MOUNTAIN BIKE · Race Craft
ENDURO RACE DAY: PACING A WHOLE DAY OF STAGES
13 min · Full library · written lesson, video in production
The point
After this lesson you can plan and ride a full enduro day as one event rather than a series of unrelated sprints, budgeting energy, food and risk so your last stage is as good as your first.
Half the answer, free
The Technique
- An enduro is an endurance day with sprints buried in it. The timed sections add up to a small part of the day, while the day itself keeps you on the hill for most of daylight: climbing, queueing in sun or wind, walking sections, waiting for your slot. Most riders prepare hard for the racing and then get taken apart by everything around it. Budget the whole day like fuel, and treat the transfers as the event they actually are. Your job on a liaison is to arrive at the top of the next stage with as much of yourself intact as possible. The rider who wins on the day is very often the one who spent the least on things that were never timed.
- Transfer discipline is a skill, and it is boring on purpose. Ride liaisons slower than you want to and in an easier gear than you would choose, sitting down, spinning, at a heart rate where you could hold a conversation. The urge to ride the climb with faster mates has cost more results than any crash. Know the liaison cut-off times and plan to arrive at each stage with enough margin to stop properly: not so early that you stand in a cold queue and lose all your warmth, not so late that you roll into the gate with your pulse high and your plan unread. The convention among experienced racers is to target a few minutes in hand, then use them deliberately.
- Stage one is a trap, and it catches good riders every year. You are fresh, keen and surrounded by people, so full commitment feels cheap. Later stages are longer, rougher and far more blown out, and by then your grip strength, your eyes and your decision quality have all dropped, with decision quality going first. Stage times add together, which means a rider a couple of seconds down early but upright and consistent all day beats the rider who is fastest on stage one and then crashes, cramps or coasts home. So set your stage one effort at the level you genuinely believe you can repeat on the last stage, and hold yourself to it while everyone around you does the opposite.
Still under the glass
- Fuelling for the stage after next, the between stages reset, and the last stage call
- 5 more technique steps
- The 4 mistakes that undo it, with fixes
- The drill that builds the reflex
- The safety non-negotiables
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