Setting a Pace (Know Thyself)

A deciding factor in your future riding style is developing your ability to pick a proper pace for the trails you are riding and the condition you are in on that day. Unless you want to be known as someone that doesn't try or someone that starts out good and then wimps out, this is an important subject and you need to start working on this now.
This article is about understanding and maximizing your abilities relating to strength and endurance on any given day.
* Picking the proper pace means understanding:
* how long your ride is going to be
* what type of trails you will be riding on
* what your current general physical condition is
* what your expected performance level is on that day
The first three you should be able to handle easily. As to the fourth, you should begin to build a log of your rides. Obviously, you'll need the cyclometer mentioned in the First-Timers articles to do this. If you don't have one yet, read this article in the First Timer secton.

You should keep track of the following in your log:
* distance rode
* elapsed time
* average speed
* top speed
and here are the REALLY important ones
* your perceived difficulty of the trail
* what you ate in the twelve or so hours before your ride
* how you felt physically during the ride

The first four are obvious enough. You use them to track your actual peformance on each ride, and hopefully your ever improving abilities. The fifth item you use to compare yourself to your riding buddies, compare your perception of trail difficult to that of your buddies. It's important when they take you to a new trail to know what to expect. The sixth item you use to understand what foods DO and DO NOT give you enough energy to prepare your body for a ride and to understand one reason why you might be weaker than normal. Finally, did you feel good or bad, weak or strong, fast or slow, clumsy or nimble. Combining all these factors together you should be able to get a complete picture of where you stand (where you sit?).

Now here is how to use it. First, if you know when you are going for a ride, eat GOOD foods! Foods that you know will give you a good store of energy without causing burps or an upset stomach (last two items in your log). Second, build on this. Over the course of your rides, you will undoubtably have had times when you just RAN OUT of energy. No matter how good you feel, the energy just isn't there later in the ride. If you have eaten well and anticipate having energy, but run out early, the likely explanation revolves around the first four items in your list. It's likely that you are riding terrain more challenging than you are used to, riding a longer distance than you are used to, or riding at a faster pace (perhaps a pace too high for you).

This is your job. Make sure you are energied up. Have an idea of where you are going to ride, how far and how difficult. Understand what average speed you can maintain given the distance of the ride and the difficulty of the terrain, WITHOUT running out of energy. Pick a gear that is consistent with the terrain and the average speed you want to maintain.

Here is a little more to help you understand whether you are challenging yourself or not. Take the Talk Test. During the course of your ride, if you can easily maintain normal conversation, you're NOT working hard enough. On the other hand, if you are panting so hard you can hardly maintain conversation at all, you're exercising TOO hard.
Given this information, you shouldn't have a problem maximizing your rides and training sessions, and by the way, having a LOT of fun!

If you still find this difficult to figure out, the article on target heart rates and heart rate monitors should straighten you out.

Good luck!