5 Things you have to know about endurance pacing.

We’ve all been there, whether its been months of training or a last minute entry, you get to the start line, the nerves kick in and all of a sudden your pacing plan goes out of the window… If there was a pacing plan to begin with that is.

When we look at elite endurance athletes, the pacing people use at different points of a race can be influenced by many factors. An athletes natural strengths, their main challengers and how to ‘break’ them, the team they have around them both on the road and supporting their efforts as a crew.

Many of these factors are unlikely to come into play until you are truly elite. However, that does not mean that strategy should go out of the window entirely.

In our experience, even the most experienced athletes can get sucked in to playing someone elses ‘game’, getting overly excited and not having the experience and/or planning to adapt pacing to changing conditions.

Here we have outlined 5 key areas you should focus on to make sure you have your race plan dialled in, whether you are pushing for a podium or just hoping to get though your first event in one piece.

5 Things to consider with your pacing strategy.

Knowing your limits.

The problem: By limits what we are referring to here is your physiological thresholds. This is more than just understanding heart rate, power or effort zones. This is about understanding how you need to fuel, how fuel effects you and your digestive system at different effort levels and how fatigue is likely to manifest itself at different points along the way.

For example, the effort required to maintain a certain pace/power one hour into a race is going to be very different at 4 or 5 hours in. One mistake people make especially on very long distance endurance events is using shorter distances to set paces for their longer distances.

The Solution: Proper performance testing can give detailed insight not just into thresholds but also fuel usage at different levels of effort to drive proper nutrition strategies.

These should also be trialled and fine tuned, as well as testing pacing across distances that are comparable to the event itself. When you look at elite athletes in most endurance sports they are incredibly consistent with their pace (unless there are breakaways, changes in terrain, we get into this below) and often run negative splits, being faster in the second half of the race.

This should point you in the direction of the attitude ‘you are better having it than looking for it’. In some events, such as ultramarathons it is highly unlikely that as distances push above 50 miles that unless you are truly elite, that you are going to run a negative split as an amateur athlete.

However, this doesn’t mean ‘yoloing’ the first half of the race… We have seen people repeatedly set off for their first ultramarathon at half-marathon pace, not respecting the distance or conditions. That’s not to say that they haven’t finished, but only being able to walk most of the time after the initial effort, is demoralising.

Our simple rule; if you have the thought that there is any chance you are going too fast, any doubt at all, you are going too fast!

Understanding the conditions.

The Problem: Not thinking that the terrain or weather conditions will have an impact.

We do our training through the winter, it’s chilly and we have no issues with over heating or dehydration. Then out of nowhere comes race day and it 30 degrees plus, humid and blazing sunshine and the course has no shade.

This highlights a couple of things for our athletes. Firstly, if training through winter for races in warmer conditions then it is important to try to train in conditions that replicate the heat, such as indoor treadmill sessions or wrapping up seriously warm.

Secondly, people get caught ‘chasing their watch’, trying to maintain performance when conditions do not replicate what they have trained or tested in. This also applies to conditions under foot, changes in elevation and the rate of ascent and desent. A course can look flat and easy on a map, but through in some mud, ice, uneven rocky surfaces, overgrown trails (for the ultra runners outthere) and all of a sudden expectation and reality are very different.

The Solution: There are a few things we can do to make sure we aren’t taken by surprise. One of the main things we look for when testing our athletes is not just typical threshold values, but also where possible how we can replicate race conditions and most importantly tune the athlete to perceived effort levels.

Dialling in ‘perception pace’ can be more important than understanding actual pace. When conditions are difficult, focusing on this measure of effort will help you stop falling off a performance cliff edge. It might mean that you miss your ‘on paper’ goal time but it will mean you are more likely to hit your best possible time!

Experience in general (assuming we choose to learn from them and not be in denial) and by trying to do some training on the event course is a huge help in adjusting pace to the real world environment. Helping to create a realistic race plan and not feeling frustrated at destroying yourself whilst watching expectations turn to dust!

Having a race plan.

The Problem: Although understanding pace is important, undertstanding the unique demands of a course and the local environment, seasonal weather, aid station/support access and unique logistical problems that are associated with specific sport.

A race plan is the strategic implementation of a pacing schedule in the context of the unique demands of an event. The problem is simply that many athletes expect things to go perfectly and have no strategy to make the course work for them and/or how to adapt to anything that comes out of the unknown.

The Solution: The first thing we should do is to remove as many unknowns as possible. Have you tested all your kit? Is your fueling strategy dialled in? Have you checked the course terrain and weather? Do you know where check points/aid stations are? Are there any areas of navigation that may be an issue? Are all the things that require power fully charged? If you need a support crew, do they know exactly what to expect and how to deliver it?

OK, now that’s sorted you can start to think about a race plan.

