Pacing Yourself

Among the first questions about adventure racing that everyone asks is: How fast do I go? The majority of the answer can be found in your training and preparation.

There is a finite amount of time that everyone can devote to training for an adventure race, and there is a correlation between the amount of training you do and your resulting race pace. While the subject of training is dealt with elsewhere, let’s look at pacing for a minute.

First time adventure racers experience a bit of apprehension to the ultimate question: will I be able to do this; will I be able to finish the race? The pace you maintain will have a direct impact on the answer to that question as will the distance of the race. A three to five hour race is much quicker than a three to five day race, so plan and train accordingly.

As a general rule of thumb, you would be wise to never exceed 70% of your maximum output for any sustained period of time. Now what does that mean. If you are in a race and you are looking at a 20 mile run/hike, harken back to your training and figure out what your pace is for a 20 mile run/hike. Now take that training pace as your 100% output. At a minimum dial 1/3 of that effort off your pace and get moving. Now you may wonder why? Well, the race will probably have other events, so you will not want to waste yourself completely on the hike. Some people have trouble judging this. In that case, a simple rule is to always have another gear left to allow you to go faster. If you ever feel yourself with nothing left, then you are probably going or have gone too fast. Now there are some points where you must give 100%, i.e. you are paddling through some nasty rapids, or mountain biking a rather technical or steep section. In other circumstances, you may be right up against a cut-off time, i.e. you have to make it to a particular checkpoint by a certain time. In those cases, put the peddle to the metal so to speak, but dial back when the situation allows.

Often times in your race planning, you will plot a leg and try to determine how long it will take to complete. Again, if you have trained extensively as a team, you will be able to judge this better. But another rule of thumb is to take however long you think it will take and add another 25 to 50% on to that time. Be prepared for the leg to take you about one and a half times as long as you expect. This fudge factor will allow you to better deal with Mr. Murph E. Law when he rears his ugly mug. And notice we say when, not if. The perfect race is very elusive, so plan accordingly. Another observation to consider is that a winning race pace is generally not much more than 100 miles per 24 hours of racing. There are many factors which determine this exact number, i.e. terrain, weather, conditioning etc., but it is a good rule of thumb.

At the start of a race, you will be pumped and have a tendency to go out too hard. All the other teams are within sight and it is easy to get swept into the competition and smoke yourself right out of the gate. Plan for this and try to control your competitive fire.

Another tricky aspect to pacing is that adventure racing is a team sport and not everyone on the team may be at the same pace. One way to overcome this is to train together as much as possible, but even still, you may have certain disciplines that you can really crank out & others that are slower for you; and same with your teammates. In those cases, the group that works the best together, will generally have the quickest pace. This also gets back to the question of choosing your teammates and helping teammates, questions that are dealt with in other articles.

The bottom line is that as a team your mantra or most basic goal should be to always keep moving toward the finish line.

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