MTB

Tracy Moseley’s Top Tips for your First Enduro Race

Planning to take on your first Enduro race this year? These tips will take you from zero to hero

Enduro is the race discipline that’s taken the world of mountain biking by storm. It combines the technical aspects of downhill MTB, the endurance aspects of cross-country, the social elements of riding with your mates and the thrill of competition, then rolls it out into various stunning locations across the country and around the world.

One woman who knows all about it is the legendary mountain biker and multi-Enduro World Champion Tracy Moseley. She’s raced in Scotland, France, Chile and Canada to name a few, and if anyone knows how best to prepare for an enduro race, it’s her.

Tracy tells us: “Enduro is the discipline where you need a good amount of all the core mountain biking skills. It combines so many elements throughout a race weekend: you need the endurance to ride the practice and whole day of racing, technical ability to be able to ride the stages, and strength and power to race the stages fast!”

Enduro racing is challenging and exciting, and it’s drawing in more and more women. If you are planning on racing this year, then you can make sure you are in top shape through effective training.

What skills do you need for Enduro racing?

As Tracy says, the keys skills can be broken down into endurance fitness, strength, explosive power and technical ability. It’s a good idea to work on all of these regularly, with a particular focus on endurance.

If you are keen to make the most of your first race and give it all you’ve got, it’s really worth getting some time with a coach or personal trainer. They will evaluate your needs, areas of weakness, and time available for training and develop a program that covers all these elements, tailored to suit you.

Endurance Fitness

“For me, getting in some long rides to build up your endurance is key. At the same time, you can still be working on some skills and some strength work.”

Enduro races cover large distances and last whole days, and in some cases several days. You’ll need to be physically very fit to do this. Getting in plenty of base miles on a regular basis is critical, and for this, it’s worth hopping on your road bike or turbo trainer to get your body used to pedalling for several hours at a time as well as regular MTB rides. Look to be doing rides of two or three hours ideally four times a week. You should also aim to do one long mountain bike ride of four to six hours.

Learning to pace yourself is also a key skill. On some longer rides, try to avoid stopping for long periods of time, and keep a steady speed on climbs. You are aiming to find a speed you can sustain for several hours that still leaves you enough energy to manage technical sections.

Explosive Power

Being able to put the power down on the timed sections, combined with technical skill, will mean the difference between being first and being at the back.

Sprint drills are great for this. Pick a section of track that isn’t too technical, such as flat single track or a fire-road climb, and go flat out as hard as you can for 30 seconds. Then rest for one minute, and repeat a further two to four times. This can be a little awkward on some MTB rides, so you might want to do this on your road bike too.

There are also various dynamic routines and exercises you can do in the gym that will help, like the dreaded burpees, and kettlebell workouts.

Strength

Pushing yourself up long climbs, and riding in control over technical descents requires a lot of body strength, so you should look to build up a good base of muscle strength. Don’t just focus on your legs either, your core is important for balance and control, your arms will need to be strong to minimise arm-pump and fatigue. Building these muscles will also help you avoid injury.

Mini band work-outs for strength training

Aim to do around 1 or 2 strength focused sessions each week. These can be in the gym, but there are plenty of moves you can do at home, such as the plank, press-ups, bent-over-rows, reverse lunges and squats. Warm up gently for about 10-15 minutes, then spend around 40 – 60 minutes working on your upper and lower body, legs, arms and core. If you are new to strength work build it up gradually.

Don’t forget to work on your flexibility too. Remember to stretch regularly, and it’s worth thinking about taking up a weekly yoga or pilates class.

Technical Ability

Enduro races are by their very nature diverse; it’s one of the pleasures of racing that you get to ride a variety of terrain. Therefore you need to practice until you are comfortable riding on everything from muddy, rooty wood sections to loose, rocky scree and everything in between. Ride as many different locations as possible, and try to ride natural terrain as well as trail centres and bike parks. Don’t let the weather stop you either – put on your waterproofs and get used to riding in different conditions.

