Good Pacing Starts With Holding Back
By Ric Stern
We all know pacing is important, but it’s more important than you think it is — and I include myself in that. Whether you’re training for an ultra or even a 4 km TT, there’s one universal truth: the fastest way to ride slowly is to start too fast.
Back when I was at uni, we looked at pacing strategies — fast starts/slowing down, even pacing, and starting slow and building into it. The threshold for where pacing matters is about 60 to 70 seconds, and once your event goes past that duration, then some sort of even pacing, or starting slow and building into it, is the way forward. For any event that is longer than about 70 seconds (which for nearly all cycling events it is, unless you’re doing a 1 km TT, which I strongly suspect not many of us here are doing!).
A while back, one of the athletes I used to coach — let’s call him Graham, because that was his name — told me he was going to the States for a while for work and would be doing a group ride while he was out there. He gave me a rundown of what some of the other riders were like and that, on the group ride, there was a long climb they went up. He asked me what I thought he could sustain over the climb and the rest of the group ride, so I went away and calculated his limits. When I sent him the numbers, he thought, “there’s no way I’ll stay with the group” with such “low” numbers. I told him to stick with it and let me know what happened.
On the group ride, he was with the group until the climb and, as it started and he maintained his power, he was spat out. But he carried on, and over the course of the climb he continued at the power I suggested and, as it went on, he started pegging the others back. By the top, he was in the lead group. That’s one of the problems with good pacing: at the start, the correct number often feels too low. Embarrassingly low. In fact, I’ve also used the expression, “you should start easy enough to be able to do your knitting at the same time.”
This concept has worked with others that I’ve coached, be it over hills, or over entire routes. When I worked with Jeff Jones on his 12-hour TT record, I made significant efforts to explain that starting too hard was the key to failure and even though he felt that the start was super easy, it actually wasn’t, as he maintained an evenish pace throughout. Jeff resisted the temptation to start too hard.
At one point I was the track endurance coach for a team, and there were multiple lessons we’d go through while coaching the 4 km team pursuit (an event that takes around four minutes). Lesson 1: Don’t start too hard. Lesson 2: Don’t start too hard. Lesson 3: Don’t start too hard.
Once we start an event too hard, especially if it involves going above FTP or critical power (CP) or some sort of threshold, it can feel easy at the beginning, but essentially it’s like the turbo injection on your car coming on and you start chewing through gas, or in our case chewing through muscle and liver glycogen at a much faster rate.
Even when you look at ultra events that last multiple hours, days, or weeks, even riding at low intensity, the energy is not just supplied via fat oxidation — even low-intensity work still requires you to expend carbohydrates, and thus you have to spare them as much as possible (even if you can refill them with gels, drinks, and other carbs).
Of course, pacing your effort is only half the battle; the other part of pacing is your mind. Learning to have a positive mindset is crucial as the distance wears on. It’s easy to fall into the black periods, as Jeff describes: “what’s the point, I’m never going to finish, I’m going to blow up.” Everyone goes through mental distress in ultra events. It’s like an invisible force starts feeding you negative thoughts so that you quit: “it’s too hard,” “just go home,” “why are you doing this; what’s the point?” The blackness can be overwhelming and you have to learn to push through it (by the way, being hungry and running low on carbs can make it come on quicker).
When I rode my first 12-hour TT (the first of three I did, the result of a stupid drunken dare at a Christmas party one year), I hit a dark patch maybe eight or nine hours in. I hadn’t seen another rider for a while and started to think I’d gone off course. “You’ve gone wrong” became this massive noise in my head, and in the end I started to cry — but I just managed to push through and keep going. Maybe an hour later I saw another racer, and the negative thoughts and the blackness eased and disappeared. Unfortunately the pain in my legs didn’t, but you can’t have everything.
Long-distance riding, whether it’s an ultra or just a genuinely long ride, pushes you to the extremes, but good nutrition, good pacing, and a strong mindset help you to push on and keep going. If you want your training built around your actual fitness, goals, and available time, MAP: The Build gives you a personalized four-week training plan for £25 (about $34) — whether you’re preparing for an ultra, a long sportive, or something much shorter.
Have a training question for Ric?
Ric Stern has spent decades answering riders’ training questions and has coached cyclists since 1997, from club racers to Paralympic medallists and Tour de France professionals. Cardiovascular fitness, strength training, VO2 max, race tactics, nutrition, or whatever is keeping you from a stronger season: ask away. We publish questions using your first name and last initial only.
Ric Stern is founder of CycleCoach and has coached athletes to World Championship gold, Commonwealth medals, and Paralympic podiums across 29 years.
