I previously had commented on my discussion with Cale about pulling at your own speed during practice, and this ended up branching out into a larger discussion on outdoor race tactics and pulling. I imagine this might prompt some interesting conversation. First, a bit about Cale Carvell, in case you don’t know who he is, so you at least know why I value his insight so much.
Cale has been running Team Rainbo for almost 20 years, and during that time he has been a top racer as well. If you look at his results on that link above for the past three years, you can see he does pretty darn well for a 58 year old. Cale is a former competitive hockey player and had his first pair of inline skates in the 70’s. There’s few people who have more knowledge of the sport. He’s one of the smoothest skaters you’ll ever see. He was the overall winner in the Hayward marathon last year, beating everyone.
So, he was reiterating his point that it makes no sense for you to jump on front of the pack and kill yourself trying to maintain a certain pace, whether because the pack is moving at a certain pace or you want to “pull your weight” or whatever. Because when you get off the pull, the whole idea is to get back into the pack, and if you kill yourself up front and cannot get back on to the pack, you’ve obviously screwed yourself.
Cale made the comment that when he pulls he pulls at the pace that is best for him at that moment in the race. He doesn’t let the pack pressure him into overdoing it. He said that if you ever watch Greg Major pull, he does the same thing. Again, no point in killing yourself in the middle of the race - it’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon.
There’s certainly a school of thought (even read it in Publow’s book) that when you are in a cooperative pack that it is somewhat assumed etiquette that everyone takes their turn pulling. That you avoid being a “wheel sucker.” (Although he does note that in larger packs, rarely will everyone pull - it just doesn’t work that way - and that has been my experience so far.) I’m not saying you should ever avoid taking a turn pulling when you can, the point is to not feel like you have to keep a certain pace to your own detriment.
This has often been my problem at practice, when I end up in front I’ve always felt the pressure to “keep the pace” and that’s a mistake. My pace is not Cale’s pace, I can’t pull that hard right now (and I may never be able to pull that hard.) The point is always this: be able to get back on the pack when your turn is over. This is the whole point of being in the pack in the first place.
The point is never to “dog it” up front - that’s not what I’m saying, but rather do what is best for your race. If the pack decides your pull is too slow, someone may just take the pull from you. On the other hand, the pack might appreciate a slight slowing of the pace for a few minutes. It all depends on the who is in the pack and what is going on in the race.
Ok, so real world situation. I reported before on my experience at Duluth racing with Candy Wong, and she has written about it too, so it’s a perfect example. For a majority of that race, it was Candy, another girl and myself. For awhile we had another guy on until he fell when he clicked my skate. The fact of the matter is, both of these girls pulled harder than I could that day for the most part - the reasons why are irrelevant. So our little pack would usually slow a bit when I pulled. I certainly was not dogging it, but I knew I couldn’t pull harder than I was (in fact, I was probably pushing a little too hard and almost did in fact get dropped a couple times.)
Candy wrote about how this was frustrating for her, which is understandable - and that she felt like she should have dropped me. The fact of the matter is, if she felt that I was holding her back and she would be better off solo or with just the one other girl, she should have dumped me. She didn’t “owe” me anything because we were together in a pack. You race your race. Whether she could have actually dropped me or not, I’m not sure, but that isn’t even the point.
By the same token, she shouldn’t have allowed herself to become frustrated with my slower pulls. I think her best strategy there was to take the rest she needed during my pull, then jump out front and pick it up again, while looking for a more suitable pack if possible. Because we started in a wave further back, this was tough - the faster packs were all ahead of us and we were not going to catch them. (In fact we spent half the race passing people at a fairly good clip).
A few times she tried to break off and jump into bigger packs, and I always kept up. None of these packs seemed to really be what either of us wanted (they ended up being too slow). Finally in the last mile or so we found a decent moving pack of about 12 skaters. I don’t believe either one of us took a pull in this group. We climbed that last hill and crossed the bridge over to the finish, at which point it all becomes a mass of people just heading for the finish.
In the end, I finished something like 8 seconds ahead of Candy. Is that fair? Yes, it is. I raced the best race I could and took advantage of packs whenever possible. I pulled as much as I could, but I didn’t kill myself pulling so that I could not continue at the pace I wanted to skate, or allow myself to be dropped from the pack I wanted to be in. But as Cale bluntly put it - race your race, and forget about what other people think. There will be times when you might want to push a pace or launch an attack. But if you aren’t doing that, you are never bound to keep a certain pace when your turn comes to pull.
I think that’s an important lesson learned for me over the winter, and now I’ll feel more comfortable racing this year.
I posted a thread on SkateLog about this very subject.
6 responses so far ↓
1 Cor // Feb 11, 2008 at 1:10 pm
A few ?s.
