24hr race training

ddraver

Hi Guys

I have an MTB 24hr race to train for.To give you some background these are usually 45min-1hr laps as a team of four.

A) I ve worked on doing some long steady road rides since moving to NL but I'd like to do some short sharp efforts to better match the laps, which are near enough flat out (although obviously planning on doing it again, 3 hrs later). I'm thinking on doing hour long blasts after work but I was wondering if Intervals would be better

There are no hills in my bit of NL, could you suggest anything I could do to simulate some hills?

Any Tips welcome guys, I ve got no idea about this stuff really..

Cheers
DaveK

ddraver

Oh, I ve posted this in the road section because I have limited access to long MTB routes here and so much of this will be done on the roadie (plus road bikers tend to know more about this stuff than MTBers and digress into gay jokes less)

bigdaveskinnytyre

I've done a few of these (sleepless in the saddle and dusk til dawn) as part of a team, the main thing is recovery between laps and refueling.

The long steady stuff you're doing is fine but as you have identified yourself some speed work will help. Just throw in a couple of hard 1 hour or 90 minute rides into your training each week along with your long rides at the weekend.

To simulate hills get on the turbo, whack the resistance up and plug away so your heart rate / power is up where it would be on a climb. (I don't think there's that much point in doing specific hill work, X Watts through the pedals is still X Watts through the pedals whether it's on the flat or up a hill the only way to get quicker on the hills is to improve power to weight ratio)

I did no specific training MTB training other than testing my lights out off road beforehand but was road racing and doing TTs pretty much every week so my fitness was so much better than it is now.

During the event make sure you give yourself a variety of food and respond to what your body wants (If your body says nutella crepe at 3 in the morning have a nutella crepe). Make sure you drink plenty of fluids between your laps and get into a routine, cross the line, clean bike, eat and drink, get head down drink some more do next lap.

Most of all enjoy it, team enduros are a lot of fun, especially if you have an arch rival team to camp next to and abuse for 24 hours.

sub55

I have no experience with MTB 24 hr events or infact team 24hr events.
But i have ridden several solo 24hr time trials, which is obviously a completely different ball game. But given my experience in what ive done , would have thought that speed work is not one of your issues. Whereas endurance is . Then adding to that sleep deprivation and the riggers of riding off road , i wouldnt be overly worried about speed work.
Do think your team racing stratergy could be improved though. You say 45 mins on , 2 hours 15 off? I know the competitors who ride the RAAM as a 4 man team, (which again is obviously a completely different ball game), basically , split the 4 man team into two sets of two . Then two riders ride 30 mins each in relay for 4 hours and the other two riders get half hour to feed , three hours kip , half hour to feed and warm up . Then swap over. Im sure this stratergy could be tailored to fit laps and would off set sleep deprivation much better.

ddraver

Thanks Sub, I appreciate what you re saying but I think laps of one is quickest - I'm not sure why but I think that one can ride one lap faster at a time faster. As in the time for 2 laps don't equal time for 1lap x 2.

We usually move to one round of two laps each at night in order to allow people to sleep a bit but tbh I think this is a bit of a wuss out - the pro teams that win ride 1 lap at at time each

The difference between us at the RAAM is that we DO fall down knackered after 24hrs rather than 24 days...

The hardest bit for me is the lap on Sunday morning having scrounged a bit of sleep, I hope that some of my longer steady road rides will help with this a bit...