Gravel Pacing: The RIGHT and Wrong Way

I want to show you an easy mistake to make. One I've made myself and one I see in a lot of gravel race power files. See this power output right here? All the red power output above the dash line.

That's riding too hard at the beginning of a gravel race. Dash line is the athletes FTP. And the red power trace above that line is going too hard in zones five and six, which is the definition of going too hard. And while you won't hear it in this video, I'm sure there is a tale of how this athlete died a thousand deaths finishing that race, creeping and crawling to the finish, barely able to hold zone 2 watts.

It's gritty, but not actually admirable because these races don't have to be a death march. There is a better, faster way. In today's video, I'm going to show you exactly how to pace a gravel race the right way. and I'm going to share the one tactical decision you need to make in the first hour of the race to pace it properly and get in the right group. This decision is counterintuitive, but it could save you 30 minutes or more.

All without being more fit than you already are and without dying a thousand deaths. If you watch until the end, I'll show you how you can get course specific pacing instructions in Watson minutes for your next gravel race. Welcome to another training video. I'm Coach Frank.

Some call me the big cat. I'm the founder of Fast Cat Coaching, inventor of Sweet Spot Training, and developer of Coach Cat, the AI coaching app that thousands of amateur athletes just like you are using to ride faster. I've been coaching cyclists for over 20 years. Everyone from firsttime gravel amateurs to world tour riders like Phil Gaiman.

Been at the forefront of powerbased training since its inception. And I've been racing gravel myself since before it was even called gravel racing. So when I talk to riders about their race and I look at their power file, I can see right away whether they paced it properly, just like I was showing you earlier. So drop me a comment below about your gravel pacing blunders and I'll share one of my biggest Stebo Gravel, the black course, 140 mi.

I was in ripping good shape and I overconfidently blitzed the first hour at a n2 intensity factor and then I proceeded to slowly detonate over the next 5 hours limping home with a 65 if in the final hour 7 and 1/2 hours of racing the last 40 miles were truly a death march and talk about dying a thousand deaths. So, I'll ask you which race did you blow to the moon at and why? Because awareness is the first step to pacing it properly. That race in Steamboat was the inspiration behind this video along with analyzing all these power files from gravel athletes and seeing them going out too hard.

To understand what going too hard is, it helps to think of a gravel race as an individual time trial. Sure, you start with a group, but many times you wind up finishing by yourself and it's against the clock and it's for hours on end. And Tom must know the number one rule of time trial racing is to not start too hard. Think about Rimco in a 40k TT.

He doesn't pin it at 120% of his FTP in the first kilometer. He may be world class, but he knows that he needs to go out in a controlled manner, hold the pace he knows he can sustain for that duration. Whether you're a Rimco or everyday athlete, every match you burn above your threshold creates a physiological debt and your body will demand repayment before the race is over. Go too hard in the first 10 minutes and you're going to spend the rest of the effort paying it back and riding slower with interest whether you want to or not.

And in powerbased training, we can measure what going too hard is with intensity factor or abbreviated if. If is essentially the percentage of your threshold you've been riding at, and it's a metric you can look at on your bike computer in real time. Riding exactly at threshold will net you an IF of 1.0. Riding at 105% of your threshold is an IF of 1.05.

And riding at tempo under your threshold is an IF of 0.80. Think of IF as your pacing gauge in the first hour of a race. And I'll reference I if a lot in this video, so go ahead and program if into your display of your bike computer to begin familiarizing yourself with it. Circling back, gravel racing is essentially a long time.

Whether it's Unbound 200, the BWR, Steamboat, or your local 80 mile gravel race, the physiology doesn't lie. Go out too hard and you will blow up. And it's not a question of if, it's a matter of when. So, here's what makes gravel racing uniquely hard to pace.

It's mass start. You're on the same line as the pros and they're about to shred the field. And right behind the pros are the fast amateurs. And then right behind the fast amateurs are the experienced racers who've done this 20 times.

It creates one of the most powerful temptations in all of endurance sports. And that's trying to keep up with people you have no business trying to keep up with. but it's in your competitive nature to do so. So, the race starts, it's chaos. You're riding at 120% of your FTP because that's what it takes to stay with the group that's just formed around you.

The adrenaline is pumping. It feels manageable. And for a brief while, you're like, I'm having a great race. This is the whole moment that defines your race because what you need to do is the hardest thing in cycling, and that's to check your ego to sit up and let them go.