1. If you can keep up with your group, how would they go about dropping you?
2. How do you determine what time is a good time if you have never marathoned before?
I guess GPS can really come in handy if you are basing your race on cadence and speed. Hmm, another toy for me.
2 Tom // Feb 11, 2008 at 1:18 pm
A few answers:
1. Maybe they can’t. In Candy’s case, I actually don’t think she could have dropped me - although it’s possible, can’t say for sure. But you might be in a pack and everything is going fine - maybe you even took a pull - and then someone gets to the front and hammers and you’re dropped. I’ve had this happen to me in practice many times. Or at some point the pace is too much for you - or a break ensues and you cannot keep up. It really depends on the *type* of group you are in. In St. Paul I skated with a paceline of like 20+ rec skaters, and I could have done it all day. I finally left them behind, but before that I was on a group for about 8-9 miles of 4 guys that was great, but I couldn’t continue the pace at one point and I got dropped. Trying to stay with them would have killed me for the rest of the race.
2. Determine a good time for…what? Your first marathon will be quite an experience, if you haven’t done one yet. It’s more of just getting to the finish line, any strategy is just icing on the cake. But I had definite ideas about what I was going to do at Duluth.
You won’t see many serious speedskaters with a GPS during a race. Because a race isn’t based on how fast you can go over X distance at a specific pace. As I noted in the post, there are constant ebbs and flows, the pack slows, it picks up, people drop, people come on. Breakaways and chases, etc. The amount of this stuff going on varies on the skill level of the group in which you are skating. But if you are in an advanced pack or higher, a GPS is useless, it’s about what is happening that moment in the race, it’s not about matching your training style with a race - hope that makes sense.
3 Cor // Feb 11, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Huh? I haven’t done a marathon yet so bare with me. If I know I can do 42km in a set time (via training), would I not want to ensure I at least do that in a race? Why would I want to draft a team that is going slower than what I know I can do. I figured that is why a GPS would be a good idea. I figured that if I know what my best 10k is, I can use that as a benchmark for 21 and even 42. Maybe I am missing something.
4 Tom // Feb 11, 2008 at 1:59 pm
Do you train with others in a paceline? (I know we’re indoors now, but I’m referring to outdoor training) The kicker is, drafting gives you something like a 20% benefit over skating alone, as you may well know. In a race, you *never* want to skate solo if you can help it. If the choice is skating solo, or skating with a group you deem slightly slower than your average time - you’d want to spend time drafting in the group and not going it solo.
While you were doing this, you’d be watching for a faster group to come up on you that you can jump on. If that doesn’t happen, you can try and change the dynamics of the group you are in by taking a pull and increasing the speed - this will drop the slower skaters and the overall speed of the group should pick up to where you may want it.
Even if you are merely skating for time - say you want to match that set training time you have - paceline dynamics are going to be in play unless you skate solo - which as I said, don’t do it if you can help it - you put out too much effort. The end result may be you shoot for a specific time, but the point is that you’ve got to be wary of basing your skating solely on this time in your head. What if you are in a paceline and you’re suddenly ahead of your pace - would you slow down? Of course not - you’d think this is going great.
But what if you get in a group and you seem to be going slower - but there is no other viable group available to you at that time? As I said, going solo there could be (most likely would be) a big mistake. A lot depends on whether or not you can skate ahead and find another suitable group. In a large race like Duluth you might be able to, but in a smaller race the chances might be much slimmer. If you don’t and suddenly you find your old group catches up to you - you’ve just wasted a load of effort.
Bottom line is that your time is going to be affected by more than just your solo ability from start to finish. You’ll need to learn how to work the race to your benefit. (Part of that is not killing yourself while pulling).
This year I’ll be shooting for 1:30:00 if possible. But I won’t be watching my watch so closely that when I’m at halfway point and I see I’m slightly slow, I jump out of my paceline and skate faster solo - that wouldn’t make sense in the grand scheme of the race. What I’ll be paying close attention to is trying to get in a paceline that suits me best, watching for breaks - maybe, just maybe making one of my own (unlikely this year) and looking for new pacelines when the one I am in doesn’t work.
There’s so much going on in a race, you just don’t want to be overly concerned with your time - especially in you first race. That one ought to be for pure enjoyment of the event. You’re going to have a lot of ups and downs in your first race, and you don’t want to put too much pressure on yourself. As you become more experienced skating in races and with packs, you’ll have a lot more control over what you want to do.
I think I’ll start a marathon strategy/race tip thread in the SkateLog forum - this is really a great topic and will probably provide some good discussion and tips from the veterans.
5 Tom // Feb 11, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Added a thread over at SkateLog here:
http://www.skatelogforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7615
6 Cor // Feb 11, 2008 at 5:49 pm
Overload. AHHHHH thx, lots of good info
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