PACING ZONES

Have you ever thought about where you go hard and where you back off while riding? Trails are a mix of technical bits, smooth-flowing and pedally sections. Using pacing zones can help you get the most out of a trail by being efficient with carrying speed and able to enjoy the whole of the descent. A good way to look at it is by splitting these sections into a traffic light system – red, amber and green.

Red sections would be when things get more technical, this is where we would back off to keep things smoother and in control.

These sections are where you wouldn’t normally gain time, there is usually a maximum speed at which these can be ridden and there is a higher risk versus reward. By easing off here, we save our legs for the pedally bits and the climbs. These would be the green sections where we need more power to maintain speed, climb and we can give it everything. The amber sections are in between – here you can pump the bike and work the trail to carry speed. By splitting up a trail in this way, we can clean the technical sections without costly mistakes and still have energy to pedal when we need it.