I call it self-dropping. The athletes who can govern themselves in that moment are the ones who have great races. And the ones who can't, well, they're the ones that you see a number of hours later when they drop anchor and you sail past them because you have started properly. They're also the ones I see in the power data with peak 5, 10, 20 minute, 60-minute power outputs in the first hour of their gravel race.

It's not proper pacing. So, remember the tortoise and the hair? We all know who wins that race. The tortoise beats the hair every single time.

And in gravel racing, self dropping is how you beat the hair. But here's the cruel part. Often times, you're feeling really good and you can't tell if you're going too hard in the moment because of the adrenaline. Your training's been going good.

You're probably fitter than you ever have. You feel good. So even though you might feel okay in the first half of the race, twothirds later in the race, that's when that physiological dent is going to come due. Your power is going to drop, your fatigue is going to rise, and you're going to find it really difficult to ride in the group that you may have been with.

You get dropped and now you're riding solo and it's in the wind and it's way slower and you've got hours to go. And I see this happen with all kinds of riders where you're the pros or amateurs just about at every major gravel race. And it's it's really not a fitness problem. It's it's mostly a pacing pacing problem.

So the other version of getting it wrong is the opposite of being way too conservative and saying, "Oh, I'm going to pace this properly. I'm not going to go too hard." And the athlete goes too easy. They miss getting in a group that is going to help them travel faster in a shorter period of time. Because in gravel, a massive tactical advantage is riding in a group at a higher average speed, which that brings us to the right way.

And so the right way is it's an art. Finding the right group to ride with is really the holy grail of gravel racing for your race results. And I like to use the time trial analogy. It's like gravel racing is a draft legal time trial.

Riding in a group at 20 mph is going to cost you less energy than riding solo at 18 mph. Wind resistance is such a huge deal and a tight group of 5 to 10 riders can average 2 to four miles hour faster than the solo rider at the same power output. So you can do the math and that's where we get that 30 minutes or more. The rub, and this is the real art of gravel racing, is you need to go hard enough at the beginning to get in the right group, but not so hard that you blow up trying or get dropped in a few hours later.

The right group is fast enough to be worth the energy cost initially and then sustainable enough that you can hold it for the rest of the race. So, how do you find this right group? Well, I you got to do a few gravel races. And I have athletes that are doing their first a do a practice gravel race just to practice this fourstep process, which is you got to know your numbers.

And so before race day, you got to have a target if to stay with in the first hour. And remember, intensity factor is your pacing gau. You're going to keep it on your bike. You're going to reference it and you're going to check it especially in that first hour.

And so here's a concrete example. So, if your FTP is 250 watts and you spend the first hour at 200 watts, your IF is going to be 0.8, which is well within what you can sustain. Now, if you spend the first 30 minutes at 240 watts, your your intensity factor is going to be 0.96. And that is a one-way ticket to Crater Town.

So, check your intensity factor in this first hour of racing to know if you're going too hard or too easy or just right. Step two, in the first 30 minutes, find riders moving at your pace. Then check the riders around you. Are they going as hard as as you?

Do they look fit? Do they look fast? Do they look like they're breathing through their nose? Are they taking it easy?

Or are they just look like they're riding over their heads, too? Ask yourself, do I want to be riding with these guys and gals for the next several hours? A lot of times, this is a huge source of motivation because you see these riders and you're like, man, if I can stay with them, this is going to be great. and you can do it. Look around and make that that judgment call.

Step three is to let the rabbits go. This is the hardest part mentally. There are going to be riders who haven't gotten the memo about starting too hard and they're going to be starting hard, too. You got to let them go.

You're going to see them in a few hours towards the end of the race. This is the self-drop sensible portion of the race. You got to be the be the tortoise. And then finally, step four, when your group forms, go ahead and commit to it.

Once you find the group that's moving at a sustainable pace, your intensity factor is within range. The riders look good. Get into it and do your share of work. Don't just sit on take pulls evenly, not harder than everyone else, and start eating and drinking and settle into the long haul.

By doing work in the group, you're going to help it travel faster and you're going to earn goodwill if you need to sit on and rest later. One caveat, this scenario is the holy grail of gravel racing and it's not always going to go this way. Sometimes you may not find the right group and that's just adversity and the way it's going to go. Keep going.

Often times you may find one or two other riders later on in the race that you can kind of glom on to and then travel together. That's also beneficial. It may not happen in the first one or two hours, but later on groups may form and then you could begin working together and travel faster. Now, let me give you some numbers because I've been mentioning if a lot.

