Road Cycling - Double pace line Question

Last week for the first time i participated in a double pace line. The group ride on Wednesday has grown over the years and last wednesday in a slight cross wind the 12 riders we were over the center line. A double pace line was suggested. No one in the group had ever done it and only two had seen it on TdF coverage. We got it working eventually

QUESTION:

How do you make it work at the front? How long. Somehow it seemed natural to move quickly from one line to the other. If you stay in front for prolonged periods does it get jerky?

ERik

Disclaimer: I, too, have pretty limited experience with double pacelines.

Problem with a double pace-line is that it basically takes the whole lane, 2 rows of cyclists for the lines, 2 for drifting back.

Don't understand the time in front question. If you're trying to go fast, you normally stay there until you've cleared the last guy that pealed off, right? Say, 30 cranks? I guess in a double line, it's best if both lines are rotating off leaders at the same time, but jerkiness sounds more like a pacing problem.

One of the cycling clubs local to me has a good guide to group riding (http://www.woodlandscyclingclub.org/guide.pdf) on their website, and paceline riding is covered pretty well.

I saw two ways of doing in the TdF coverage.

1). It's really just one pace line, but the rides are falling off so fast that it appears to be two pacelines. They are only doing 10 to 20 second pulls and immediately falling off to the left. By then, the last leader is about a bike length back. So it's really just a flattened circle.

2) True double line with both leaders falling off. The left line falls to the left and the right line falls to the right. Note, this requires you to use the middle of the lane so that people falling off have room.

PBW

You mean an Echelon. This is where you have a cross wind.

Pretty basic - Simply fidn the spot where the wind doesn't hit you. There is a limit on how many can get in depending on the width of the road. The last guy is usually the called the 'gate keeper'

Once it is full you need to start another line.

The guy in front slides back on the side where he will shelter the group on his way back and take over the last position ('gate keeper')

Take note this should never be done in traffic. Very dangerous and illegal in many places.

Originally posted by Grendel
One of the cycling clubs local to me has a good guide to group riding (http://www.woodlandscyclingclub.org/guide.pdf) on their website, and paceline riding is covered pretty well.
Good reference!

Thanks for the link. What i was after was the "rolling paceline" or as someone above mentioned it is kind of a flattened circle. i have a better idea what governs the two front positions.

Erik

On our group rides, we routinely do a double pace line. But, riders don't switch from the right line to the left. Rather, when they are done with their pulls, the riders on the front separate to let the rest of the group go up the middle between them. (It's really just two single lines.)

We also take long pulls--5 to 15 minutes, depending on the fatigue level, headwind, strength of riders (weaker take shorter pulls), etc. Although quite a few members of the group are racers, we're not trying to run a super fast paceline (i.e. with really short pulls). The strongest racers usually take the longest pulls, in part because they want the workout.

The roads that we ride on (and German laws and drivers) permit our road possessing behavior (actually we're never that close to the center of the road). Only in heavy traffic, on the equivalent of a U.S. state highway, do we drop to single file. Getting honked at is a very rare occurrance.

I would imagine that our rotation system is "socially determined." Doing a right to left rotation would make conversation impossible as would riding single file. Es wäre gar nicht gemütlich.

Cheers,
Jamie

Originally posted by Mzungu
Last week for the first time i participated in a double pace line. The group ride on Wednesday has grown over the years and last wednesday in a slight cross wind the 12 riders we were over the center line. A double pace line was suggested. No one in the group had ever done it and only two had seen it on TdF coverage. We got it working eventually

QUESTION:

How do you make it work at the front? How long. Somehow it seemed natural to move quickly from one line to the other. If you stay in front for prolonged periods does it get jerky?

ERik

Well, when I think of a "double pace line", I think of the leading pair of riders usually rotate out simultaneously and generally the guy on the right rotates off to the right and the guy to the left rotates out to the left.

A "rolling pace line" looks like a "double pace line" but it is quite different. In a rolling pace line, the right line is moving about 2 mph faster thaen the left line. The person in the right line has to come off when the person on the left line drifts behind them (or the line will really collapse). This takes discipline from the group but it works very well at higher speeds because obviously the pulls are really short.

On a "double pace line" how long should the pulls be? Well that depends. Sometimes you will have 2 really strong riders just sit up front and pull a bunch of weaker riders along for miles.

A big thing to remember is to not pull too long. Many people after sucking wheel will up the speed a bit or even more than a bit. You need to come off with a bit of zip left in your legs so you can last out someone's acceleration pull.

Also riding en echelon (in a slant to take advantage of the wind) is not a good thing. You take up too much of the road. And if a person is in the rear of the paceline - they have the nasty option of either riding across the double yellow (and maybe not living) and not getting any draft.

Check out the following web site:

http://spiderman.novit.no/dahls/Cycling/paceline.html

It has a pretty good explanation of riding in various formation and animated graphics to show you how it's done.

There is a pretty good explanation on double pacelining (with an animated illustration) on this page too.
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Our group practices a rolling or rotating paceline as part of every group ride. We stay on the front only as long as it takes to clear the rider who just moved off. In fact as the receding rider's front wheel drops behind the pulling rider he announces "Clear!".

We also do regular paceline and group riding, but rotating paceline is the most fun. When things are clicking it feels elegant, like a ballet.

Originally posted by RainmanP
<snip> In fact as the receding rider's front wheel drops behind the pulling rider he announces "Clear!".

When things are clicking it feels elegant, like a ballet.

