TRAINING TIPS By Race Elements

Training Tips | 50km Nutrition | 100km Nutrition | Climbing Hills

“There is no substitute for time on the bike, like time on the bike.” – Andrew Wilcher 5th outright, 2007 Noosa Enduro.

Andrew is dead right. The best way to training for mountain bike riding is by riding your mountain bike!  If time is an issue, and you find it hard to get onto the bike for hours on end during the week, then there are a few useful little tricks.

Long slow distances, during rides, are going to be more beneficial to you then short hard rides. If you have an option of doing 2 long rides a week or 3 short hard rides, drop the short ones and get into the longer rides. While the longer rides will condition your body, they will also allow you to practice your eating strategies.

The intensity while you are training needs to be relativity low. Try sit around the 70% mark on the flatter rides. In the hills, allow it to rise, but try not to max it out. If you stress your body out too much by always training at a high intensity, then the risk of burning yourself out will increase. Leave the high intensity for race day. We have some great riding programs for sale on our website, www.raceelements.com.au.

Strength training at a gym or studio once a week for 30 minutes at a high intensity, will give you measurable performance gains within 4 weeks. Over the last 5 years Race Elements have lead the way in developing programs to help time-poor riders get the most out of their training. You need to have a good amount of compound exercises to fatigue your arms and legs, as well as core strengthening exercises to help work on your chassis.

Essential Noosa Secrets:

A quick chat to local Noosa boy, Jeff Toohey, 3rd in the world for 24hr solo as well as Noosa Enduro bridesmaid for 2006 and 2007, it’s clear that there are some essential Noosa Enduro Secrets.

Here are Jeff’s top 5 hints:

1. Train on big hills – riders that have ridden the track know that some of the climbs feel that they are never going to end!  So, do your self a favor and get comfortable tackling long steady climbs.

2. Geax Mezcal is the tyre of choice – It’s fast, has a low knob height and grips up.

3. Pressure over Traction – look at running your tyres at a higher pressure. The speed-gains you will achieve, will out-weigh the better handling abilities of a lower pressure.  Just don’t crash!

4. Hard tail course – due to the nature of the course, a hard tail is going to be the faster bike. Hard tails can be set up to be comfortable by having a baggier tyre on the rear as well as a carbon seat post.

5. Grow some chops (side-burns) –  all great riders have chops!  David Harter, who was the first rider to climb The Mother with out stepping off, has chops.  Jeff Toohey has chops and he is No. 3 in the world for 24hr Solo.  Growing chops allows you more time for training too.

Race day nutrition is a vital element of having a great day on the bike.

An average punter will take anywhere from 2.5hrs to 4hrs to smash out the 50km Enduro course. This means you will need to drink at least 3 litres of water/sports drink, which can either be carried in a decent sized Camel Pack, or run two 750ml water bottles on your bike.  If you are going to use the water bottle option, then make sure to have support crew at the next check point to give you fresh bottles.  If you drop a bottle during the race, make sure you stop and pick it up!

Endura are the event sponsors, so they will be supplying their ‘sports drink’ at the drink stations as well as a gel in your race packs. You can start getting used to using their gear by using it when training.

Endura Optimizer will be the drink of choice for most riders for the 50km course. The blend of carbo’s and protein will keep the body from hitting the wall. Play with the strength of the mixture - find out what mix works best for you.

Eating while riding is a must! Your body only has about 90 minutes of carbo stores while exercising at a good intensity. If you don’t put some fuel in tank while you ride, your body will retaliate and start causing you to have cramps and headaches, make you uncoordinated, and extreme cases, it can lead to muscle melt-down.

To stop this from happening, make sure to have at least 1-1.5 g of carbohydrates per hour per kg of body weight - on top of your Endura Optimizer. For example, a 70 kg rider needs a minimum of 70g carbohydrates per hour of riding. This could be done by having 3 Endura Gels per hour - each gel contains 26grams of carbo’s, but I don’t know too many people that could take 3 gels per hour for a total of 2.5-4 hours. So, experiment with a mixture of gels, bars and other foods.

Your nutrition and hydration plans for racing a 100km Noosa Enduro needs to start at least 5 days before the event. You need to have all your tanks full before you get to the start line.

The amount of people that come into train at Race Elements who don’t eat and drink enough during the normal work week, can be a bit scary. To give your body the best chance of enjoying and surviving the 100km, make sure to start a strict plan of eating and drinking adequate amounts of food and water during the final 5 days leading into the event.

To ensure you’re doing this, have at least 1 liter of water per 25kgs of body weight per day on top of 1 liter of water per hour of exercise that you do during that day.  For example, a 75kg rider needs 3 litres of water per day, and if they had done a 3 hour ride during that day, then add another 3 litres – making their total daily consumption, 6 litres.  They may frequent the toilet many times during the day, but at least they are hydrated.

