Whether you're a data nerd or consider yourself a "feel" athlete, we can all get better at developing our internal pacing. There are certain paces (and heart rates, and power output) that in general we try to shoot for in each race distance. These are good rules of thumb and they're great for developing each zone in training, but what I really want you guys to get good at is this:
No matter where you are in any race, you know exactly how much effort to put out consistently for the remainder of the race to maximize everything you have left in your tank.
Developing your feel and your internal pacing is what allows you to get the most out of yourself. We have to have awareness of the objective measures of our output, as they correlate to our perceived exertion. So that means we have to approach this from both the data nerd angle and the "feel" athlete angle.
Nerds- you guys are probably already really good at hitting an exact prescribed output. When I say ride for 10 minutes at 200 watts or "tempo pace," you ride for exactly 10 minutes at exactly 200 watts, no matter what your body is giving you for tempo pace that day.
Feelers- you guys already have some inside information on what your body is giving you, but sometimes that means you ignore the numbers a little bit too much. So when I say ride for 10 minutes at 200 watts, or "tempo pace," you go right to whatever feels like tempo pace that day and the 200 watts goes right out the window.
So our challenge for the pre-season is that we're all going to get better at developing our pacing, myself included. A couple examples of what how we can approach this for each discipline are:
Swimming: 100m/yd. intervals- trying to come in on an exact interval without checking your watch
Biking: cover up your watts or cadence for a given segment, then check in after to see how close you were to the prescription; for max intervals, see if you can stay at a consistent power output for the entire interval (like within 2-3 watts the whole time)
Running: 400's on a track- trying to hit each lap on an exact time without looking at your watch
This is on you guys, let me know how you're going to work it in or ask me for help if you're not sure where it would be the most beneficial. This is going to be FUN and it's going to make us all dangerous competitors. Let's get after it!
- Coach Laura
