How to maximize your endurance and finish a 94km mountain bike race within 30 days!

I need to maximize my endureance and make sure I finish this 94km race and time flies! On the 12th of August (less than 30 days away) I am participating in the Vasa mountain bike race in the northern part of Sweden.

So what is the problem?

Well, the only “challenge” is that I have only been on a mountain bike three times this year and not sure there will be any more opportunities until I am standing by the starting line. In terms of preparation, I have not done as much as I should (or most people would think) and you can always do more… My intention is to finish the race and doing it without killing myself and still manage to get a decent time.

With less than 30 days to go, I have to make some changes to my exercise regime as I have not been as consistent as I would have wanted, especially when it comes to biking and doing longer (time wise) sessions. Over the last 6 months, only one session has been longer than 2 hours and less than a handful have been longer than 1 hour and the race will probably take around 5 hours to complete so not ideal.

Over the next few weeks, I intend to do what works best (without spending +3h per day as that is not my priority) for the ones who know what they are doing, the professionals. When going through some articles and blogs, it seems like there are a few things that resonate with me and my view of efficient exercises (most of my sessions at the gym last for no more than 30 min but they are intense and almost without any rest).

In general, the 80/20 rule seem to work for most athletes – approximately 80% of their time is spent on “easier” endurance training and 20% very (extremely hard) training. There are even studies of Kenyan marathon runners stating that 85% of their weekly exercise was BELOW their threshold (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12569219).

High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) is the part I’ll be focusing on together with lowering my pace a bit during my runs to get closer to the 80/20. The HIITs will most likely be sprints at different distances and a maximum of 500m*10. I will also try to include at least 2 – 3 sessions of +2h bike rides over the next couple of weeks.

This together with leg exercises at the gym and nutritious food (check out our Health section) should take me all the way to the finish line in a decent time and without too much pain 🙂

So basically, just model the ones who have done it and are still doing it and make sure you keep your pulse in check and you should be able to finish a race that lasts for about five hours. If not, have a closer look at our blog and copy our lives and you’ll see that if you have balance in terms of exercise and food, you will easily be amongst the top 20% in most physical sports.

Set your goals and make it easy to reach them (even if most will think they are hard to reach, that makes it even more fun!!)