For some Enduro races, you’ll be riding the trail blind, so learning to read the trail ahead and anticipate what’s coming is key. This will mean you won’t often ride at a flat-out pace, and with practice, you’ll find a compromise speed that’s competitive but means you don’t keep crashing and losing time.

Finding flow is also something that will come with practice. By pumping the terrain, weighting and un-weighting into dips and bumps, you can generate momentum without expending energy through pedalling which might just give you the edge in a race. Local pump tracks or BMX tracks are brilliant for getting the hang of this skill.

It’s also worth practising riding technical sections when tired. A good drill for this is to find a short circular section with a climb and descent. Go hard up the climb, then straight into the descent, and keep repeating!

Tracy’s Tips for keeping on top of your Enduro Race Training

1. Spend some time planning the races you want to do, and setting yourself some goals along the way to keep the motivation high.

2. Work on any rehab you need to for any injuries you have sustained previously

3. Eat well and try and stick to a good routine of eating

4. Make sure your bikes are set up correctly to make the whole process of getting out easier and more enjoyable.

5. Get stuck in and get the work done!

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Tracy Moseley

Where to Ride MTB

Eastern Unknown: We Discovered A Trail Paradise In Switzerland

Finding new and exciting adventures in Europe's secret biking gem....

Beyond smuggling ourselves in on cable cars from over the border for a smash and dash on the fearsome Champery World Champs track, or transferring from Geneva down to the French mainstays, Switzerland is a place we’ve largely kept our noses out of.

Put off by the airport caviar bars, hordes of suited business types and hefty exchange rate, we were pretty happy leaving it be and finding our thrills in other bits of Europe. We’d written it off as too expensive and best left alone. However, when Swiss tourism got on the phone and told us how wrong we were, we decided it was finally time to take the plunge.

Former 4X World Champs medallist Luke Cryer and back-wheel-lover Nikki Whiles drove over from Crankworx Les Gets to join us as we headed away from the bikeparks of the Portes du Soleil and to see what the Eastern edge of the mountainous crown of the Alps has to offer.

Ticino

Locarno was our first port of call. Nestled in Ticino, the only Italian speaking province of Switzerland, on the shores of Lago Maggiore, it’s a popular holiday spot for Swiss nationals looking to escape from the chilly mountains for some Southern European heat.

We stayed in Hotel La Campagnola, a small way up the imposing slopes of Monte Tamaro, the site of Greg Minnaar’s 2003 World Championships win. His triumph occured in the bike park around the other side of the mountain but on the Locarno side it’s singletrack paradise.

“Be nice to people, respect your responsibilities and have a good time!”

On the first day we took the public bus to the top of the Alpe di Neggia pass. The ride was free thanks to the Ticino Ticket that comes with any hotel room – just strap your bike on the back at the bottom stop and it shuttles you up to the top. Our goal was the Carbon trail, at 8 km long and with more than a kilometer of vertical, it’s a 30 minute wild ride.

Open turns at the top soon give way to flat-out straights that hasten you into safety-pin switchbacks. Fleeting glimpses of the enticing lake shore rising up to meet you, encourage you to keep the hammer down all the way.

Nikki and Luke start to get playful, searching for high and low lines on each corner, trading places and buffeting dust upwards in each other’s faces. You have to admire the amount of work that’s gone into this one trail that costs nothing to ride – skinnies on the side to stop and play on, levees crossing rivers to keep winter meltwater at bay and, down the bottom, a staircase of chopped up logs that drop you into the town.

It’s a trail that needs a few runs to perfect but luckily Stefano, the hotel owner, was happy to oblige. A Swiss national, he moved to America in his twenties to become a professional poker player. He’s ended up the landlord of this plush set up after somebody bet their ranch against him… and lost. He runs a shuttle service for mountain bikers and takes about a third of the time of the bus, straddling lanes and chucking it into the hairpins faster than we would come down them. But this is a man who has rolled on the biggest tables in Vegas, he thinks of risks a bit differently to us.

