I'am a few months into my career and I'm wondering, what is the ideal way to ride in mountain stages. Do you guys protect your leader and accelerate with him? To you form a Sky-like train with follow or do you guys just stay in the pelotin with the "stay in place"-command as long as possible?
What I normally do (and not saying it is necessarily the best way) is that if I have the proper riders (my experience is that they should be at least 75 in MO), I do that. The train contains of 3-4 riders where the first rider begin to ride at effort 80 at around 12-10 km left. When his yellow bar is done the next rider takes over with a little higher effort, something like 85.
If I don't have proper riders, I have riders protect the leader as long a possible and then until around 5 km I just make sure that no favorites attack and then do the effort at 85.
having never played the strongest team, my tactics basicly consist of protecting the leader during mountain stages with my second best climber from the point where it really matters (before that, just let the most important helper rest in the peloton, of even give him protection).
I always ride solo effort on a climb. that way you avoind unnessecary and abrubt accelerations which burn away half your red bar, and take a good chunk of yellow bar. A solo effort also makes it easier for your helper to protect your leader. continue to ride solo effort at around the same pace as the peloton untill you think its time to strike, and then up the case with your leader. You will burn your helper pretty quickly, but the competition who has to do a sudden acceleration will also suffer. as soon as your leader is with his nose in the wind, either keep on going at the same pace, or attack really short to get that 6-10 seconds gap that the competition will have to work real hard on to close it. a lot of them will blow up during that effort.
Tha_Reaper wrote:
I always ride solo effort on a climb. that way you avoind unnessecary and abrubt accelerations which burn away half your red bar, and take a good chunk of yellow bar. A solo effort also makes it easier for your helper to protect your leader. continue to ride solo effort at around the same pace as the peloton untill you think its time to strike, and then up the case with your leader. You will burn your helper pretty quickly, but the competition who has to do a sudden acceleration will also suffer.
This is, what I have been doing too. I was just wondering, if riding solo might burn more energy than staying in place in the pack. As in theory more riders in the pack may give you a bigger wind shield than just one protecting teammate.
Is there any statistic for energy burn differenting between
- staying in pack
- riding solo with protection
- riding in a train
One thing is sure, holding position is the worst thing you can do ( not even experimented with it ). You always get stuck behind other riders, and sometimes you just drift off the back ( even if his max efford is high enough to keep in front ) and if you hold position with efford 99, the pace will always fluctuate and you'll go in full sprint ( red bar ) one moment and other his heart rate is 140. So thats pretty bad.
Hold position is only a decent option in the begin/middle of the race when the pace is low and you don't want to micromanage everything.
Riding on effort is a good option to keep in front of the peleton or to pace yourself to the end of a race ( AI has a habbit to attack on a mountain finish and be empty last 500m orso ). So you don't react to the attack ( or you burn yaself ) and just keep the effort to the finish ( and you will recatch them ). Riding on effort is a killer for teammates ( even good ones ) when they are protecting him. As riding at 85 will put the teammate into the red bar rather quickly. Making his use kinda low.
So Effort is a good way to keep in the front when you don't have teammates ( or just want to keep position ) or in the absolute final of a stage ( last mountain ).
Riding in a train ( Sky-train ) is actually the best option, but ONLY when you ride on front and keep in the front. If you have some good teammates you need to put him on high effort and just let them ride high and empty them one by one. This way you can do some high damage to the AI riders and keep ya leader with some energy left.
Note that a train is useless when you are not on front of the peleton. Riders on the back of the train ( so ya leader or best domestique ) will get stuck behind other riders and sprint ( again red bar ) back to their position, losing alot of energy.
This is also a reason to nu make a train to long, 3-4 riders is plenty, if you have a longer train, you leader will get stuck again.
mbtail wrote:
Riding in a train ( Sky-train ) is actually the best option, but ONLY when you ride on front and keep in the front. If you have some good teammates you need to put him on high effort and just let them ride high and empty them one by one. This way you can do some high damage to the AI riders and keep ya leader with some energy left.
Note that a train is useless when you are not on front of the peleton. Riders on the back of the train ( so ya leader or best domestique ) will get stuck behind other riders and sprint ( again red bar ) back to their position, losing alot of energy.
This is also a reason to nu make a train to long, 3-4 riders is plenty, if you have a longer train, you leader will get stuck again.
Yes i would subscribe to this being most effective. Long trains can potentially ruin riders. I still like to do it, when im sure that i have enough effort to sustain my team in the absolute front. I only recently discovered that you can push a rider to the left/right using numpad key 4/6. This can free them up being stuck and i can much faster assemble trains (might consume some energy due to wind).
EDIT: I would also point out that i do this generally for any terrain. In northen classics pushing a hole on cobblestones is often key to winning. Energy consumption on the flats between these sections to close these holes is brutal.
Edited by w3t_ on 08-09-2018 20:47
