Part 2

A Q&A with Tanner Ward.

By Bryce Ward |  Photography by Kai Caddy

Tanner Ward is a professional cyclist riding for the L39ION of Los Angeles. He lives in Little Rock and specializes in road races, criteriums and gravel racing. In the second part of this Q&A, he shares tips for becoming a better racer.

What is the secret to becoming a better bike racer?
Having a mentor who has racing experience helps a lot. I was fortunate in having someone who helped me when I first got into racing; he helped me understand race tactics, how a race unfolds, and that it’s not always the strongest person that wins. There are smart moves and there are bad moves. A lot of calculated risk is involved. But trying different things in a race is key.

Everyone will eventually, throughout their cycling career, figure out what their strengths and weaknesses are. But that doesn’t mean you should pigeonhole yourself. Say you’re a sprinter and you never want to touch the wind, and you just always wait for a field sprint; I would caution any cyclist to not fall into the trap of only racing one way. Put yourself out there a little bit, try to get in a breakaway, and vice versa. If you’re a breakaway rider and everyone knows that’s your strength, someone will get on your wheel if they’re smart and they will follow you and they’ll use you as a workhorse because they know you’re strong. So that sort of rider has to understand how best to use that characteristic.

There’s a handful of cyclists that are heads and shoulders above everybody else in the race. In the world tour you look at guys like Tadej Pogacăr and Mathieu Van Der Poel — those two guys can toy with everybody and attack 60K out, but pretty much everybody else has to figure out a way to try to win that’s different than what they might want to do.

“I would say the biggest thing with road racing — and this also applies to crit racing — is positioning.

You don’t want to be on the very front if you can avoid it.”

What are some general tips you would give for road racing specifically?
I would say the biggest thing with road racing — and this also applies to crit racing — is positioning. You don’t want to be on the very front if you can avoid it. You don’t want to be at the very back, necessarily, unless it’s a super small field, but you want to be in a position that allows you to be able to react to anything but still get a draft. Understanding where your competitors are in the peloton, especially the strong riders, is key. Typically, positioning yourself behind them is best so you can see if they’re attacking or not.

What are some tips unique to criterium racing?
One of the biggest things for beginner crit racers especially would be understanding that sometimes it’s OK if your wheel overlaps with another rider’s. A lot of riders are taught not to wheel overlap, that it’s a way to have an accident, but in crit racing it happens, and it happens a lot.

If it’s a left-hand turn, for example, and your front wheel overlaps with the rider in front of you but you’re on the outside of their rear wheel, you can turn when they turn, and if they push it wide, you have to push it wide. If you’re overlapping, the person on the inside has control of where you go. But on the flip side, say it’s the same thing, a left-hand turn, but you’re on the inside and someone’s hitting the apex correctly — ideally, you would kind of float back and hit the apex with them, but if you’re overlapping, you’re going to get pinched going into that corner. You don’t want to “dive bomb” the corner, but you also don’t want to have to slam on the brakes. So it’s a matter of backing into it as the corner’s coming up so you don’t kill your momentum.

But basically, the biggest thing is understanding that people positioned in front of you dictate where you go, and you need to be able to predict how others are going to ride so you can keep your momentum and get into a sort of flow state. Everyone has an anaerobic battery. Each time you tap into it, you don’t really get it back. In a criterium, it’s really important to avoid those spikes and surges any chance you can, that way you have more in the tank when it matters most.

“For the more experienced gravel racer: fueling. Gravel is the biggest kilojoule burning event you can do so fueling and training the gut is crucial.”

Any tips for gravel racing?
For beginners, I would say pacing, trying to flatline your effort and make it as smooth as possible — for longer races especially, that’s going to give them the best experience and help prevent the hunger bonk from kicking in. Once you get to a certain point, say it’s a five-hour event and you’re getting past that three-and-a-half-hour mark — if you’re feeling good, start to squeeze it out a little bit, but definitely avoid riding too hard too soon.

