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Pacing One of the most difficult advanced skills to learn for a snowshoer is proper pacing. It is more efficient and faster to maintain a constant speed during all segments of a race than to move at an uneven pace. Proper pacing is especially important in longer distance races of 800 meters and above. Depending on the skill and ability level of the athlete, pacing can become important in races as short as 100 meters.   It is sometimes difficult for an athlete to apply the concept of proper pacing, as typically many other athletes in a race will not run with proper pacing. Most athletes start too fast for their aerobic and physical ability, slow dramatically in the middle, and then sprint to the finish. After all the basic skills of snowshoeing have been mastered, improvement essentially comes down to practicing to improve fitness and conditioning so that the athlete can maintain a faster pace throughout the race until the finish.   Skill Progression Your Athlete Can Perform: Never Sometimes Often Snowshoe at different speeds Distinguish the difference between snowshoeing at different speeds Maintain a consistent speed while snowshoeing over 100 to 400 meters Distinguish the difference in effort when snowshoeing at different speeds Maintain a consistent speed for half to 3/4 of the race distance Maintain or increase race pace in the last 1/4 of the race, even as fatigue sets in   Teaching Points Make sure your snowshoers can actually move at different speeds and can do this independent of others. It may help if you or someone else initially snowshoes along with your athletes to show them different speeds and paces, but realize that the athletes must eventually learn to do this on their own. Emphasize that it is not always the athlete who starts the fastest who wins a longer race. Inexperienced athletes usually start longer races at the pace of the fastest starter, and then as they go into oxygen debt, everyone slows down except the fittest athlete. All others must slow until they recover (which they never completely do) and then start moving faster again at their own individual threshold pace. This is a very painful and inefficient way to run a long race. Emphasize that a consistent pace and speed over the entire race is what usually produces the fastest times. The effort required to maintain a high even pace will increase as fatigue accumulates. An analogy is that over 50% of the effort is used in the last 25 % of the race. Athletes need to run their own best race and pace for the first part of a longer race, and then focus on actually racing other athletes later in the race. Emphasize that the skill at the beginning of a race is to run near their ideal even pace, and this may require letting other athletes get ahead. Coaches should determine at what pace an athlete should move in an ideal even-paced race, or the "goal pace." Take the best time for an athlete for a given distance, and then divide that time by the number of segments of a shorter distance that goes into the longer distance evenly. This will give you a time-per-distance speed to strive for. The shorter distance is usually 100 or 200 meters for a 400-meter race, 200 or 400 meters for an 800 or 1600-meter race, and 400 or 1000 meters for the 5 K or 10 K. An 800-meter runner with a best time of 4:00 should maintain a speed of 1 minute per 200 meters for an even paced race, as 800 divided by 200 equals four and 4 minutes divided by four equals 1 minute. A 5 K runner with a best time of 32:00 should proceed at a pace of 6:24 per kilometer, or about 2:56 per 400-meter segment. These goal pace/distance times are a key tool in allowing athletes to practice even pacing and are useful for athletes to gauge their progress in longer races, if they can take or get intermediate split times from their coaches. Good coaches follow every step of their athletes in longer races and record intermediate split times to analyze later. A workout for distance snowshoers might consist of multiple repetitions over a known shorter distance at a speed equal to the pace they want to maintain for their entire distance, with rests in between. For example, a 1600-meter snowshoer with a best time of 10:00 minutes might do a workout of six times 400 meters at a speed of 2:30 per 400, and with a jog of 200 to 400 meters between each of the six repetitions. As fitness improves, the athletes can increase the number of these repetitions and/or decrease the time/distance resting between them. Athletes can increase the speed when they improve their best time. Coaches should be aware that athletes' best times for a distance may rapidly improve at first, once they learn to pace themselves properly. Goal pace is something that can change weekly/daily for a novice snowshoe athlete, but is more constant for experienced athletes. Be aware that snow conditions, weather, hills and terrain may drastically affect the speed at which a snowshoer might travel in a race. Athletes should thus learn to eventually base their pacing more on effort than speed.   Faults & Fixes   Error Correction Drill Reference Athlete starts fast and slows dramatically Start slower at goal pace, ignore other racers at start Practice goal pace, have athletes of different abilities practice together but run their own goal paces for repetitions. Have athletes run two shorter practice race time trials: one where they run an even pace and another where they start significantly too fast over the first 25% and then slow to finish at the same time as the even paced race. Ask them which was easier. Fox Chase Drill Athlete maintains goal pace and then slows Start a little slower at adjusted slower goal pace and/or improve fitness Adjust goal pace, and/or snowshoe more, to improve fitness and conditioning Athlete maintains goal pace but then is out-sprinted at end Increase pace slightly from start, start racing others farther away from the finish, improve conditioning for faster finishes Practice by ending workouts with simulated sprint finishes, encourage athletes to race others at end Rabbits and Hounds Drill Athlete starts slower than goal pace, then finishes strong Try starting a little faster than goal pace, warm up properly Have athletes run even-paced time trial over 3/4 of racing distance at a little faster than goal pace, to give them confidence they can do it

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