In the previous chapter, we discussed the importance of choosing races/event distances that match your physiology. We explored how inherent physiological differences can significantly impact performance among athletes of similar fitness levels, depending on the distance and type of event. This aspect is crucial—it's the initial and essential step in racing to your potential: positioning yourself at the right start line.
Now, assuming you're at that start line, the next critical question arises: how should you pace your race to maximize performance based on your current fitness level?
It's important to realize that in races worldwide and across all sports, less fit athletes sometimes outperform more fit ones simply because the latter didn't strategically utilize their fitness. This leads us to the core of our discussion here: what does it mean to race "strategically" across various events? How can we approach a race, considering variables like terrain, weather, modes of travel, competitors, and more, and allocate our fitness resources to navigate these variables most efficiently, reaching the finish line as swiftly as possible?
As highlighted in the nutrition chapter, success in long-distance racing, basically any event over 90 minutes in duration, is primarily an energy-limited, rather than a fitness-limited task. The challenge for the successful endurance athlete is to distribute this available energy in the most performance-efficient manner…
Words from the Wise
'Think of it this way, my champion: your energy is a precious reservoir of water, each drop a morsel of your vigor, and the race course is a vast garden you must irrigate with precision and care. Your task is to ration the flow, ensuring every corner is kissed by moisture while not a single drop is wasted, all to cultivate the path to victory in the most fruitful, swift bloom.'
As Walter alludes, pacing is essentially this skill of dividing up the energy reserve that we have to work with in the most effective way, i.e. the way that gets us from A to B in the shortest possible time. It makes sense, then, that the first step is identifying just what kind of energy reserve we have to work with!
In the last chapter, we covered just how variable this energy reserve can be among different athletes. Depending on things like fat oxidation, muscle fiber type, and morphology/size, the amount of energy that the athlete has available to them can cover a broad range. So, the first step, regardless of the particulars of the race is to get a good sense of the athlete’s energy reserves and how long we can expect those reserves to last at different levels of intensity/power outputs.
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