When is is really clicking you can see the grins start to form.

Thanks for the "clear!" tip. Might help getting them moving over.

But bigger problem is when a rider moves over and doesn't slow down slightly and the guy in the forward line then sprints to move past and in front and then there are gaps.

On wednesday's ride we did the rolling paceline again on some middle sections with slight crosswiinds and although we had some newbies "kinking" the chain I managed to ride 1kph faster than ever before over 80km
It is interesting that the majority of the posts only considered the paceline and double paceline but only a few discussed what i was asking about, the rolling paceline. Pacelines are wonderful but as Rainman says rolling pacelines are ballet.

My view is that the benefit of a rolling paceline (as opposed to a double paceline, which you originally asked about) lies in practicing for a team timetrial or for technique exercises in which you want to emphasize speed. And these definitely have their place in training. And, it might just be fun to turn 12 people into one well-oiled machine.

But, as far as a workout is concerned, we are all better off not drafting at all. Average speed is no indicator of the difficulty of the workout. A ride with a lot of hills will give a slower average, but a harder workout.

Ergo, a double paceline accomplishes one of the main reasons for a group ride: conversation.

Cheers,
Jamie

That's why we do some of each, slightly slower group riding for conversation, regular paceline for everyone to get a little extra work, and rotating paceline for fun. Our group's big activity for the year is the local MS150 in October. Although I am new, the group has ridden every one since something like 1989. The group rides it like a long team time trial. Some of us whose training had been disrupted were not able to keep up, but the majority of the group finished each 75 mile leg averaging over 20 mph. Not bad for non-racers. Ours is one of the better known and best organized groups. Others know this and like to jump into the line. Unfortunately, no one else practices like we do so it can be very irritating and dangerous. Nobody minds if someone wants to sit on. That's fine, just stay out of the paceline if you don't know what you are doing.

That sounds like a really cool group Rainman. I'd love to find a group like that around here... especially for the MS 150. For some reason they do a 100 and 50 mile legs here, not the 75/75 legs. 100 miles is always so much easier with a paceline, but none of the guys I ride with want or can do a paceline. One guy is terrified of them... and unfortunately, he always wants to ride in front. So I ride with him for a while (sitting on his wheel) and then try to take a pull in front and he just drops way back. So I just keep going at my own pace and let him catch up at the next rest stop. Shrug... not much I can do besides sit on his tire all day without pulling and that's no fun. :)

PBW

Riding in pacelines is considered an advance technique. It does requires special skills that must be developed and most of all trust has to be established in the group.

Each person in the paceline has a responsibility:

1. The leader - the leader has to be careful not to make any moves that will ripple down the line. That is this may mean taking some pot holes that he/she wouldn't normally take if they were riding alone. Further a paceline is not about speed. It's about cohesiveness. That is the leader has to set a pace the will not break the line apart. The speed has to be at a where the pace of the line is fairly comfortable for everyone in the line. Otherwise you'll see the accordian effect.

2. Riding in front of a person - each person in front of a bike in the line has the responsibility of taking care of the person in back of him/her. Because the spacing is tight in a paceline, there is little to no reaction time to avoid a crash if some goes wrong in the line in front of the person.

3. Riding behind a person - each person riding in back of a bike has to maintain a safe distance but stay in the slipstream of the rider in front of you. The person riding in the back must be attentive not to overlap wheels and not to fall back to far. A safe distance in a paceline is 6 to 12 inches. However, ride with your gut. You can tell how someone is riding and judge from that. Some rider's wheel is earier to hold than others. Been there, done that and and crashed because I overlapped a wheel in a line.

4. COMMUNICATE! - Handle signals, shouting commands, USE YOUR MOUTH. This is a cardinal sin with a lot of cyclists. They don't use their mouths to announce what their intentions are. And then when something happens, they are ready to get pissed off when it was their fault all along.

These are just some tips from experience I'm passing onto to you. Riding in a paceline takes practice and everyone in the line has a job to do. You can tell those who ride in a paceline often and those who don't.

When the paceline is working in synch as a unit, it is a beautiful thing, like a well oiled machine. Everyone benefits.
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Madcyclist raises some very good points. Here are a few more tips that apply to any paceline, single, double or rotating.

When learning to ride in a paceline a newbie should stay back a little farther, maybe 2-3 feet until they feel comfortable and confident, gradually decreasing the distance to 6-12 inches.

Because the view of following riders is obstructed, the leader is responsible for announcing not only his actions but also to announce road hazards. The leader should announce such things as "STOP SIGN!", "RED LIGHT!", "SLOWING!", "STOPPING!" "RIGHT TURN!" in advance of taking the action. This gives others a chance to open a little space if necessary and prepare to take action. For road hazards, yell out then point to the side where the "danger" is. For instance, "BUMP!", "GLASS!", "GRAVEL!", "ROADKILL!" "ALLIGATOR!" (not a joke in the areas where we sometimes ride!) etc. Pointing to the side with the hazard lets everyone know which side to avoid.

When a car approaches from the front, the leader should yell "CAR UP!". Similarly, the last rider in line should announce "CAR BACK!" when a car approaches from the rear. This is especially important for warning the current pulling rider not to pull off in front of an overtaking vehicle.

All such warnings should be repeated back or up the line to make sure everyone is aware and prepared.

We only ride rotating paceline on very deserted stretches of road. If there are any vehicles at all we ride single paceline so we can stay single file as needed.