Looking forward to the 2023 road racing season

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.

Best place to be is in the first 20, to avoid crashes likely further back in a tightly packed bunch.

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