Is it faster to do the wheel with the guys finishing their pulls and sliding over and shutting it down, or should they be continuing to stay on the gas when they pull over. I’m a bit confused because I’ve received conflicting advice from various guys. My impression is that the acceleration of the line moving up is what adds speed to the bunch and that if guys don’t shut it down after they pull off it can be difficult for the guy coming to the front to actually get far enough up to be able to pull over. Especially in a group of varied skills when you are trying to keep everyone in.
Had some experiences the other day where the line moving up would grind to a halt or get really surgey because guys are struggling to smoothly come to the front and pull over, a mix of the difficulty of the ride and from guys not shutting it down enough in the line that is pulling off.
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You don’t shut it down, but you don’t stay full gas either.
When you move over, you’re still exposed to the wind, and shutting it down too fast you go backwards pretty quickly, then have to accelerate hard to latch back on at the end of the line.
Move over, drop the effort enough that you can see the next guy moving up beside you, how much you let off will depend on how fast you are going.
Once you latch onto the back, that’s when the proper “rest” starts.
The person taking over, should be able to increase power only enough to maintain speed. Should never actually accelerate.
Eg if you are doing 45 km/h, and the rider behind you is doing 45, once you move over they should not surge to like 48 to pass you then slow back down, they should maintain speed, as you decelerate to like 40 to go backwards relative to them.
The most important things are to not accelerate when you take over the front, but maintain speed, and then let off a bit when you come off, but not so much as it results in you having to accelerate hard to latch back on at the end.
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The rider pulling off should soft-pedal briefly to allow the next rider to overtake them.
If they don’t soft pedal, the pace has to continuously go up and which leads to fewer riders pulling as they blow up….and the net result is a slower pace overall.
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I really get the feeling that there is a difference between the wheel and a rotating double paceline that guys are not getting, the difference being that the wheel relies on maintaining the forward movement of the line of advancing riders, having any kind of delay between the rider reaching the front and subsequently moving over causes the constant speed of the moving line to change and introduces acceleration which the requires an increase in force somewhere in the advancing line.
So if you have guys pulling to the front and then taking 2-3 seconds to get up and over because the guy is not letting off as you say, that is bad, much much worse than having a gap. You don’t want to trap the advancing riders on the front at all, imo. Sometimes it comes up like okay guys are shutting it down too fast and going backwards well before the next guy is pulling off, but that is generally happening because the guy isn’t trying to pull off quickly he is thinking pull on the front instead of roll like a wheel… because if there is nobody on your right as you reach the front then it should be very easy to pull off quickly.
Idk man I ride with guys that aren’t really breakaway specialists so they get all antsy when there are gaps but the group is doing 46km/h and they have no complaints when there are no gaps but we are going 39km/h , I’m the opposite personally if we aren’t riding faster than the peloton then what is the point.