Crit Racing Tactics

Winning A CritErium Cycling Race When Racing Alone, What Would Mike Tyson Do?

What is the Mike Tyson Crit Racing Strategy? In order to utilize this, you need:

terrain that you can utilize in order to isolate riders. If it’s just sweepy and fast, this won’t work
the desire to risk losing in order to win. (If you don’t have this mentality, you probably will never win anyways.)
Learn when to throw punches and when to sit back. It’s an ebb and flow. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.

Another term for this crit racing strategy could be the whack-a-mole strategy, because as one issue pops up, you squash it, ready to thwart the next attack, while also attacking. You’re basically trying to beat everyone to their move before they even know it’s their move.

When This Bike Racing Strategy Won’t This Work

as mentioned above, if it’s too fast, you’ll never be able to string it out and NOT get counterattacked.
if there are too many strong riders. I’d say 5 is a max, as you can put some on the ropes, and hopefully still cover a move going up the road. That said, you’re taking risks here, but you really have no other option unless you want to just follow moves
if there is ample time for rider’s to recover

2019 Cookeville Crit

This course is perfect for this crit racing strategy. It’s 30s uphill, 30s downhill, with 4 corners and 2 chicanes. It’s fast on the downhill but there is no hiding on the uphill. This is where we are going to try and punch people in the mouth before they jump on my back and beat the crap out of me.

Strava Link: I’d appreciate a kudos. For real.

Let’s jump into some metrics before we go over the bike race strategy.

Criterium Racing Metrics for 83kg cyclist

Day 2 of the race weekend. Day 1 can be found here.
Duration: 1h 1m 7s
Miles: 26.7
Average Power: 354W
Normalized Power: 403W
Max Watts: 1,181W
Max 5m Normalized Power: 462W
Max 20m Normalized Power: 427W
Max Heart Rate: 171bpm
Average Heart Rate: 160bpm
Work: 1,298kj
TSS: 101

Here’s the Power isolated and then the Heart Rate isolated. What do they tell you?

There usually isn’t a ton to see in a criterium cycling power file as it’s so much of on-the-gas and off-the-gas, but you can see here that we are full throttle over and over and over in the beginning with heart rate rising and falling from mid-160’s to low 170’s…that’s high for my master’s aged heart. ;-)

It does drop before a high and elongated spike midway through the race…this is the calm before the storm. The field had been whittled down to 8 or so, and I was sizing up who was left, recalling what move they usually make late in the race, and pondering HOW CAN I WIN??

Eventually the 12-laps-to-go attack was what catapulted me away from the other riders, and then its easy to see the groove that I get in: 11 x 30 second efforts at 480W with 30 seconds rest in zone 1 or 2.

Whack a mole riding, just crushing over and over again.

Criterium Bike Racing Strategy

I had just been beat up the day before in the Aaron Shafer Road Race, and quite frankly, I wasn’t sure how to play the cycling criterium. I was not feeling 100% after a really hard day on Saturday, but I decided to stick to my Mike Tyson plan even though it didn’t work the day before. The reason it didn’t work was that it was too fast, too many strong riders, and all things mentioned in the previous blog post.

Trust your process.

If you aren’t feeling amazing during your warm up, what aspect of your cycling criterium does that affect? If you can’t go over and over and over, make it fast but under 130% FTP; don’t let it be so surgey. Whittle the race down in a way to get a win.

Would people be racing to win, or racing so that I wouldn’t win?

With a cycling criterium course like this, I have an advantage with my cycling race strategy: I can use the hill as a teammate. If I crush the hill hard enough, it will eliminate half of the course where attacks can be flung. Since there are two to three turns from the highest point in elevation from the course, a rider needs to put in a really solid dig in order to get away on the downhill portion of the course.

They would also have to be a stronger bike criterium rider than myself, or one that is extremely good at going anaerobic over and over, and then recovering enough to launch a get away attack.

The chance of a group sneaking away on a counter attack seems unlikely on this bike criterium course, so I’m looking for groups of 2 or 3. THOSE ARE THE RED FLAGS. If two guys motor up the road, I need to be ready to bridge a lap or two into the attack. Preparing for that bridge means allowing the teams that missed the move to start working, and then pouncing when the time comes. Float like a butterfly…

This bike racing strategy, in effect, could fail if racers decide to race so that I don’t win (in which case they’ll stop riding if a break goes up the road even if their teammates aren’t in it (like in Aaron Shafer; so silly)) as opposed to racing to win. If that is the case, there’s not much you can do about the situation regardless of tactics.

Check out the video below to see how my bike racing strategy shook out! If you don’t like videos, keep reading below.

Criterium Bike Race - Play By Play

21:16 Fausto Crapiz and Taylor Herron attack. Definitely want to keep these two in sight!

22:27 Rolly Weaver and Andrew Crater go: THIS IS A RED FLAG!!! Two of the strongest riders in the race, and Rolly made the race winning move with Mike Olheiser the day before, only to have no one chase them down with any effort. I was getting ready to launch after this one.

25:19 Michaelee Bowes attacks

26:48 Herron attacks

27:47 Housler attacks

29 Housler attacks again

Follows Fausto moves

Crater counter move, nice!

32:38 TJ Killelea attacks,

Crater caught

33:32 group bunches

Sit in for a minute and read the race

35:30 Rolly attacks. When I catch him I can see he’s gassed a bit and I get really hopeful!

37:52 group back together

38:39 Housler attacks mic starts again

Group down to 10 riders

40:38 sneak attack on downhill, Housler to chase down Cooper and TJ

43:20 5 riders left.

See the video to see how it all plays out.

Learn More About: Criterium Training Plans

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Brendan@EVOQ.BIKE

Criterium Solo Bike Racing Tactics & Training Plan