We’ve all felt that adrenaline spike and sense of excitement at the beginning of a new route or race start. That pumped-up feeling can sometimes make us dash out of the gate, leaving us gassed when we have many more miles left to cover.
Letting emotion guide our pedaling, especially during a longer-than-normal ride on pavement or gravel, can lead to a plummet of energy later, a.k.a. the bonk—that moment (or hour) when you feel a whole lot worse than you did at the kickoff.
When your body (and brain) feel like cinderblocks midride, it means that either your blood-glucose or muscle-glycogen levels, or both, are depleted.
More From Bicycling
Besides progressive training blocks—as in, gradually increasing your ride distances week by week—there are a few methods you can apply to accomplish long-distance efforts without falling victim to the bonk. And that includes learning how to pace your long rides.
You can strategize a pacing plan based on a few metrics, the course profile, and a handful of tools to aid the process. Simultaneously, integrating a solid nutrition plan before, during, and after a long ride can help you meet your target pace. Here’s how to integrate a pacing plan into a long ride so you finish feeling strong.
How to Measure Your Effort for Smarter Pacing
Depleting your body’s muscle glycogen stores and hitting a wall is a risk if you start out too fast, which is why controlled pacing from the get-go is key. The mistake is easy to make, especially for beginner riders, says Landry Bobo, an USA Cycling level 3 certified coach specializing in road races. You’re excited to get going and hitting 18 miles per hour feels a lot easier at the beginning versus the end of a ride.
According to Zach Allison, a USA Cycling level 2 coach and owner of the Foco Fondo gravel race in Fort Collins, Colorado, the two best metrics that a cyclist can use to pace for a sustained, lengthy effort are heart rate and power.
“Heart rate is the lagged output of what your brain is telling your body to do and is a measure of the cardiac output of how hard you are working. Power is an instant read of what your muscles are doing for work, and you can see at what point you are in aerobic or anaerobic [phases of training]. Those are both crucial for pacing,” he says.
Using Heart Rate to Help You Pace
“For an endurance ride for most people, keeping their heart rate zone between 65 and 80 percent of their max heart rate is a good range to complete a long course but not go too hard so they can’t finish,” says Bobo.
As a coach, Bobo uses the five-zone training model for his athletes. Based on those zones, he recommends that for long durations, cyclists aim to spend the majority of their ride in the upper half of zone 2:
- Zone 1: Very light, 50 percent to 60 percent of maximum heart rate (MHR)
- Zone 2: Light, 60 percent to 70 percent of MHR
- Zone 3: Moderate, 70 percent to 80 percent of MHR
- Zone 4: Hard, 80 percent to 90 percent of MHR
- Zone 5: Very hard, 90 percent to 100 percent of MHR
“If we are talking training, riding most of your training in zone 2 is the most effective zone to train in to build endurance,” says Bobo.
On the flipside, “If your heart rate is below 65 percent of it’s maximum, you are probably going a bit too easy if you’re trying to train your endurance,” Bobo says.
On rides, you can wear a heart rate monitor and sync the data with a bike computer to help track your zones, Bobo recommends. (A bike computer is also a helpful tool for showing the overall mileage, ascent, and course profile, which can help cyclists pace better, notes Allison.)
4 Great Heart Rate Monitors
Scosche Scosche Rhythm 24 Heart Rate Monitor
Using Power to Help You Pace
The goal of looking at power output is to know your typical output in watts and target that output on certain sections of a course, Allison says. Wattage is a direct measure of output.
“Based on what wattage you’re doing in that moment we know if you’re aerobic, anaerobic, if you’re utilizing carbs or fat for fuel, and how hard you’re going relative to your own ability,” says Allison. The goal for a long ride is stick with aerobic training, maintaining efforts for long rides around zone 2 and typically not exceeding zone 4.
To establish an understanding of your performance based on power, it’s helpful to perform a Functional Threshold Power (FTP) test.
“If you know these [FTP] zones you can better understand how deep you can go on a climb and be able to recover, at what wattage you actually are recovering, and how much you can push the pace on certain sections of a long course,” says Allison.
Training zones correlate with the average power output and heart rate (HR) zones, according to Training Peaks:
- Zone 1: Active Recovery, <55% power, <68% HR
- Zone 2: Endurance, 56-75% power, 69-83% HR
- Zone 3: Tempo, 76-90% power, 84-94% HR
- Zone 4: Lactate Threshold, 91-105% power, 95-105% HR
- Zone 5: VO2 max, 106-120% power, >106% HR
- Zone 6: Anaerobic capacity, >120% power, N/A HR
Using Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) to Help You Pace
“Heart rate and power are objective measurements, but RPE gives us subjective feedback on those measurements. For example, if someone has improved their fitness level, a certain power output might feel a lot easier, and they probably need to do some tests so they can update their training zones,” he says. Also, some days you might feel great and can push more power than normal, other times you might not feel so good and need to scale it down.
Paying attention to your perception of effort or exertion can be somewhat helpful for pacing, as well, says Bobo. For example, “Pace yourself at [no more than] a 5 out of 10 effort on a six-hour ride, and try to hold a consistent pace,” he says.
The American College of Sports Medicine defines rating of perceived exertion (RPE) on a scale of 0 to 10:
- 0: Rest
- 1: Very easy
- 2: Easy
- 3: Moderate
- 4: Somewhat hard
- 5: Hard
- 6: Between hard and very hard
- 7: Very hard
- 8: Between very hard and very, very hard
- 9: Very, very hard
- 10: Maximal effort
Use talking as a gauge. If you’re able to hold steady conversation then you’re at a moderate level of aerobic exercise (a RPE of 3 to 4) whereas a vigorous effort would only allow you to say a few words (a RPE of 5 to 7), according to the American College of Sports Medicine.