And then for the more experienced gravel racer: fueling. Gravel is the biggest kilojoule burning event you can do, so fueling and training the gut is crucial, and training time-in-zone — improving the amount of time you can spend at tempo power is going to serve most folks the best.

What are some strategies for getting into a promising breakaway? And what makes a breakaway successful?
To get into a promising breakaway, you have to look at the course, for sure. You have to see if it’s a breakaway-type of course or not. And what makes a breakaway course varies. It could be a flat course and on paper it doesn’t seem like it suits a breakaway, but if it’s windy, that might change. If it’s a hilly course that’s punchy, it’s going to lend itself more towards a breakaway because everyone’s doing the same work on the hills. The faster the race, the harder it is for a breakaway to stay away.

After that, I would say knowing your field, knowing who’s in the race, being aware of anybody that is good at getting in breakaways, good at making them stick, but also knowing other people are going to know that, too. Be flexible with your race strategy and remember that racing is dynamic; everyone (for the most part) is making calculated decisions in real time.

And then, catching people by surprise, too. I remember doing the Crosswinds race one year when I was new to the 1/2/3 field, and I knew Hunter East was a fast sprinter, and on lap one he attacked solo and I was so confused. I don’t recall if it worked — I think some guys bridged up to him — but it caught everyone by surprise. So use the element of surprise to your advantage, too, just to throw a wrench into things sometimes. It may work, it may not.

For a breakaway to stick, it depends on the makeup of who’s in it and the teams that are present. Depending on the category, how well teams are working together will impact whether a breakaway has a good chance of sticking. The other thing is the riders have to work efficiently together. Each person in the group needs to understand how to ride as efficiently as possible. If you as a rider know that the wind is coming from the right and the rotation needs to be going clockwise, but the group is going counterclockwise for whatever reason, you have to speak up and get the group to roll the proper way into a crosswind. Coordination and efficiency will either make a breakaway or kill it. It has to be smooth. If there are crazy surges, it’s not going to work.

If you’re the one surging, don’t do it. If someone else is doing it, politely tell them not to do it. Maybe suggest that they take longer turns on the front. If you’re a super strong rider in the break and you really want it to stick, you can do the bulk of the work or you can do the opposite and bank on someone else doing it. You can also try to trick the other riders into thinking that you’re hurting and for them to think they have a better chance of winning. A breakaway is like a smaller chess game within the bigger chess game of the race.

“Coordination and efficiency will either make a breakaway or kill it. It has to be smooth. If there are crazy surges, it’s not going to work.”

A lot of racers, especially in crits, struggle to move up in a peloton, and even if they can move up, they struggle holding their position. What are some practical tips for navigating a peloton and holding a good position?
So, it’s different across categories. What comes to mind initially is momentum. If you’re not moving forward, you’re moving backwards. At the top level, everyone wants to be in the first quarter of the peloton at least, and you can either carry your momentum with power or finesse.

As far as getting there, sometimes you have to rely on power if you’re too far back. Sometimes you have to burn a match and know it’s worth it to get into a better position. If you don’t want to burn that match, you have to do it through finesse. You have to understand the course. You have to know where it opens up, where you can make up the most amount of positions while spending the least amount of energy. The most efficient way through a peloton is often through the middle; if you can learn how to do that, then that’s huge.

What kind of mindset do you try to get into before a race? Do you prefer going into it calm or amped up?
This is very individual, but for me personally, I try to go in as relaxed as possible, and what allows me to do that is if it’s a race I’ve done before and I know the course super well, then I can go in relaxed. If it’s a first-time race, then I make sure I’ve done some homework, and if possible, I try to pre-ride the course.

A lot of the top crit racers in the country will pre-ride the course, both on the course but even on the sidewalk, and analyze every corner, analyze the inside line, analyze the outside line, find where there’s cracks in the road, and check the gutters. It’s different in every city. Some gutters you can ride in, some you can’t. Course recon is super important. If you can find a YouTube video, do that, but also check it out the day before. Then get into whatever routine helps bring you the race-day focus you need. I like going into a race calm, but I know some folks like to be amped up on caffeine.