As well as turning into a fish, it is important that you to eat properly. Your goal should be to eat 5 meals a day, made up of fresh produce and minimal amounts of processed foods. The fresh fruit and veggies will provide your vitamins and minerals - so spoil yourself and hit the farmers markets.

It’s difficult to get your recommended daily intake of vitamins and minerals from food,
so get onto a good multi vitamin to fill any gaps in your vitamin intake.
 
Keeping your nutrition up on race day will need some planning and practice.  As mentioned above, aim for 1-1.5 grams of carbohydrates per hour per kg of body weight. Seeing that you will be riding for more than 4 hours, in some cases 9 hours, it is vital that you have a broad range of foods to draw upon. The body can loose the taste for the same food over and over again during the longer races, which can be a problem as it may discourage you from eating as much as you need to.  When your tank’s empty or low, you’ll hit the wall hard!

Here is a list of foods which the Race Elements/For The Riders Team uses while racing in these types of events:

• Sandwiches – honey and jam in bread rolled flat with a rolling pin - small and dense.
• Gels
• Energy bars
• Protein bars
• V Energy drinks
• Bananas
• Chocolate Soy Milk

If you’ve been over the ‘Noosa Enduro’ course or even looked at the scary graph depicting altitude you would have cringed as you realized that this is going to be a long day in and out of the saddle – all is not lost – read on.

‘Specificity’ is a key element to any training program and is not to be avoided if you want to make that important day in July a memorable one – for all the right reasons. In short, ‘specificity’ is about doing some training that’s relative or specific to the task you are about to encounter, which in this case is ‘lots of climbing’.

Of course, there have been libraries written on ‘How to climb’ on a road bike but when it comes to climbing on a MTB the advice is not as easy to find. The long hours spent on the road or on that sweet piece of single track that goes down hill forever with the occasional undulation will obviously aid you to completion but ultimately it’s the age old adage – “Want to get better at climbing – go find some good hills !”.

To be more specific - lots of climbing to improve your technique, pacing/cadence and mental toughness.

Technique for mountain bike climbing is much the same as road climbing with a few subtle differences for surface changes.

Most coaches will tell you to keep your head up and try to focus about where you will be in about 10 – 20 seconds up the track and generally speaking this works. Some of the hills you will encounter such as ‘mother’ and other parts of the ‘Cooran Tablelands’ group are so steep that I find looking ahead doesn’t work for me as it seems to give gravity a hand to suck me back down the hill.

What does work for me is to look a couple of metres in front so I can see the terrain but at the same time concentrate on spinning the pedals around. This also relaxes my neck and shoulder muscles which is less taxing over long distances when you are climbing regularly. TIP: If you are going to use a hydration system on the day then make sure you train with it as an ill fitting design will knock your neck, shoulders and back around.

Finding a comfortable position for your hands can some times mean moving them from the grips to a set of bar ends, or in my case, in a couple of inches towards the middle of the grips. It makes me sit up a bit more and reduces the need to ‘choke’ the grips and use more energy.

On the road it’s a bit easier to sit back a bit on the seat and avoid hunching over which affects your ability to suck in some ‘o2’, however off road you need to get some weight on the front wheel to stop the front wheel tipping back so you may need to drop your elbows slightly. Once again small things in preparation leading up to the race like good torsional strength will benefit you on the day – the guys at ‘Race Elements’ may be able to help you here.

Cycle coaches will advise to move back on the saddle slightly to engage your quads more, but once again I find the opposite on some of the more steeper climbs and find myself going towards the ‘nose’ of the saddle – horses for courses !

Spinning – remember what Lance Armstrong does on the ‘Alpe De Uez’ amongst other climbs – he sits and spins, unlike his nemesis Jan Ulrich who seems to delight in pushing that big gear relentlessly. Lance seems to cruise effortlessly (the French called it ‘souplesse’) when Jan is grimacing the entire climb, and who is at the top first sipping a latte.

Getting back to off-road application, you will not have a choice on some of these tracks but to spin as you will lose traction if you push a harder gear. You will get the chance to stretch your legs and back at the top of some of the hills so why not move to one bigger gear just prior to standing on the pedals and gently swing the bike from side to side about shoulder width. Give it about two to three pedals (any more and you will risk ‘oxygen debt’) and sit back down. Remember if you’re standing, you are supporting your body weight which needs more muscles which needs more blood and therefore requires more oxygen. Pacing or cadence is more a choice then a technique particularly early in the race when you may want to keep up with the whippets –who may subsequently reach an early demise anyway. Group riders will often fall prey to this ‘must keep up’ attitude but in a ride that’s 100km you will have all day to catch up when those others may have realised their mistake – too late ! Last but definitely not least, mental toughness. Some have it, some want it, but ALL definitely have to work for it! Get out there, find some hills that may replicate the ones you’re going to be riding up in July and practice your technique, pacing and raise your fitness level. At the very least the technique/pacing mantra will take your mind off your cramping gastrocs, hammies and quads.

David Harder, after climbing ‘The Mother’ - clipped in, in 07!