The 2026 E3 Saxo Classic hits the Oude Kwaremont twice.

That’s new. Previous editions sent the peloton over Flanders’ most famous cobbled climb once and moved on. This year’s redesigned route doubles back, adding a second Kwaremont ascent plus the brand-new E3-Col, a purpose-built climb that dumps 35 extra kilometers of ascending into the final phase of the race. On March 27, the peloton will face a finale that tests repeated-effort capacity over raw punch.

And that’s exactly the pacing problem most amateurs get wrong.

Quick Summary: What the 2026 E3 Route Changes

Feature	2025 Edition	2026 Edition
Kwaremont ascents	1	2
New climbs	None	E3-Col added
Extra final climbing	—	~35km additional
Race dynamic	Single selection point	Repeated attrition
Favors	One-punch attackers	Repeated-effort specialists

Race date: March 27, 2026 Key absence: Pogačar and Van Aert both missing Heavy favorite: Mathieu van der Poel

Why the Double Kwaremont Matters

The Oude Kwaremont is 2.2km at an average of 4%, with pitches hitting 11% on the cobbled sections. That’s not a mountain. It’s not even particularly long. But it’s the kind of climb that punishes overambition in a way that a 20-minute Alpine ascent doesn’t.

Short, steep, cobbled climbs have a specific pacing trap: they feel manageable at the bottom. You start strong because you can see the top. The effort horizon is close. Just two minutes of hard riding, maybe three — and your brain says go for it. So you push 10% over threshold. Maybe 15%. You crest the top breathing hard but okay. No problem.

Except now you have to do it again 40 minutes later.

That second ascent hits different. Not because the climb changed. Because you did. That 10% overshoot on the first Kwaremont cost glycogen you won’t recover, created muscular fatigue that compounds, and pushed your heart rate to a ceiling you’ll reach faster next time. The second climb is physically identical. Your body isn’t.

This is the exact scenario the 2026 route was designed to create at the pro level. And it mirrors what happens to amateur riders on any hilly route, every single weekend.

The 10% Rule: Why Small Overpacing Compounds

Here’s a number that changed how I think about pacing on repeated climbs. If you ride a 3-minute climb at 10% above your sustainable threshold, you accumulate roughly 40-50 seconds of “anaerobic debt” that takes 8-12 minutes of easy riding to clear. That’s from work by Andrew Coggan and Hunter Allen in Training and Racing with a Power Meter — their W’ (W-prime) model, which tracks how much anaerobic capacity you’ve burned and how fast it recovers.

On a single climb, no big deal. You recover on the descent and the next flat section.

On two climbs separated by 30-40 minutes of racing? The math gets ugly. You never fully clear the debt from climb one. You arrive at climb two with a smaller anaerobic tank. That 10% surplus you could afford once? Now it’s a 10% deficit.

I learned this the hard way at a local spring race last year. Four climbs over 90km. Hit the first two too hard — not wildly, just enthusiastically. By climb three my legs were answering questions I hadn’t asked. Climb four was survival. Finished seven minutes slower than a training partner who rode all four climbs at the same power, 10-15 watts below what I started at.

Same fitness. Different pacing. Seven minutes.

What the Pros Will Show You on March 27

Without Pogačar and Van Aert in the startlist, the E3 Saxo Classic shapes up as a race for repeated-effort specialists rather than pure explosive attackers. Van der Poel is the clear favorite, and his strength has always been that he can go hard repeatedly without paying the compounding tax that buries other riders.

Watch how the top riders approach the first Kwaremont. The smart ones will sit in, conserve position, and let others surge. They’ll climb at 95% of what they could do, saving the extra 5% for a moment when it matters more. The ones who attack the first Kwaremont with everything are making a bet — that they’ll create enough of a gap to survive the second ascent on fumes. Sometimes that bet pays. Usually it doesn’t.

The E3-Col adds another variable. It’s a new climb, so nobody has historical data on it. But 35km of extra climbing in the finale means fatigue will be higher when the second Kwaremont arrives. Any pacing error on the first ascent gets amplified by the cumulative load of the E3-Col in between.

This is a race worth watching specifically for the tactical education. You won’t be riding the Kwaremont anytime soon (probably), but the dynamics translate directly to your local hilly road race or gran fondo.

How to Pace Repeated Punchy Climbs: A Practical Protocol

Step 1: Know Your Numbers

You need a repeatable power target for 2-4 minute efforts. Not your max — your repeatable ceiling. There’s a meaningful difference.

If your FTP is 250 watts, your theoretical max for a 3-minute effort might be 330-350 watts. But your repeatable 3-minute power — what you can do five or six times in a ride with partial recovery between — is probably 290-310 watts. That gap between max and repeatable is where pacing disasters happen.

Test this. Do a workout with five 3-minute efforts at decreasing rest intervals: 10 minutes rest, 8, 6, 4, 2. Track the power you can hold on the fifth effort. That’s your repeatable ceiling. Target that on every climb, not just the first one.

Step 2: Pace Off RPE, Not Just Power

Power meters don’t lie, but they can mislead on short climbs. You hit 340 watts on a 3-minute cobbled climb and think that felt fine. It did feel fine — because adrenaline, because fresh legs, because the group surged and you went with it. The data looks clean.

