GORP - Pacing Yourself - Bicycling for Fitness

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Bicycling for Fitness
Pacing Yourself
By Peter Oliver

Adapted from
Bicycling
by Peter Oliver

Establishing a comfortable pace can be tricky business, especially when seeking maximum variety in your riding. Some cyclists, with deep pockets and a deep obsession for statistical feedback, rely on computerized heart-rate monitors to help maintain an aerobic pace. If you've got $100$250 of disposable income sitting around, a heart-rate monitor is a great device, but it isn't essential. You need, simply, to tune into your body's signals—your heart rate, muscle fatigue, breathing (easy or labored), and so on—and respond accordingly with a riding pace you can maintain for at least an hour.

For road riding, 12 to 15 mph is a good average-pace starting point—fast enough to get you into the aerobic zone, but not so fast as to be overtaxing. From there, work on increasing your pace as your physical condition improves. You'll probably find it easy at first to hump your pace up one or two miles an hour. But as you begin to enter the 16- to 20-mph zone, you'll find each incremental gain harder won. A pace above 20 mph represents a high level of performance achieved only after hundreds—perhaps thousands—of miles of dedicated road work. Don't expect a miraculous ascent to that level after only a few days of riding around the block.

Stay on track with a cycling computer

If road pacing is tricky, establishing a constant mountain-biking pace borders on impossibility. The syncopated cadences dictated by rough up-and-down terrain can render heart beats per minute or miles an hour all but meaningless. Again, the key is to attune yourself to your body's signals. Search for a pace (however erratic it might be) at which your body tells you you're pushing yourself but not straining. Settle on a pace you can sustain for an hour or more—while still leaving room for plenty of the antic, athletic playfulness that is so much a part of mountain biking's essential fun.

Rest

When they really get into their exercising, some aerobic athletes become so obsessive as to forget about taking a break. Rest is a critical part of any sensible exercise program. It gives hard-worked muscles a chance to rejuvenate. Rest is also part of the mental game of cycling, relieving the dulling sense of regimentation and duty that can creep into any riding program. If you are successful in developing a riding program you can stick with, congratulations. Now for the easy part: Make sure to work in days here and there in which you permit yourself to be indulgently, and guiltlessly, lazy.

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