Pacing yourself with a PM

[maddox]

Saturday was my first MTB race (Burger, 80k) with a PT. Given that I havent done a race since last year I thought it best to start at the back slowly and try to ride a consistent pace and hopefully push hard over the last 15k's. The first hour I passed almost no one - so really thought I was holding myself back. From hour 2 I started to pick up riders and only had a couple pass me throughout the race. So without looking at my stats I'd say I rode a fairly consistent pace. The stats however don't show that:

 

Current threshold power is 275w

Splits (by hour):

1- NP: 250 ; Avg HR: 174

2- NP: 229; Avg HR: 172

3- NP: 214 ; Avg HR: 172

4- NP: 181 ; Avg HR: 171

NP for entire race: 219

 

The question I have is - in an ideal situation what should I be using to pace myself if I was going to ride another 4 hour race? Should I be trying to hold 219 NP for the entire duration or should one expect power to dip by as much a margin as the numbers above?

 

Any advice appreciated.

 

thanks.

[rpedro]

its going to be difficult but I would like to see what the hubbers come up with. I'm new to the whole PT stuff but I think your dipping NP could be in relation to the actual route profile as well. The 1st half of the race was much harder than the second part.

[maddox]

Yes by looking at the profile the first half had the bulk of the climbing. Just interested to hear how one could or should pace oneself. I have little data to work off so this is probably the biggest problem.

[Sharkie 2]

I believe your threshold power is not right and to high....I don't know what your max HR is but riding at 250watts with a HR of 175 is quite high.

[maddox]

Hi, I'm fairly certain that my threshold is right as I've done a couple of tests over the past 2 months (the last one was up a very big well known hill - time was 54min with 280NP). My max HR is around 194 although I haven't worn a HR belt for a couple of years so my age might be catching up with me!

[Agteros]

Pretty much the same for me and the Jock.... however a few things happened

1. It took place two weeks after recovering from bronchitis

2. Cleat broke (from walking!) during stage 2

3. Stage 3 I rode with pedal and RHS shoe tied together with cable ties

 

So taking NP for stage one as 100% it changed as follows: (Percentages of 60min peak of stage 1)

Stage 1: 60 min: 100.0% Whole stage: 96.8% (of stage 1 60min peak)

Stage 2: 60min: 93.0% Whole stage: 81.3%

Stage 3: 60 min: 74.3% Whole stage: 67.3%

 

 

Bela-Bela, a VERY flat A bunch race, per 5 kms: (km 1 to 5 as 100%)

 

005km:100.0%

 

010km: 84.5% (of above)

015km: 88.7%

020km: 67.5%

025km: 70.9%

030km: 69.4%

035km: 76.6%

040km: 88.3%

045km: 80.0%

050km: 89.8%

055km: 98.5%

060km: 87.5%

065km: 89.8%

070km: 80.0%

075km: 75.5%

080km: 58.5%

085km: 75.5%

090km: 88.7%

095km: 93.6%

100km: 92.8%

101.6km: n/a

 

Peak 60mins: 87.5% (of km 1-5)

Whole race: 76.2% (of km 1-5)

 

Making sense of all these fuzzy numbers, take into account that even though negative splits, or equal splits are the goal for a lot of people, in reality it does not work like that. There is (apparently!) enough evidence to point to the fact that if you can maintain a pace, or improve on it as a race goes along, you were not going hard enough!

 

I am no expert on these things, but do believe that performance will taper off towards the end of an event...

 

The billion dollar question though, is by how much?

[usxorf]

Try pacing with shorter periods of time than an hour. As an example, if a climb is 15 min and I see 350w for too long, I'm gonna run out of steam, so I back off. It's kind of hard to keep track of averages during a race anyway, so a glance down every now and then is all I do. Ride with power, not by power, is the philosophy.

 

Do you have golden cheetah (free) or training peaks (paid)? These programs will show a chart of your ride, mapping the time with power, elevation, heart rate, etc. It can highlight when power goes above a certain value for a given duration. If you did ride too hard in the first hour, there will be lots of highlighted areas and very few during the last hour or two.

Edited July 30, 2012 by yazzo