1. Warm Up
If you are keen on going from the gun and fighting for the early breakaway, you need to make sure you are properly warmed up so as not to shock your body's systems and muscles. A good idea is to do a good activation on the turbo or on the road before the start.
This will ensure that your body will be ready to go full gas early in the race.
The purpose of a warm-up is to increase blood flow, increase muscles activation and stimulate the neural system.
A good warm-up exercise that I usually reccomend to do is the following:
· 5' ZONE 1 (light spin the legs)
· 8/10' progressive to ZONE 5 (2' ZONE 1 - 3' ZONE 2 - 3' ZONE 3 - 1' ZONE 4 - 1' ZONE 5)
· 2' ZONE 1
· 2' including 3x6 seconds accelerations to activate (with a light gear)
· 3' ZONE 1 (light and easy)
2. Follow the right moves
Be relaxed, don't attack too often and follow the right moves, as you can't be in every single attack. Try to be in a move and if it doesn't work, then recover a little before trying again. Paying attention to what is happening in the race and staying focused is important. You have to feel the mood of the bunch, and base when you attack off of this. Being able to feel this can be improved with more racing.
3. Pick the right moment
The break will often go after or during when it's the hardest. Finding the right moment is everything when trying to get into the break.
Look and wait for moments where the bunch might hesitate, going into corners, going from wide to skinny roads, on a windy section or anything that might catch people by surprise.
In this same sense, sometimes if there is a climb or feature that everyone is fixated on making it up or past, or attacking up, the break won't go because everyone expects it to go at that spot, and it will go after the climb or feature because people will relax once they make it over.
4. Cooperation
Getting the right composition of teams in the breakaway is key, you can even ask a member of a rival team to keep on your wheel when you attack to ensure that they are represented and don't chase. Cooperation with rivals can begin before you even make it in the move!
