More on Pacelines
Gosh, I had forgotten all about doing this thing on
pacelines. I'll see what I can come up with.
In a road race, there is only one reason to do a
paceline: If you're in a breakaway with a limited number of riders, a well
worked paceline is about the only chance you have of staying away from the
chasing pack behind. A paceline nearly always breaks apart in a large peloton
because 2/3rd's of the field would rather sit in and draft than take a pull,
and are always more than happy to let the heros in the front do the work. In
a team time trial: The paceline is how you keep the group together at a faster
rate of speed. A team time trial takes the time on the fifth rider of a 9 man
team in the Tour de France (six must finish). In Baton Rouge on September
24th, the time is taken on the third rider of a 4 man team. It is to the
benefit of the stronger riders to keep the group together at a slightly
faster speed to get the weaker ones to the line as quickly as possible. In a
tour or group ride: A paceline helps keep a group covering ground at a faster
rate while not expending the energy as you would go alone to keep the same
speed. It is a friendlier way to socialize, too, when everyone is together
and working to keep up the efficiency of that paceline. In an ITU
(international triathlon) event: I hate it. Anyone who endorses this type of
racing should be strung up by their thumbs, and the shingles on their houses
removed and nailed to their cars. You might as well tie a rope to the rider
ahead and read a book as he pulls you around the course. I hope you bend a
fork and inhale your CO2 cartridge. Have a good day, you commie!
DRAFTING.
Okayyyyyyy, drafting is a good thing (outside of the
ITU). The good thing is that our bikes are actually pretty aerodynamic
already. It's those people on the bikes that screw it up, sometimes causing
as much as 80% of the air resistance as we ride. Once you've aero'ed up the
bike, put on some tighter clothes, put on an aero helmet, and shaved your
legs (just kidding, you don't have to do that), the paceline is the next best
thing to going fast and saving energy. According to a recent article in
Bicycling Magazine, "as we ride we push the air in front of us and it
pushes back. The power needed to overcome this air resistance rises at the
cube of our speed...to double your speed from 12 to 24 mph you need to
produce eight times as much power." When you draft behind someone you
reduce the wind resistance and the energy you need to produce to maintain a
higher speed. You can get a reduction in wind resistance of up to 45% when
you are within a foot of the rear wheel of the rider ahead of you. It drops
to 27% when you drop back to six feet (still not a bad deal).
PULLING.
I'm not going to spend a lot of time on how long you
should pull in a paceline. I think it's idiotic to take "hero"
pulls where a guy spends about 10 minutes or 5 miles in the front to show how
tough he is. Unless you're a triathlete/time trialist and you're training to
get used to wind resistance (and you tell the group ahead of time), there is
no good reason to spend more than a couple of minutes at the front, tops. You
