Straight out of the blocks

See that? That's basically last week's big ride. Part one of the Sella Ronda, in the Dolomites. I have this propensity to just go off, way too hard, for the first ten or fifteen minutes. That's an Xert graph, so the purple line is my MPA, or maximum power. As you can see, when you continually crank out the watts, your theoretical maximum power will drop, to the point where your effort crosses that line. That's known as a "breakthrough", but it invariably comes when you've pushed so hard that you can't do much more. All well and good - but perhaps not in the first 10% of a ride!

Thus, I've been working on getting more pacing into my rides. A little more restraint. Will it work? I'd like to hope so!