10 WAYS TO SMASH A SPORTIVE
1 PACING PERFECTION
Is there an ideal pacing template for a sportive? ‘Even pacing’ would initially seem the most effcient. There are no spikes in power to drain your glycogen reserves or burn your muscles. The problem is, in reality it’s the hardest pacing strategy to follow, whether you’re pacing by speed or a physiological parameter (such as power output or heart rate [HR]). You see, if the course features the odd hill or two, no matter the gradient, maintaining an even speed means a power profile packed with spikes; if you’re looking to maintain an even power/HR profile, it necessarily follows your speed will be variable.
There’s also ‘negative splitting’, where you start slow and gradually increase speed. This is a possibility on pancake-flat sportives, but on hilly events, or courses where hills are skewed early or late, it’s not feasible. It’s also psychologically tricky to avoid going hard from the o". Which brings us onto the most realistic and arguably the most effcient pacing model: the J-pattern.
“The J-shaped strategy is pretty effcient,” explains Stephen Cheung, author of the book . “You start out harder than your sustainable workload and
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