Been trying to get advice on how to pace for the Furnace Creek 508. Not surprisingly, there is not a ton of information about how to properly pace a 500 mile bike race. Joe Friel's Advice for Ironman Pacing Joe Friel mentions in this article
The sub-five-hour racer will usually ride at 70 to 80 percent of FTP. The eight-hour rider will do something like 50 to 60 percent of FTP. In between finish times will probably be 60 to 70 percent of FTP. Why the difference even though the slower rider has a lower FTP? Simply because you can’t hold a high percentage of a high output for a long time. If the sub-five athlete was going eight hours in a longer distance event he too would have to ride at a lower power output in the neighborhood of 50 to 60 percent of FTP. That’s what I mean when I say that the fast rider and the slow rider are not doing the same race even though both are in an IM.For me, 50-60% of my 330 FTP would be 165-198 watts. I am guessing that most people intending to race the 508 go out way too fast, end up over-heating, and start to slowdown and end up wondering why they are feeling so awful. My last 508 gives me little experience to go by as I wisely was advised to just finish and took it extremely easy and ended up finishing near the cut-off. This time, I want to be a competitor, and I want to avoid a lot of the mistakes I see people make and would prefer a smartly paced race at 190 watts to 200 watts vs one that starts at 280 and ends up with me crawling in. What do you think? Would you start out very slow right off the bat at 190 watts, or go out with the leaders and see what happens? Will do more research.
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