[closed] Difference between a way and a relation route

I am interested in extracting all of the bycle routes from witihn certain coordinates. I found that it could be done like thus:

http://www.overpass-api.de/api/xapi?way[bicycle=yes][bbox=32.744,35.267,33.04,35.729]

meaning I extracted all of the ways with the tag "bicycle", within a range of coordinates.

However, I've read in the OSM wiki that bike routes are represented as relations of the type "route". Upon checking the XML database of OSM, I found ways, tagged as "bicycle", that don't even exist in any relations.

What is the right way to find bike-routes? using ways or using relations?