Could you talk a bit about pacing strategies and how to execute them the right way?

Question

Could you talk a bit about  pacing strategies and how to execute them the right way?

Nino Schurter · Answer

Actually, that's a good question, especially for tomorrow's Cape Epic stage, first stage prologue. It's always if you can ride the highest pace over the entire distance, you'll always be faster than if you go on some points just a bit faster and then slower, faster. So you need to try to find the highest possible pace over the entire distance. That's now what we are trying also for tomorrow's prologue stage. So we know the route. We know the distance. We know about how long it's going to be. How long we are on those three climbs that we are going to see tomorrow. And from our interval trainings and all our training, we know exactly how long we can stay at a certain Power Zone. So we use a power meter in our bag. So that's how we pace ourselves, actually, off the power if you know how long you're going to try to be fast, and you have a good power meter, you can actually pace you quite well. It is sometimes challenging on the mountain bike, when there is a lot of turns, and it's bumpy, and you never can really go as hard as if you go on the tarmac. So you need to keep that in mind. But if you know what your threshold is, if you want to be at your best over an hour, just try to ride on your threshold, and you will be the fastest. If you go too fast at the beginning, you will slow down towards the end and it will for sure be slower. And if you can hold it all the way to the end, your threshold will be higher than you were thinking. So that's the challenge. You need to find out how fit you are and then have a good power meter. And then you will find out quite soon what's your best pacing strategy. Have a good one, maybe you are going to watch the Cape Epic tomorrow and see if we had a good pacing or not.

Barry Anderson · Answer

There's a lot that goes into pacing from a scientific standpoint. It depends about the event and the athlete. And whether or not they have done their homework, with regards to their calorie expenditure, their lactate combustion, and things like that. If you've done your homework, you can very accurately. Pace yourself over any distance and know how many calories you need to take in at what level and when you need to do. So the science is right there. Are the question for an individual athlete is, have you done the homework? And do you have the right coach and the right metabolic testing to let you know about how your pacing should go.

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"Could you talk a bit about pacing strategies and how to execute them the right way?"