Roll on the start of the road racing
season, when the peloton once again hits the road.
I penned the
following for the Box Hill Association Video celebrating the 2012 London Olympic
Road Races which made the Surrey Hills famous. They had asked my why do
competitors ride in a big bunch!
The narrator
read it like a poem.
The huge mass of riders swept by in a
moment, a blur of bodies entwined with bikes in a riot of colour.
The whirr of gears.
In the wake of the express, dust and paper is
set dancing over our heads, the turbulent air whipping the hair across our
eyes.
That was the bunch, or peloton -
French for platoon - literally a large body of soldiers. In cycle road racing
the term peloton describes the epi-centre of the race.
A tail wind will see it bowling along
at 30s, a headwind, much slower.
Team tactics will dictate the pace, set the
odds for those weighing up their chances of escape.
But the dynamics are such that a
rider must judge his effort to perfection if he or she is to succeed in getting
clear.
Why?
Air resistance - the bain of all
cyclists’ lives.
It materialises once you top 15mph
and only gets worse the faster you go.
An invisible force through which a
bunch will punch a bigger hole than a single rider, and move faster as riders
at the front relay each other in a constantly moving chain to share this work.
The cagey ones, or the protected team
leaders, take shelter in the wheels, saving 20 per cent more energy than those
taking the brunt of it.
The benefit disappears on steep climbs, when
the gradient, not air resistance, becomes the problem.
Then the peloton may fragment into
smaller groups.
You must constantly move up to stand
still, so to speak, because others will be striving for that top 20 place, too,
moving past, sending you backwards.
The sprinters teams will often drive
the peloton at speed, to discourage attacks, to keep the race together, to favour
their sprinters.
Others may want to break it up, those
who favour contesting the finish from a smaller group.
So within the mass that is the
peloton there is a constant state of agitated motion.
If a break does get clear, teams not
represented will set a tempo to keep
them in reach.
And gamble on rushing them nearer the
finish. However, teammates of those in
the escape will attempt to disrupt the chase, soft pedalling in the line to
slow it down.
As the peloton accelerates and is
strung into one thin, long, snaking line, riders often struggle to hold the
wheel in front.
Lose that wheel and a rider will be
gone, blown away “out of the back” as the saying goes, as the peloton speeds on
its unrelenting way.
Allez
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