“If you have no problem holding a conversation, that’s a good pace starting out at,” Bobo says. “If you have to take a lot of breaths in between, you might be starting out too hard. It depends on the course, too. If the course has climbing and you can’t talk, you might not have a choice but to maintain a steady hard pace (without talking) on the climb.”
One catch: Perceived exertion does not have a linear output, which can be problematic for pacing, says Allison.
If cyclists only depend on their subjective perception of exertion, they are more likely to go too hard in the beginning, which leads to fatigue followed by a slower pace despite the perception that they are riding harder over time.
“With the accumulation of fatigue, it’s nice to use wattage or heart rate to objectively measure output,” Allison says.
How to Approach Your Pace From Start to Finish on a Long Ride
Pacing throughout the course of your long ride depends on the terrain and more specifically the hills. A flat course yields an even and the fastest pace of an athlete. If there’s a 50-mile course that’s flat for 40 miles and ends with a 10-mile climb, a cyclist should pedal a few percentage points easier in wattage on the flats in order to have a higher output of power on the climb, which will help them finish the course faster overall, says Allison.
Bobo agrees and notes that if the route has an undulating climb, it’s best to push more power on the steeper sections and recover a bit on the flatter sections.
How to Pace Ascents Within a Long Ride
“Look at how long the climb is and how long you can hold an effort, focusing on wattage zone or heart rate zone,” says Allison.
Cyclists can use climbs to their advantage by applying the same rule as the start: don’t go out too fast.
“Negative split the climb by power (watts), heart rate, or perceived exertion, which will help you go over that climb the fastest. You want to go the hardest over the top of the climb into the descent, which you use to coast, recover,” Allison says. Your heart rate should come back down over that descent. “If you go anaerobic or close to max on a sector, make sure you’re recovering on the descent so you can do it again on the next climb or hard section.”
The effort on an ascent will also be based on how long the climb is. A 20-minute climb means you could go at threshold effort, holding onto it for the 20 minutes and recovering on the descent, says Allison. But if you hit a climb that’s 60 minutes, which is near the threshold of a max effort, you should choose to maintain an aerobic effort (zone 2 for heart rate and power) for the entirety of that climb, he says.
Overall, whether it’s a 20-minute or 60-minute ascent, try to stay within or below your threshold heart rate, says Bobo, which is 80 percent to 90 percent of your max heart rate, zone 4 of the five-zone model.
A bike computer is especially useful for pacing on ascents, so that you know where the top of the climb is and where to go hard, says Allison.
When to Push It and When to Pull Back on Your Pace
“If you’re in the middle of a training block, and you are training for a big event, it might be better to stay within zone 2 [on long rides]. This way you won’t fatigue yourself too much and can go and train again the next day,” says Bobo. If you’re feeling good, testing your personal limits depends on the type of ride you are on, and where you’re at in your training cycle.
“If someone is racing, I suspect they’d be riding with the group and pushing [their effort] the entire time—I’ve yet to do a race where you're not going as fast as you can,” says Bobo.
Otherwise, if you’re on a long ride, you would want to save energy for big climbs or hills and back off on the downhills and flats. Allison says to focus on putting out the most power on climbs.
Your pace during an event versus a long training ride is somewhat conditional, though, meaning its influenced by the course and the other athletes.
Bobo adds, “If someone is doing a long ride as an event, like a Sportif or Gran Fondo, then [pushing your effort] also depends a lot on the course. You could be solo on big climbs or it could be flat and in a large pack,” which can incite how hard you push if you’re in race mode and adapting your pace with the aim of staying ahead of other cyclists.
Allison agrees: “If you’re racing in a group, you really have to ride with the dynamic of the group and draft. If you're new to that, try to stay in the draft as long as possible without going too deep into the red.”
All in all, a general rule of thumb, whether you’re in a long race or a long training ride, don’t push it until closer to the end. “In a longer event definitely wait until closer to the end to really go deep. Blowing up or bonking in the middle of an event is never fun so wait to really push the limits until the end is closer,” says Allison.
As far as knowing when to back off, listen to your body. Dial it back if your legs are burning and you just can’t keep up, Allison says.
“If you’re not feeling good, then there’s often a reason behind it, such as dehydration, [in which] you might experience increased heart rate, thirst, or lightheadedness. Or, if you are bonking, you’ll experience low energy, hunger, and lightheadedness,” says Bobo. To fix either of those issues, take in fluid or fuel and see how you feel and if you can increase your pace after that.
Other Factors That Affect Pace
Before a long ride, draw up a plan for what you’re going to eat and drink, where you’re going to fill your bottles, or which aid stations you plan to stop at in an event, says Allison.
If you have big mileage planned, increase your carbohydrate intake the day before and during the ride, says Bobo. Eating or drinking carbs during a long effort can improve performance in addition to consuming carbohydrates after exercise and starting a ride with full muscle glycogen stores.
Other factors that might affect your pacing include sleep and stress, too. So remember to pay attention to those areas of your life before you set out to ride long miles or hours.
Morgan Tilton writes about the outdoors with a focus on travel, industry news, and human endurance. Her work is featured in more than 70 publications, and she’s a recipient of many North American Travel Journalists Association awards, including double-awards for the essays, “Wild & Broken: A First SUP Descent of Utah’s Escalante River” and “A Wild Space.” Morgan grew up mountain biking, hiking, and playing in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains before moving to Crested Butte, in the adjacent range.
