Midweek in the Paceline

Here's a word you won't find in the dictionary: Paceline. Sometimes it's also something you won't find on the local group ride either. If you're lucky, though, and you do find yourself in a paceline, you can be sure that your definition and that of the guy who just surged off the front of it are not likely to be the same. A case in point: This morning's training ride on the levee.

We started out with most of the usual cast of characters, although Rob and Chad were notably absent but probably already out ahead of us. Our ride out to the turnaround went smoothly enough with riders taking long pulls at the front and a gentle east wind making it seem particularly smooth and easy. At the turnaround we met up with the aforementioned guys along with a few of the more recent additions to the nebulous levee training ride "group." As the group got up to speed, I heard someone say "Let's get a paceline going." I thought to myself "Dude, this is a paceline." You know, a bunch of riders riding one behind the other with the lead rider pulling for a while and then dropping back behind the last rider. You know, a paceline. Of course, I knew what he really meant. He meant "Let's get a circular paceline going." Circular pacelines belong to that flavor of pacelines in which everyone is taking short pulls, just long enough to clear the rider who pulled off earlier, so that there's a double line -- one moving forward; the other moving backward. These are particularly nice when it's windy because nobody is without a wheel for more than fifteen or twenty pedal strokes, and it's really easy to just slide over from one line to the other when you get to the back. The key to making this kind of paceline work is for every rider to be especially smooth and careful not to do anything sudden, like speed up or slow down. Like so many things on the bicycle, that kind of smoothness comes only with practice, although it is sometimes, indeed usually, helped along by harsh words, gentle coaching, or both from the other riders. Today Rob and Chad were both busy offering tips of the "gentle coaching" variety. It was good.

The only problem with circular pacelines is that they require a lot of road, especially if there's a crosswind. On the levee bike path with its 5-foot wide lanes, a circular paceline, even without the crosswind, is going to occupy both lanes for sure. This would be fine were it not for the occasional pedestrians and oncoming cyclists around which the group has to maneuver. With the whole group in a double line, there's not much room available when everyone needs to momentarily squeeze into a single 5-foot lane, and it's made even more difficult by the fact that the riders near the back often can't see much, if anything, of the road ahead. Of course, it does keep everyone on his toes, and this kind of close-quarter group riding makes for a good introduction to faster group rides and races in that it lowers the "panic" factor that sometimes results in an ill-advised grab for the brakes and subsequent pile-up in the local criterium.