Tomorrow, Tadej Pogačar and Mathieu van der Poel will ride the same two climbs twice and make completely different decisions about when to hurt.

The 110th Tour of Flanders hits the Oude Kwaremont (2.2km, 8.4% average) and the Paterberg (360m, 12.9%) each twice in the final 80km. That’s four above-threshold punches across 278.2km of racing, with the last Kwaremont-Paterberg sequence deciding who wins. Both riders know this. Both have the power. The difference between a monument victory and a blown finale will come down to when each man chooses to spend his matches — and whether the first pass left him any to spend.

That choice is the exact one you’re making on every hilly group ride. And you’re probably making it wrong.

Quick Summary: Flanders 2026 Pacing Breakdown

Factor	Amateur Default	Pro Approach
First Kwaremont	110-120% FTP, feels fine	95-105% FTP, deliberately controlled
Second Kwaremont	90-100% FTP, legs gone	105-115% FTP, attack-ready
Power fade	15-25% drop by final climb	Less than 8% fade
Cardiac drift	Ignored	Planned for
Glycogen strategy	”I’ll eat later”	Fueling between every effort

Race date: April 5, 2026 (tomorrow) Distance: 278.2km, Antwerp to Oudenaarde The lesson: The rider who goes slower on climb one goes faster on climb four

The Two Styles You’ll See Tomorrow

Pogačar and van der Poel don’t pace the same way. Watch them both on the first Kwaremont passage and you’ll see two strategies for the same problem.

Pogačar sits and spins. He’s a Grand Tour climber racing cobbled monuments. His Flanders approach, which won him the race last year, is positional patience. He doesn’t need to be first over the Kwaremont. He needs to be in the top 10 with controlled breathing and a cadence above 80. He rides the first Kwaremont at maybe 95-100% of what he could do, tucked behind teammates, letting the cobbles bounce everyone else into the red while he floats. His acceleration comes on the final Paterberg, when other riders have already overspent.

Van der Poel probes. He’s won three Paris-Roubaix in a row and Flanders is the Monument he wants most. His style is different: he tests rivals on the first pass, not to drop them but to read them. A half-second surge at the top of the first Kwaremont. A look over his shoulder. He’s measuring who’s breathing hard, who sat up, who’s already at their limit. That probe costs him maybe 5-10 seconds of above-threshold effort. But it buys information worth minutes later.

Both approaches share one thing: neither rider goes all-in on the first Kwaremont. Pogačar conserves. Van der Poel invests strategically. The rider who goes 110% on that first pass — full gas, ego-fueled, no plan for what comes after — is never either of them. It’s the rider who gets dropped on the second Paterberg and finishes alone.

The Cardiac Drift Problem Nobody Talks About

You’ve heard of cardiac drift. You might even monitor it on long rides. But most amateurs don’t connect it to repeated climb pacing, and it’s the hidden reason the second pass feels so much worse than the first.

Here’s the mechanism. You ride the first Kwaremont at 300 watts. Heart rate hits 170. Hard but manageable. You descend, recover for 30-40 minutes of racing at tempo, and arrive at the second Kwaremont. You ride it at 300 watts again — same power, same climb. But now your heart rate hits 178. Same output. Higher cardiovascular cost. That 8-beat difference isn’t fitness loss. It’s cardiac drift: progressive dehydration, rising core temperature, and accumulated fatigue shifting your heart rate upward at every power level.

The result? That second 300-watt effort feels 15-20% harder than the first, even though your power meter shows the same number. And if you went 110-120% FTP on the first pass instead of 95-105%, you’ve stacked an anaerobic debt on top of the drift. The compounding is brutal.

I tracked this on a ride last October. Local route, four laps of a 2.5km climb at 7%. Paced the first two laps at 270 watts, heart rate settled around 165. Third lap, same 270 watts, heart rate 172. Fourth lap, 270 watts, heart rate 176, and my legs felt like I was pushing 310. The power file looked steady. The experience was anything but.

That’s a four-climb, two-hour ride. The Ronde is four key climbs across six hours. The drift is worse. Much worse.

What 95-105% FTP Actually Looks Like (and Why It Feels Wrong)

The hardest part of pro-style pacing isn’t physical. It’s psychological. Riding a punchy climb at 95% when you know you can do 115% feels like leaving time on the table. People are passing you. The group is splitting. Your brain screams go now.

But 95-105% FTP on the Kwaremont — let’s say you’re a 260-watt FTP rider, so that’s 247-273 watts on a 2.2km climb — is a deliberate choice. You’re banking watts for later. The pros know exactly what they’re doing here.

How the math works on a 260-watt FTP

Approach	Kwaremont 1	Kwaremont 2	Power fade	Final Paterberg
Amateur (send it)	312W (120%)	247W (95%)	-21%	Survival mode
Pro (patience)	273W (105%)	273W (105%)	0%	Full attack available
Elite (negative split)	260W (100%)	286W (110%)	+10%	Decisive move

That third row is what Pogačar did last year. He was faster on the second Kwaremont than the first. That’s not superhuman recovery. It’s pacing discipline that preserved his glycogen and kept cardiac drift from compounding.

The amateur in row one lost 65 watts between passes. Same rider, same climb, same fitness. Just a different first-pass decision.

