The solo effort vs. the pack dynamic

I was chatting with a friend the other day and was telling him about how my weekend at the Methow Valley Tour had gone. I told him I'd had a good time trial but had been caught up in the crash in the road race and was therefore a little disappointed that I didn't get to find out how well I might have done without the crash. He replied, "That's why I like time trials, you're not relying on others to affect or not affect your chances." We talked a little more and it seemed that it wasn't only that he didn't like the idea of having his chances ruined by someone else's mistake, but he actually didn't enjoy figuring out the teamwork and tactics of the group.

It got me to thinking about what I enjoy in my racing. I enjoy time trialling, but largely because I'm pretty good at it and being a bike "geek", I enjoy all the specialized equipment and choices. Road racing is really what I enjoy though and for all those reasons that my friend didn't. I love trying to work and ride as a team. As a Cat 4, you don't see much of it and it's always rewarding when a few riders can manage to do it right and work together and achieve a good result. The tactical choices of racing in a group are a lot of fun to me as well. There is always that balance of watching out for yourself by conserving your energy vs. sharing in the work of the group which will benefit others while hoping that it will benefit yourself as well.

Time trialling is by definition a solitary pursuit. Even if you have friends or teammates at a given race, your race experience is unique to you. In a road race, there is a shared experience and a social element that is missing from the time trial. If something happens in a road race, or even outside of the race along the roadside, you and your teammates will all have a slightly different observation of it that will fuel the post-race discussions and memories. In a TT, you and your teammates may be many minutes apart on the road and other than the course characteristics or conditions, if you experience something unique or memorable during the ride, its yours alone and it won't mean much to your teammates who didn't experience it.

Because of the social element and shared experience of road racing, if I had to choose only one, I'd choose the pack dynamic over the solo effort.