larger groups with mixed ability. That way the stronger riders can do longer turns, the weaker riders do shorter ones - or even pull over as soon as they get to the front, which gives them some rest but without breaking the group up.

I had thought that the double-line approach was faster with 9 riders though? USPS/Discovery always used the double line approach, and I seem to remember a lot of teams (esp CSC) copied this approach. Looking at photos from this year's TTT the trend does seem to have gone back to single lines though.



Cheers, Andy

JJDLD

Is it just me, or can anybody else hear Finbar Saunders fnarr-fnarring while they read this?!

JJ

eh

Surely in the UK typically you would pull off to the left when road riding (training), otherwise you are pulling out blind into the traffic which is not a smart idea. All UK clubs I've ridden with use this approach.

Road races are a slightly different situation in which case wind direction may alter which side you more too.

Tracks typically run anti-clockwise so then you pull to the right.

(Far easier to do in practise than write the above!!)

aracer

andrewgturnbull wrote:

I had thought that the double-line approach was faster with 9 riders though? USPS/Discovery always used the double line approach, and I seem to remember a lot of teams (esp CSC) copied this approach.

Are you sure? I was basing my comments on what I remembered USPS/Discovery doing - my recollection is that CSC went from a double line to a single to copy them rather than the other way round.

Here's a piccy from the 2005 TdF of Discovery in a single line: http://cyclingnews.com/photos/2005/tour ... CHANNEL220 and here's one from 2003: http://cyclingnews.com/tour.php?id=phot ... stage4/FS1

Meanwhile here's CSC in 2003 in a double line: http://cyclingnews.com/tour.php?id=phot ... ge4/JD/JD3 and in 2005 in a single line: http://cyclingnews.com/photos/2005/tour05/?id=tour054/6 and 2006: http://cyclingnews.com/photos/2006/giro ... 065/fs_003

...and the winning teams in this year's Grand Tour TTTs.
http://cyclingnews.com/photos/2008/giro ... 824_1_full
http://cyclingnews.com/photos/2008/vuel ... a081/fs003

andrewgturnbull

aracer wrote:

andrewgturnbull wrote:

I had thought that the double-line approach was faster with 9 riders though? USPS/Discovery always used the double line approach, and I seem to remember a lot of teams (esp CSC) copied this approach.

Are you sure? I was basing my comments on what I remembered USPS/Discovery doing - my recollection is that CSC went from a double line to a single to copy them rather than the other way round.

Hi there.

The short answer is I'm not sure! I remember a bit of chat about the double-line being a more efficient way of doing things when they reintroduced the TTT, but things seem to have definately come back around in favour of the single line again. Possibly as this formation evens out the differences in rider's abilities.

EIther way, I'll see your 2003 and raise you a 2001 double line:



Cheers, Andy

andrewgturnbull

Don't know why that img didn't work... Maybe the url is too long?

Link here:

http://cache.gettyimages.com/xc/590522. ... B75F48EF45