Here are some ranges for you to use in your next gravel race. Find out how long you think your race is going to take you and then stay within these ranges for the first hour. So eight hours needs to be a lower intensity factor and two to three hours can be a little more aggressive because the race is shorter. The the shorter the race, the harder you can go in the first hour.

The longer the race, the easier you need to go in that first hour. And we're talking intensity factors between 7.8 if for a race like Unbound. And then for maybe these middle to shorter 100 mile races, 77 to 0.88 is generally what we see from successfully paced gravel races. The longer the race, the easier the first hour should feel and be.

And then when done properly, you're going to be the rider that is passing all the other riders that didn't pace it properly towards the end of the race. And if you have previous race data, check the intensity factor from the first hour and then compare that to how you finished. As you remember my Steamboat gravel example, 0.92 in the first hour, 65 in the last hour. That is not that great.

The start of a gravel race is one of the most exciting moments in cycling. The energy is electric. Everyone around you is going hard. Your body's loaded and adrenaline, everything in your brain is saying go.

But the athletes that execute perfect pacing are the ones who can override that signal. They've internalized deep in their bones that the tortoise beats the hair every single time. If it feels like you're going too easy in the first 30 minutes, you're probably going just about right. When that's the confidence that it takes to hold back from knowing your numbers and trusting your training.

If you've done the work, if you've done the long rods, the gravel power workouts, you know what sustainable long rods feel like. Trust that feeling. Trust your power meter over the adrenaline and I promise you a great race. To recap, gravel racing is a time trial and the number one rule is to not start too hard.

The holy grail of gravel racing is finding the right group because drafting is the quickest way to get to the finish line. Dropping yourself out of a group that's forcing you to ride too hard is the single greatest decision you can make in the first 60 minutes. Be the tortoise, trust your training, and your best gravel race is on the other side of that decision. If you want to dial in your pacing even further, the AI in Coach Cat can give you course specific section bysection pacing and wattage instructions.

Simply type in the chat, give me pacing instructions for this race. And then it helps if you copy and paste the course description, usually found on the events website into the chat. You can even provide it with ride GPS course information. You can uh paragraph form works too, but you can paste it into the chat and say, "Give me pacing instructions for this race." Here's my pacing guidelines for the Uber pretzel that we're riding this coming Sunday.

I know it's not a gravel race, but it practically rides what I want. And you can see it's very detailed from start to finish, watts, target watts, and ranges, and then even for how long. Notice how my IF target is 72 for the first 20 minutes riding to the base of the this epic KM climb. And then I'm going to pace it properly at 76 to 82 up the climb for 38 minutes.

I could go a lot harder, but I also need to ride another four hours after this. So, I'm going to hold back here, and that's going to give me the energy and the watts to deploy later on in the so-called race. There's a lot to unpack here. I don't want to take up the rest of this video.

So, I'll make another one. If you hit that subscribe button, give me a few days to make it. And I'd love for you to join me on the Uber Pretzel ride. Take on this challenge.

It's Sunday, March 1st with us. I'm going to try to go sub five. and I need folks to help me form the right group and travel at that higher average speed in between the the two climbs. So, join us. I'll put the RSVP to join in the description.

You can find it in the Fast Cat Coaching Club of the Zift Compendion app. And thanks so much for watching. Let me know in the comments if you have any questions about your gravel racing. And don't hesitate to start a free 30-day trial of Coach Cat to put everything we talked about in this video into practice.

And until the next video, work hard, ride fast, have fun, and as always, FTF ping.

Are you making this gravel pacing mistake? It could be costing you 30 minutes or more — and you won't even feel it happening until it's too late. 🚀 Start your free trial: /app

In this video, Coach Frank breaks down the #1 pacing mistake I see in gravel race power files, why it happens, and exactly how to fix it. I'll show you the one tactical decision you need to make in the first hour of your next gravel race that could save you 30 minutes — without being any more fit than you already are. What you'll learn:

- Why gravel racing is really a time trial (and why that changes everything) - How to use Intensity Factor (IF) as your real-time pacing gauge - The art of "self-dropping" — and why the tortoise always beats the hare - A 4-step process for finding the right group without blowing up - First-hour IF targets for every race duration from 2 to 8+ hours

Want course-specific pacing instructions in watts for YOUR next gravel race? CoachCat's AI can give you section-by-section wattage targets so you always know what's too hard and what's just right. 🚀 Start your free trial: /app 00:00 Introduction 02:53 Pace like a Time Trial 04:52 The Wrong Way 07:37 The Right Way 08:35 Finding the Right Group 11:29 Intensity Factor