This should break down the race in to bite sized chunks with targets to tick off in terms of both pace and ‘logistics’ along the way. This should help you know if you are ahead or behind pace expectations and using our previous points; know whether we can push to catch-up, if we need to back off as we have been a little excited, or if we need to reflect and change our expectations at each stage if conditions are tough or our body just isn’t functioning as expected.

This is why it is good to have ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C’ goals so that we don’t get fixated on one number.

For example, an ‘A’ goal time might assume that the conditions are perfect, we have trained well, are fully fit and healthy and that we have a good understanding of the course and what to expect.

A ‘B’ goal might assume that conditions are not as expected, we have limited experience on the course or that type of terrain despite doing our best to replicate it and we are basing times loosely on this idea.

Depending on the length of the event and expected completion times, we might decide once we have started that this goal is more reasonable and we will allow ourselves 10-15% more time than our A expectation.

The C goal might just be to throw time/pace out of the window and focus on completing the event safely, and to make the primary goal learning and gaining experience to inform our training and racing in the future.

Our ‘C’ goal might kick in if it becomes clear early on that we have an inadequate understanding of the terrain, the conditions are poor and we are not prepared for them. We will prbably have noticed early on in the event that our battery is draining quicker than usual at our A and B goal pacing expectations.

Even experienced athletes sometimes have to take a ‘C’ when competing in new events, in new conditions, in new countries.

There is no shame in this and it is often better to work on getting through an event and building mental resilience and adaptability rather than pushing hard, putting a DNF on the table, or even worse ending up in serious trouble.

There is no shame in DNF’s if we have had a bad day at the office, we get injured or conditions are truly horrendous. However, we have to give ourselves the best possible chance of finishing and that is often the issue for many people, not their physical or mental ability, but an unwillingness to adapt to the conditions until it is too late.

This is something we have seen repeatedly in ultramarathons where people have not respected the conditions and pushed on too hard and ended up being withdrawn medically, less than half-way through an event, where a more pragmatic approach would have possibly seen them finish, or at the very least not but their health at risk.

Listen to Your Body.

The Problem: As Mike Tyson famously said, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. Now unless you are a combat sports athlete (and we do work with many to be fair), this is unlikely to effect you in the literal sense, but metaphorically this ‘punch’, can be anything that comes out of the blue to know us off guard.

Of course this can be the factors related to our environment mentioned above, but it could be something more ‘physical’ out of the blue.

For example, their is the obvious potential to have a bug or illness, tweak a muscle or ligament and we have on one occasion have an athlete have a rare form of allergic reaction that was triggered by a combination of overheating and a random insect bite!

Some of these things we can to an extent put to the back of our mind. But there is a balancing act between being tough and being stupid.

The Solution: This is where proper planning and pacing comes into its own as well as trusting our training and nutrition plan. If we have trained properly, if we know what to expect and are confident in our preparation and ability to complete the task in front of us.

The if things are ‘off’ then we should be able to dial into that knowledge and either be able to figure out what is wrong and fix it, or trust our bodies and back off and see if things get better or if we have to decide to change our goals.

A great example of this was an ultra-runner we worked with who had a stomach issue during the race. It wasn’t a bug or nerves. It turned out that they were using a type of sports drink they hadn’t tried before (not advised and was not on our plan!) and an ingredient, possibly a flavouring used, had caused the issue.

After switching to water for a few mile and then swapping fuel to solid foods that were safe, the athlete made up time and finished only a few minutes behind their target time despite being behind schedule by over an hour at one point. Patience with, and understanding of our body’s allows us to be kind to it when it needs it. Yes it can be frustrating but listening to, and adjusting, to our body’s can get us the best available result on any given day even if it isn’t our desired one.

The need to develop mental resilience.

The Problem: Many athletes are fit, healthy and more than capable of hitting their goals. However, two main things can stop this. Firstly, all of the things we have outlined above that can go wrong and are very real and we should not ignore them (ironically, this is where mental toughness can do more harm than good!).

Secondly, is that even when things do go wrong, or when races get hard (let’s face it if we are trying to get our best result at some point it is going to hurt), athletes haven’t had the exposure to the level of discomfort sufficiently to be able to understand and cope with it and/or they have not worked on any skills that help with mental toughness that then just chips away at pace.

The Solution: As well as breaking down the race into manageable sections and trusting our training and planning has given us the tools to do the job there are other techniques to help improve mental performance. Training itself should be programmed in a way that helps you develop your ability to sit in discomfort in a controlled way, helping you ‘get comfortable, being uncomfortable’.

Incorporating mental training techniques such as visualization, positive self-talk, or mantra repetition to maintain focus and motivation during the race are all skills that can be learned. Some tools work better than other depending on the individual and the athletes we work with all have their unique ways they keep pushing when things get uncomfortable.

There is no one size fits all approach here, and this isn’t our area of expertise. However, we do partner with an elite Sports Psychologist. So if you do need any support in this area then please don’t hesitate to reach to contact him.
www.PodiumPsychology.com