How to Steal This for Your Riding

You don’t need a 278km Monument to practice this. Any ride with repeated short climbs works. Your local loop with two or three punchy hills. A gran fondo course you’ve been training for. Even an indoor workout on a trainer.

The Repeated Kwaremont Protocol

Here’s a workout I’ve been running since February, borrowed from how I watched the pros ride last year’s Ronde. It’s specifically designed to train the restraint of the first pass and the commitment of the last one.

Warm-up: 15 minutes progressive, finishing at tempo.

Main set (repeat twice):

1. Kwaremont effort: 3 minutes at 95-100% FTP (RPE 6-7/10)
2. Recovery valley: 5 minutes at endurance pace
3. Paterberg effort: 90 seconds at 110-120% FTP (RPE 8/10)
4. Recovery valley: 8 minutes at endurance pace

Final block:

5. Last Kwaremont: 3 minutes at 105-110% FTP (RPE 8/10)
6. Last Paterberg: 90 seconds at max sustainable (RPE 9-10/10)

Cool-down: 10 minutes easy.

Total time: About 70 minutes.

The critical rule: efforts 1 and 3 (the first Kwaremont-Paterberg pair) must feel controlled. Not easy — controlled. If the first Kwaremont feels like an 8 out of 10, you went too hard and the final Paterberg will collapse. The first pair is setup. The second pair is the race.

I failed this workout four times before I stopped overpacing the opening set. My natural instinct was to hit the first 3-minute effort at 108-110% because I felt good and that’s what the climb “should” feel like. Every time I did that, the last Paterberg effort was 10-15% below what I could manage when I held back early.

It took deliberate, uncomfortable restraint on effort one to make effort six count. That’s the whole lesson.

The Cardiac Drift Check

Here’s a simpler diagnostic you can do on any longer ride with a heart rate monitor and power meter.

Pick two identical climbs on your regular route — same gradient, same length, at least 60 minutes apart. Ride both at the same power. Compare heart rates.

If the second climb shows 5+ beats higher at the same watts, you’re experiencing meaningful cardiac drift. That’s the gap where pacing mistakes compound. The larger the drift, the more critical it becomes to underpace early efforts, because the physiological cost of every watt rises as the ride goes on.

If you’re seeing 8-10 beats of drift? You’re also probably underfueling between efforts. Dehydration accelerates drift. Glycogen depletion accelerates drift. Both are fixable with a bottle and a gel.

Five Things to Watch Tomorrow (April 5)

The 110th Tour of Flanders will be broadcast from early afternoon European time. Here’s how to watch it as a pacing clinic:

1. First Kwaremont power play (with ~60km to go). Who accelerates? Who sits fifth wheel? Pogačar will likely be controlled here. Van der Poel may test the front. Count who responds at what cost.

2. The valley between Kwaremont and Paterberg. It’s about 2km of flat connecting them. Watch who soft-pedals, who eats, who’s already sitting up. This gap is where pacing failures become visible. Riders who went too deep on the Kwaremont will drift backward through this section.

3. Paterberg cadences. The Paterberg ramps to 12.9% average, with pitches above 20%. Cadence tells you everything about a rider’s state. If someone who normally spins at 80 is grinding at 55, they’re in glycogen debt. The riders with cadence above 70 on the Paterberg’s steepest pitches still have matches to burn.

4. Who accelerates on the SECOND Kwaremont-Paterberg (~15km to go). This is the race. The rider who can negative-split — go harder on this pass than the first — wins. It’s almost always someone who was conspicuously conservative 45 minutes earlier.

5. The attack timing on the final Paterberg. Van der Poel, if he has legs, will go on the steepest cobbled section with about 200 meters left. Pogačar, if he counters, will wait until the gradient eases near the top and use his superior climbing watts-per-kilo. Two different pacing strategies for the same 360-meter hill. Both valid. Both depend on what happened on every climb before this one.

Your One-Day Pacing Cheat Sheet

If you’re riding something hilly tomorrow — or any day with repeated short climbs — here’s the protocol distilled to its simplest form.

Before the first climb: Decide your target power. Make it 95-100% FTP, not your best effort. Write it on your stem if you have to.

On the first climb: Hit that number. Not higher. When riders pass you, let them. They’re borrowing from their own future.

Between climbs: Eat. Drink. Spin easy. Every flat section between climbs is recovery and fuel time, not socializing time.

On the middle climbs: Hold the same power. Watch your heart rate. If it’s climbing at the same watts, you’re drifting — back off 5 watts and increase fueling.

On the last climb: Now go. Everything you saved is available. The riders who passed you on climb one are the ones you’re riding past now.

This sounds simple. It is simple. But I’ve done group rides with 20 experienced cyclists and watched 18 of them blow the first climb and suffer through the last one. Every single time. The two who paced it right were always the ones still riding strong at the end — and they were rarely the strongest riders at the start.

The Tour of Flanders is 278.2km of the hardest racing in cycling. But the lesson it teaches is the most basic training truth there is: the rider who goes slower first goes faster last.

Watch Pogačar and van der Poel prove it tomorrow.

---

Based on personal experience with overpacing short climbs for years before learning restraint, cardiac drift data from my own power files, and pacing principles from power-based training models. Race details from Flanders Classics official route information and climb profiles from ProCyclingStats. You don’t need Belgian cobbles to learn this lesson — just two hills and enough discipline to go easy on the first one.