Part 3: Moving, Stopping and free speed (AKA pacing part 2)

In the early 2000s long distance mountain biking started to boom in my country. Races were well attended, attracted massive fields, and the prize purses were quite frankly ridiculous. A good 24 hour racer could win more prize money in one race than he’d previously won in a season. I entered my first 12 hour in 2003 and to my surprise I won the race against some of the already established names in the game. I went into 2004, and the biggest 24 hour in Europe expecting good things but came out somewhat dejected with 5th position and with an empty wallet. Racers I’d beat in the 12 hour a year previous had finished miles ahead just a year later in the longer race. In 2005 I went back to Mountain Mayhem and again came home empty handed, this time finishing in 8th, but had made a powerful discovery and just 3 months later I put that discovery to work. I won my age group at the 24 hour World Championships, finished top age grouper, and 11th overall amongst the top ultra mountain bike pro riders of the day. My fitness had not changed but I had discovered something that elevated me from also-ran to top of the box. That discovery gave me the most golden years of my racing career, and later when I began to focus on coaching helped a lot of my athletes elevate their times without having to train harder or longer.

At Mountain Mayhem in 2005 I had a friend help in my pit who had just one job to do; his job was to record how long each of my competitors spent stopped in the pits. The race results only ever give a single time, the time a person crosses a line to finish or start a lap or segment of a race. At mountain Mayhem I discovered that the winner had spent only 7 minutes stopped across the entire race, whereas I had spent the best part of 3.5 hours stopped! I was in fact a faster racer but I was throwing away my chance to win by squandering time. In fact, all I needed to do was spend those 3.5 hours walking at a leisurely pace of <2mph and that would make the difference between 8th and 1st place.  

We are two decades on from my initial endurance race timing analysis and literally nothing has changed! 

Every mass start, big field of riders event that I have done since shares the same common pattern: the further down the field someone is the more time they are likely to have stood still. At least that’s the case for the majority of athletes, and it has huge implications for anyone wanting to finish nearer to the front who doesn't know this. Stood still time is dead time, and often the amount of time stood still means that the athlete could have either ridden at the same pace and finished much higher up the rankings and with a faster time, or ridden at a more leisurely pace and enjoyed the event, or even walked calmly in some circumstances, and still actually finished in a better time, had they just kept going rather than riding too hard and then stopping constantly as a result. 

How was I able to finish the Marji 50 in the top 30, on a single speed, overweight, not suffer like a dog, come out of the race excited and happy and declare that I’d enjoyed every minute? Well some of it is fitness, some of it is skill at riding technical terrain, but a huge portion of it comes down to the second element of pacing an endurance race: I kept the pace enjoyable and I made up a ton of time not stopping anywhere. It literally never fails to work. 

Today we have the luxury of Strava, and my friend who very kindly recorded those pit times for me in 2005 is out of a job! Pretty much every athlete has an account where they proudly display their data for all to see. Strava gives us both time moving and total time, and the race also gives us total time if we want a real timekeepers number to cross-check against. Let’s start at the pointy end of the 50 race as this shows what is possible if you are highly motivated to try and win these things.

Ben: 6:40:22 moving / 6:45:02 race time / 4:42 stopped

Canyon: 6:49:47 moving / 6:54:09 race time / 4:22 stopped

Dan: 6:50:43 moving / 6:56:11 race time / 4:24 stopped

It’s fair to say that in order to try and win the 50 you probably need to keep your total stoppages under 5 minutes. You probably need a sag crew. Some of us won’t have one and need to use the trail angels. That’s what I did so here’s my stats for comparison:

Rob: 8:22:18 moving / 8:33:51 race time / 11:09 stopped

So, with a sag crew I could realistically save about 6.5 minutes, which in results is the difference between finishing 30th and finishing 25th. That’s actually pretty tidy, and I’d take 25th over 30th if someone would like to sag me next time out!

Further down the field this time spent stopped is going to get longer and longer and it’s important to recognise that we don’t want this to happen for a few reasons which I will get into. First though a few more stats (apologies if I have randomly plucked your data - it’s not personal and if we look at the riders around you the figures are highly likely to correlate - this is purely for illustration purposes) I’ve ditched the names, and the seconds and focused on a rough position, hours and minutes because the numbers get big the further we go down the field.

Roughly 100th position: 9:13 moving / 10:00 race time / 47 minutes stopped

Let’s use my unsupported stoppages as an example - if this athlete cut their stoppages down to match mine their new race time would now be 9:24 and they would finish in 68th instead of 100th.