Stefano is a generous host too. It’s his wife’s birthday and he invites us along to the party. A Tom Waits tribute act serenades us, jugs of beer are brought to the table and Stefano holds court extolling his opinions on ebikes (good) and Brexit (good) and giving us his three rules for life: “Be nice to people, respect your responsibilities and have a good fucking time!”

Slightly bleary-eyed the next day we spend a morning chilling by the lake and shooting some extra footage. It’s the closest you’re going to get to a beach break in Switzerland so you may as well enjoy it! Watching the tourist boats on the lake and enjoying a refreshing Gazzosa ticinese is a great way to rest battered bodies and livers before heading up to our next destination.

Davos

We’d heard of Davos mainly due to the Enduro2 race that moved from Les Arcs to the Swiss resort a couple of years ago. Les Arcs is one of our top Alpine resorts so we knew we could be on to a winner here.

It was a two hour drive North but what a drive it was! Sweeping hairpins on roads as smooth as a dolphin’s back, then down valleys entombed by daunting peaks to arrive just over the hill from Lenzerheide.

Sitting at 1,500 metres, Davos is a major ski resort that’s yet to feel an influx of British mountain bikers but is well loved by Germans and the Swiss. With six cable cars, 27 marked routes and a separate bike park we were never going to be able to hit it all in the 48 hours we had available but there’s definitely potential to spend a week or longer here.

“IT’S A BATTLE TO KILL SPEED THROUGH ZIG-ZAGGING CORNERS BEFORE DROPPING INTO WIDE OPEN FOREST TRAILS WITH A HOPSCOTCH OF ROOTS TO PICK LINES THROUGH.”

It’s a trail and enduro focussed area with most descents taking more than 10 minutes to complete. There’s no lack of technicality but you’ll feel like a bit of a wally if you turn up with a downhill bike. The highlight of it all has to be the Bahnen tour. A mapped out route that uses a number of chairlifts to get you 10,000 metres of descending over 86km. It can be done in a day if you’re really pushing or spread over two and taken a bit more chill.

This is high Alpine riding at its finest as rocky trails cut through meadows, along ridgelines and down steep rooty forests. It feels totally unspoilt and the trails at the top were deserted when we rode them so early in the season. A highlight comes along at the Rinerhorn ridgeline overlooking Davos itself, hucking in off the fireroad, it’s a battle to kill speed through zig-zagging corners before dropping into wide open forest trails with a hopscotch of roots to pick lines through.

The Bahnen tour overlaps with the Davos Epic trail, Switzerland’s only recognised IMBA Epic trail. At 45km long, it’s a proper backcountry experience that we’d love to go back and hit properly with a bit more time.

Instead, we had our sights on the bike park and the Gotschna freeride trail on the Prince mountain (so-called because Prince Charles’ bodyguard died in an off-piste avalanche testing if it was suitable for the Prince to ride).

The trail is full of wallrides, table tops and some of the most impressive woodwork we’ve ever seen. There are plenty of black options to get loose on and progress. The bike park definitely isn’t the focus of Davos (there’s probably half a day’s worth of riding in total) but as a way to wind down after a long few days in the saddle, throwing shapes and flowing through the tarmac-smooth berms isn’t a bad way to finish the trip.

And so our eyes have been opened to Switzerland. In 72 hours we had everything from summit-to-shore riding to backcountry epics. It’s still not cheap but for the complete riding experience, we’ve not found many spots that offer as much as this.

The Details

HOTELS

Locarno – Hotel La Campagnola
Davos – Hard Rock Hotel Davos

TRANSFERS

Carbon Trail – Autopost bus – travel free with Ticino Ticket, bike extra
Bahnen trail/Gotschna freeride – Lift pass included with a hotel room stay

OTHER ACTIVITIES

Ticino – Boat trips, Ponte dei Salti, great food and wine. More info.
Davos – Wakeboarding, hiking, golf. More info.

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MTB

Tracy Moseley’s Top Tips for your First Enduro Race

Planning to take on your first Enduro race this year? These tips will take you from zero to hero