• Pacing is easy to forget when we\’re out on the bike. How tempting  it is to start out blazing fast! But if the ride is to be long, or if it\’s a race, taking off like a missile isn\’t necessarily wise.

On the other hand, some days we feel sluggish;  slow as a snail; like molasses in January.

We hope we won\’t feel like that on the day of an important event; but pacing in cycling events is very important. Cutting Edge Cycling includes a discussion of this (Chapter 6).

To complicate matters, there\’s more than one manner of pacing. Even pacing the entire time? Negative split? And so on. As I understand the text, things to take into consideration are: How long will I be riding? Just a few minutes, or several hours? What distance will I be riding? What\’s the best warm-up for me for this type of event? What are the course conditions? And so on.

I\’m certain that a lot of subtleties are involved, things that can be learned only through years of experience. Some of them, I\’ll bet, are the kind of thing that suddenly dawns on you, and you wonder why you never \”got it\” before.

When I go on a weekend long ride, I try to keep to an even pace. It annoys me that I\’m still — STILL — not as fast as I\’d like to be, but when I want to get in 30, 40, or even 50 miles, it\’s not a good time for \”force\” intervals, or trying to jam it up to 20 mph. I don\’t need to \”blow up\” when I\’m far from home. Proper pacing will help to prevent such a disaster.