Its not a secret that I have rarely enjoyed training. One thing that I loved about living in Sydney 15 years ago, was that I could race 5 days a week, and twice each day on the weekends. I would do one or two training rides (a real long one, and a really really hard one) and the rest was just racing. The only reason I ride my bike nowadays is to race. Whenever I race, I write some candid commentary about it. These Race reports have become increasingly popular but are often too brutal to be shared on my business website. This is an extension of those race reports.
The selling point of bike racing is meant to be that everyone has a chance to win. Not always an equal opportunity, but still an opportunity. Opportunity is born from the ability to read the race, and recruit your physical ability at the right time. Depending on the state of play in the last 5 minutes, you might be in with a chance, or have literally no chance of winning based on the decisions made by you and others up until that point. Kind of like a choose your own adventure book, there’s a variety of intersections in each race where you can make good choices, or bad ones.
One of the most crucial processes I undertake is to know (or to quickly determine) what character type each of your opposition is. Its stereotyping, but it helps you with the decision-making process during the race. I give each rider classification in 4 groups.
Once you have done your assessment on the riders around you and identified the character types, the winners more often than not will be the opportunist.
Try thinking about your local race, and categorise the riders. I bet you can think of people that meet the stereotypes, and also conclude that not all the riders do in fact offer themselves equal opportunity. Most haven’t figured out yet how to be part of the race, rather than a participant of the event.
Pay attention to the opportunists.