Roughly 200th position: 10:52 moving / 11:34 race time / 42 minutes stopped

If this athlete cut their stoppages down to match mine their new race time would now be 11:03 and they would finish in 161st instead of 200th. 

Roughly 300th position: 10:47 moving / 13:47 race time / 3 hours stopped

If this athlete cut their stoppages down to match mine their new race time would now be 10:58 and they would finish in 159th instead of 300th.

This person is actually moving faster than the people roughly 100 positions ahead of them - please just stop for a moment and think about this!

Roughly 400th position: 12:13 moving / 19:21 race time / 7+ hours stopped

If this athlete cut their stoppages down to match mine their new race time would now be 12:24 and they would finish in 235th instead of 400th.

How much fitness gain do we think it takes, and how long (months/years/forever) of training would it take to achieve it and lift a person’s position in this race by 32 places? how about 141 places? how about 165 places? 

ANSWER: Time spent stopped at these volumes is insurmountable and no one can out-train it, no matter how genetically gifted they are, no matter how good a coach they hire, no matter how hard they train, or how long they live. It’s impossible.  

OK, OK, I know what you are thinking: “but Rob the longer we are out there the more we need to stop. This is true, but why? Because more often than not we are riding, walking or pushing ourselves too hard whilst we are moving, and then needing to rest much more as a result.

The person in roughly 400th position has actually averaged a 5mph moving time. The total race time gives an average of 3.2mph. So how about we back it off a bit, move at a relatively leisurely 4mph and not stop as much? What would happen? The result would be a much easier race, less energy expenditure, less dehydration, less requirement to eat and drink, less duress, less chances of crashing, and still a faster time. The body would work better, sustaining forward movement becomes easier, the brain becomes accustomed to the non-top work because it’s not all grim and painful. 

So why does stopping get worse the further down the field we go, and why is it possibly not a good tactic to stop too much or for too long? 

From my experience the stopping gets worse further down the field for a number of reasons. First is fitness, and preparation. Training, tends to be riding with friends or groups and stop start in nature. It involves riding too hard for short periods of time and then stopping to recover. When we train like this we race like this, and that’s a sure fire recipe for a bad time out in the RAMBA trails. The race itself, from the chemical reaction within the body standpoint, is “fight or flight” and it starts out exciting. We release certain hormones to help with the effort, and to keep the mind sharp and alert. The body shuts down or down regulates certain functions that facilitate better movement and better focus. 

Stopping part way through in contrast reverses a lot of these functions. Athletes who stop regularly or for long periods are much more likely to suffer gut issues as the body starts allowing certain organs to go to work processing and repairing. The brain is much more likely to fall off task. The athlete is much more likely to become disengaged from staying in game as a result, and much more likely to do things like over-eat, under-drink, and get all sorts of issue further down the line. Stopping creates a spiral of problems that make stopping again much more of a likelihood and then the spiral gets worse until the rider either quits early or spends more time stopped than moving in the latter stages of the race. 

Action:

First step is to make training much more like a non-stop race by performing training sessions specific to keeping going and that are much less like a stop-start play in the woods. Yep, I know this is boring and we are going to lose all our mates, but fear not, once a week is more than sufficient to teach our bodies and our brains that it is just fine to keep moving along at a nice relaxed endurance pace, to feed on the bike (or whilst walking up hills like I did at the Marji) and to not stop until the session is over. Once a week, that’s 50 times or so between now and next year’s race and we could be hacking minutes if not hours off our finishing time at the Marji Gesick because a) that slower, easier, but non-stop session is going to make us significantly fitter and better at endurance racing, and b) because we will have trained our brains that it’s perfectly normal to ride, walk and push non-stop for long periods of time. 

Second step is to plan roughly what we are going to eat and drink, and how much of it we are going to carry in the race, where we will collect more, and how we are going to fill any gaps. In the 50 it’s easy. Top tube bag, handle bar bag, cargo shorts, jersey with pockets, backpack, take your pick. Then we also have a drop bag we can visit twice, and there are trail angels everywhere. No sag at this race is easier than anywhere else on the planet I’ve raced. 100 gets a little harder, but it’s OK to ride a bit slower when we are not stopping so much and so carrying a bit more fuel is not going to be a deal breaker. 

Step 3: practice carrying the same amount of stuff and using it on our non-stop once a week endurance ride. The pace is easy, and we can train the guts at the same time as we train our brain to keep going and our legs to be efficient. The result: FREE SPEED!