Tactics and strategy in bike racing comes down to predicting how a particular race event might play out, and then deploying the best plan to achieve your teams objectives. Some riders will go through years of racing without ever truly understanding the anatomy of a bike race, so lets use our magic divining rod and read some tea leaves to understand the black art of deciphering bike races. The Many Moods of RacingBike racing is perhaps one of the most dynamic sports in existence. Its a team sport, but unlike most team sports, there are no rounds, periods, time outs, penalty boxes, yellow cards or over time. Perhaps most unlike other team sports, there are more than two teams competing, sometimes as many as 20 (Imagine 20 teams competing on the field at the same time in a football game!). Also, compare it to most other types of racing. Most races are either endurance events, sprints or somewhere in between. Bike racing involves all three disciplines sometimes all on the same day. For instance, in the recent Tour of California, Levi had to blow the doors off of most of the field in a 4 minute effort but also be the strongest rider over the next 8 days. From a physiological stand point, that ability is staggering. So you might think, that will all those infinite variables, every bike race would be as unique as a snowflake. However, I think most cyclists and bike racing fans would be surprised to...
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