Just to put Isaac's tips into context, the rides we have have been doing are specifically to get people to reach
PR mileage, so our paceline rules are a means to that end. He is not referring to your typical club ride or race paceline. This is a single paceline of a small group of people, most of whom have little or no paceline experience, who are all trying to accomplish a singular goal of helping the weaker riders and each other get stronger. So to do this we determine a pace that the slowest rider should be handle for the mileage we are pushing them to. I've found that most rules are universal but every group has different do's/don't's for their pacelines and very often they are not told to newer riders so the one thing we do before we start each ride is to just make sure what it is we are tying to accomplish and what the rules are.
-No eating or drinking-This is for the guy on the front. I encourage the group to not do it at the front because generally most newer riders tend to stop pedaling or at least slow down when their focus shifts to reaching for the bottle. So to keep the yoyo to a minimum and keep the front riders attention up the road where it should be, I ask everyone to not do it at the front. If you can reach your bottles and pockets and open whatever wrapper without slowing down at the front that is ok, but your at the front for a short period of time so there's no reason to not wait a few minutes. If you're that thirsty or hungry, no big deal, rotate off to the back and get a drink.
-The guy in the back calling "all on" - Again our pacelines are to keep everyone together for the xx mileage, the two places you generally see pacelines split are hills and turns. I tell the lead riders to slow the pace slightly after each of these to allow the group to get back together. While this may slow us down after the hill it actually speeds the group up overall because the slower riders do not feel pressured to sprint up every hill trying to stay on. They know to just get up the hill at their own pace and the group will be not too far away soft pedaling. It also keep everyone safe through turns because you don't have people trying to pass each other in turns in fear that they will allow a gap to open in the group and get dropped. I've been on group rides where every turn became a free for all as the single line exploded into a mass of riders trying to get through the turn and back on to the group.
-The guy in back calling "clear" before turns - Everyone is obviously always responsible for their own safety but I tell the group the guy in front is responsible for navigating the group safely, The guy in the back is responsible for helping him. For example, if we have a turn coming up the guy in back is responsible for telling the guy in front when it is safe from behind to shift lanes and start the turn.
-No aero bars or drops- I personally feel no one should ever use aero bars in a line. Your hands are not near brake levers in an emergency. As for the drops, again our lines are not concentrating on getting from point a to point b the fastest so using drops at the front will not make a difference in speed. Since we are generally pulling weaker riders and often times when things get tough and windy the front is rotating amongst the stronger guys/girls while the weaker riders just sit in. So I tell the group if your at the front you eat the wind for everyone else. Your at the front for a small period of time so eating the wind for those couple of minutes is not a big deal. To put this in perspective we ride with a strong rider who barely breaks 5 foot. On days with particularly nasty headwinds we have to ask her to just stay in back and play tail gunner because noone can get a draft off of her and the guy behind her is actually doing two pulls at the front.
-Pulling off to left/ right- everyone is correct this should be dictated by wind direction but some of our rides have in excess of 50 turns so I would constantly be changing the rotating side. When we get more comfortable working together as a group we will start integrating this but for now I am going with the "keep it simple" rule.
Like I said every group does things differently but these are the rules our little group follows to make sure everyone stays together and enjoys the ride. We've helped alot of people break mileage and speed
PR's because there is little to no yo-yo and everyone knows their role in the line and folows it. It often times feels like its a slow pace because you don't have that constant accelaration but its actually a very consistent speed and we often times end up with respectable averages above 16mph for metric and century paces. As we all get stronger and more comfortable working together we'll start working on the double pacelines and picking up the pace. But as a start with a group of riders where the majority have all started cycling in the last 12-18 months I'm real happy with how far our little group has come.