jakebigham

The other one you will hear a lot is "SLOWING!" it is an auditory
equivalent to a brake light.
In 4-5 there is a lot of change in velocity for a variety of
reasons: fear of cornering at speed, difficulty in judging and
anticipating the flow of the pack, difficulty in maintaining speed
at the front because people are not as fit and don't understand about
how to turn over a paceline and difficulty in maintaining an effort
at the front. Then there is just plain old nerves. All this compounds
to create a "slinky" effect. The people who are in mid pack to the
back are constantly either powering hard to stay on, or breaking hard
when their front wheel is heading into a wall of bike shorts. The
further back you are - the worse it gets. It is potentially very
dangerous. If you were ever to brake hard, the people behind you
would be in big difficulty.
You will hear some experienced racers say "never brake" - which may
work OK for them in the 1-2-3 field where things are much smoother,
but for those of us in the low CATs some certain amount of braking
will be inevitable. Do your best to limit braking to an absolute
minimum, hold your line, don't get stuck in the center. Always try to
have a "way out"
On Apr 20, 2006, at 10:18 AM, KG wrote:

> At PIR in the Cat 4/5 race about every mile everyone would yell
> "BRAKE" and some form of chaos would ensue. Is this typical of
> most races or just new riders not pacing properly? I feathered my
> brake once when I knew no one was behind me and the guy next to me
> yelld, "BRAKE".
>
> Of-course eventually there was a wreck from an overlapped wheel so
> maybe the yell is the lesser of two evils?
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