But RPE (rate of perceived exertion) integrates more information than a power meter. If climb one felt like 7/10 at 340 watts and climb two feels like 9/10 at 320 watts, your body is telling you something the numbers alone miss. Trust the RPE. When the effort rating climbs while power drops, you overpaced earlier.

I use a dead-simple RPE rule on repeated climbs: if the first climb feels easier than a 7 out of 10, I’m going too hard. That sounds backwards. But if climb one feels easy, you’re either not pushing enough (unlikely on a race or hard group ride) or you’re not yet feeling the cost. The cost arrives later.

Step 3: Negative Split the Climbs

This is counterintuitive and almost nobody does it. Ride the first climb at 90-95% of your target. Ride the last climb at 100-105%.

The logic: on the first climb, everyone else is going hard. You’re going to feel like you’re losing ground. You might actually lose a few seconds. But those few seconds buy you a much bigger anaerobic reserve for later, when everyone else is paying for their early enthusiasm.

Negative splitting repeated climbs works because fatigue is nonlinear. The difference between 95% effort and 100% effort on climb one is maybe 5-8 seconds. The difference between having a full W’ tank and a depleted one on climb four is minutes.

Step 4: Fuel Between Climbs

Every flat section between climbs is a fueling window. Not just water — carbs. If you’ve been working on gut training for race-day fueling, this is where it pays off. A gel or a few swigs of carb drink between the first and second Kwaremont could be the difference between cresting the second ascent with gas in the tank and cresting it empty.

The pros have team cars handing up bottles. You have pockets. Fill them. Use them between climbs, not on them.

The Workout: Double Kwaremont Simulation

Here’s a session I’ve been using since the 2026 route was announced. It simulates the repeated-effort demand of the new E3 finale. Works on a trainer or a road with a 2-3 minute climb you can repeat.

Warm-up: 15 minutes easy spinning, building to tempo in the last 5 minutes.

Main set:

Block	Effort	Duration	Recovery
Kwaremont 1	95% of repeatable max	3 min	8 min easy
E3-Col sim	Sweet spot (88-93% FTP)	10 min	5 min easy
Kwaremont 2	100% of repeatable max	3 min	10 min easy
Kwaremont 1 (set 2)	95% of repeatable max	3 min	8 min easy
E3-Col sim	Sweet spot (88-93% FTP)	10 min	5 min easy
Kwaremont 2 (set 2)	100-105% of repeatable max	3 min	Spin down

RPE targets: Kwaremont 1 should feel like 7/10. E3-Col sim should feel like 6-7/10. Kwaremont 2 should feel like 8-9/10. If Kwaremont 2 feels like 10/10, your Kwaremont 1 was too hard.

Cool-down: 10 minutes easy.

Total time: ~85 minutes.

The key insight from this workout: you’ll want to go harder on the first Kwaremont rep. Resist that. The discipline of holding back when you feel good is exactly the skill the E3 route is testing. If you nail the pacing, the second Kwaremont efforts should feel hard but completable. If you blow the pacing, the second set falls apart and you’ll feel it in the final E3-Col sim.

If you’ve been doing sweet spot work this spring, the E3-Col simulation blocks should sit right in your wheelhouse. The Kwaremont efforts are above threshold, which is where the repeated-effort challenge lives.

What to Watch For on Race Day (March 27)

A few things to pay attention to when the E3 Saxo Classic runs:

1. Who attacks the first Kwaremont vs. who sits in. The riders who go early are making a tactical choice, and it’ll be clear by the second ascent whether it was the right one.

2. Splits on the E3-Col. The new climb is an unknown. Watch how much damage it does to the group between the two Kwaremont ascents. If riders are already shattered before the second Kwaremont, the E3-Col is doing its job.

3. Van der Poel’s positioning. He rarely wastes energy on early attacks. If he’s sitting fifth wheel over the first Kwaremont and then accelerating on the second, that’s the masterclass in repeated-effort pacing.

4. Late-race collapses. Riders who went 10% too hard early will fade visibly in the final 20km. You’ll see it in the way they sit up, drift back, stop responding to surges. That’s what overpacing looks like at the pro level.

If you’re doing your spring classics preparation, watching this race with a pacing lens is free coaching. Especially with the new route adding an extra layer of tactical complexity.

The Amateur Takeaway

You don’t need to race the Kwaremont to learn from it. Every amateur ride with repeated short climbs presents the same challenge. Your local Tuesday night ride with four punchy hills. The century route with six categorized climbs. The gran fondo with that one 2-minute wall that shows up twice.

The pacing mistake is universal: go too hard on climb one because it feels manageable. Pay for it on climb three. Blame fitness instead of pacing.

Your fitness is probably fine. Your pacing might not be.

I spent two years blaming my FTP for getting dropped on the last climb of our Wednesday group ride. Then I started pacing the first two climbs 10 watts below what I could hold, and I was suddenly there at the end, riding past guys who’d been ahead of me all day. Same watts per kilogram. Better distribution.

The E3 Saxo Classic just gave us a professional laboratory for this exact concept. Watch the race on March 27. Note who paces and who punches. Then go ride your local hills and practice being the pacer.

Your legs will thank you on the second climb.

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Based on personal experience with pacing failures on repeated climbs and training principles from power-based coaching models. The 2026 E3 route details are from official race announcements via Flanders Classics. Your local climbs aren’t cobbled, but the pacing math is identical.