- Welcome back you beautiful people,
and today is a very special day, we got a special guest.
Oli Beckingsale, he is, three times olympian,
- That's the one
- Five national champs, so that he's won that five times,
and he got silver,
in a Commonwealth Games, in cross country.
Yes, Oli Beckingsale everyone. - You know the whole CV
- Yeah and he's done sixteen years of it.
- Sixteen years full-time.
- Of pain.
- Sixteen years of pain, you would've thought,
I would've decided to do something else at sometime.
- I know yeah,
- But hey,
- we're here.
- It's our lucky day, he's going to show us the ropes,
on how to go for an epic long ride.
(swoosh and crackling sound)
- Okay so it's not a lot of stuff,
I'll be able to teach Blake, about downhill.
(exciting rock music playing)
- And definitely, not jumping,
(exciting rock music playing)
But, all my years of cross country racing,
I've learnt, to able to ride more efficiently,
being able to climb as well as possible,
and it's those skills,
that we can get across into all day trail riding.
And these can help enduro, we got link the sections,
this can help the trail rides,
and even of course XC racing itself.
(deep breath) So we going to head out for a little ride today,
- Little one, yes
- Couple of hours
- Cup cup, right how couple yep
- Maybe three
- Three hours!
- Yeah
- Do you know I've only got one bottle of water,
- Ah, first case.
- Lesson number one,
- Lesson number one, water, food
- I'm going to learn the hard way,
- Yeah but we'll be alright, - Alright I'll follow you
- Cool, cheers
(Oli humming and whistling)
- Did you get snacks
- We got snacks,
- I didn't got, I haven't got anything.
- Energy gels!
- Energy gels? What are those?
(Oli laughing)
(upbeat jazz music playing)
(upbeat jazz music and keyboard playing)
- Big thing, with climbing,
is pacing, and gauging your effort. Alright.
So all the time you looking ahead and we saying,
well what's coming up, how longs the climb,
giving you some signs, how steep is it going to be,
and trying to work out the severity,
and how long it's going to take.
- Yeah
- Then the idea is then gauge your effort.
If it's a ten second climb,
no stress, we can just punch up it.
- That's what I do, I just go (whoosh sound effect)
- Then you're in your element, - Yeah
- All right, so you can use the power, get up it,
out the saddle, longer climbs, we want to sit down,
choose the gears that you need,
and just try and pace the effort for the duration.
If it's a
- Cadence is that the sort of thing you would do
- Yeah, so what we're looking to try and do,
is look after our muscles as much as possible,
during the ride. If we're looking at about sixty, seven,
seventy revolutions a minute.
So feeling strain on your legs,
you're not going to be able to do that for a long ride.
Two hours, three hours. A better cadence, eighty, ninety,
if you can.
- Sitting down, riding efficiently, relaxed upper body,
out the saddle's okay for producing power,
but it burns, loads of energy. So, short bursts,
longer than twenty seconds,
- Yeah
- Sit down and spin it out
- Right
Alright longer climb, the key is just getting up that climb,
- Yeah
- Saving on energy, a good one, is use your breathing.
All right,
- Which I don't noramlly do
- Yeah, so if you're breathing's out of control
- Too hard, for a long climb. So you want to,
be able to still have a conversation if you could.
- Okay
- All right, so going to rock on down here, turn left,
big climb and we got to have a chat the whole way up.
- How big's this climb? It's like
- It's five minutes
- Five minutes, oh that's not that bad,
I thought it was thirty.
- No
- We're alright
- I'll follow you then
- Cool (Oli humming)
(smooth upbeat jazz)
- How we doing there? (Oli laughing)
- I me, I think I went a bit too hard,
have you got that gel?
(upbeat jazz music) (Blake panting) (upbeat jazz playing)
(Oli chuckles)
- How did you do that?
- You rode it all wrong mate.
- So Blake, just smashed up that hill,
it was a five minute climb, gave him some warning,
but he couldn't help it on the steep part,
gut had just kick in, so it's quite a common mistake,
not to pace that climb, push too hard,
and although it might be faster in a section, overall,
it's going to be slower and it's going to be really painful.
- [Blake] Cause I died half way up
- [Oli] You died, big time - [Oli] You overtook me
- The other downside is obviously we just climbed up,
mountain biking, for most of us on are trail rides,
is all about descent. If we over paced a climb,
got it wrong, as we hit the top completely gasped,
breathing hard, when we drop into the descent,
to go and have a load of fun or racing, downside is,
we got to ride it slower, and all those tech skills,
that you've got
- Yeah
- You're not going to be using them when you can't see straight
- All out the door, yeah
- [Oli] All out the door
- [Oli] So it's about, start and steady,
- [Oli] finishing strong on the climbs,
drop us down, into the descent,
and then we can use all the skills, have fun,
whatever we want to do. Enduro racing,
if we paced those sections between, get to the top,
just about to start your section,
it means you're all on top of it,
energy can focus on the racing bit. That's the key.
(upbeat smooth jazz music)
- Look at that punchy ass climb,
- Acorn Climb,
- Why's it called Acorn Climb?
- Cause there's acorns around here
- When I used to have my training days
- This was the perfect training rep hill, alright.
Twenty seconds steep
- Yeah
- Cause if I was doing, it at fifteen twenty reps,
can't count
- Twenty reps
- Twenty reps, mate, but I can't count that much okay,
but I, make a little pile of acorns,
(Oli scratches in his pocket)
- Every time I finish one,
- You get a snack
- Throw it away - You get to throw it away
- Throw it away, wow, number one.
- Only one rep today though
- Only one
- Alright, but the key is to these short steep climbs,
this is right in your territory now,
you're a more powerful guy than me,
you can use that sprint power
- So about less than twenty seconds, you can power up,
we don't have to look, think about the efficiency,
sitting down bit. The fastest way to get up these,
big power out the saddle,
- [Oli] It's got loads of grip today,
so we can ride out the saddle, quite aggressively,
a bit more like a road sprint
If we've go low grip, you're going to have to sit down,
still full power,
Nudge forward a little on the front of the saddle,
to keep that weight forward a bit,
to stop the front wheel rising.
Another key one,
think about putting your elbows down towards your knees.
Pull your elbows to your knees, activates all your core
- Keeps you strong, steady,
and then that can get the power to the legs.
- But today, we can just go for it, full gas.
- I've learning all the way here,
and I've got power to do that, and so
- [Oli] This is your climb mate,
- [Blake] We start from here
- Go
- Go for it,three
- Ah, you got the jump on me,
- I'm not even clipped in.
(peddling and heavy breathing)
- [Oli] Nino power (laughing)
(upbeat jazz playing)
(bikes gears)
- Okay you (mumbles), whoa,
- Oh man,
- Alright, how you doing, feeling good?
- Feeling,
- Hungry
- Not so good here man,
- Alright so we at two hours in now, all right
- And it's really time that we,
we should've probably eaten already.
But it's now time for us to have a snack
- Long time ago
- So any ride that you're doing over an hour and half,
two hours tops, you need to get some food,
or some energy inside you.
- So I got some snacks, you got anything,
I can lend you a snack mate.
- Okay so some pro tips for you,
I'm getting a bit more technical.
We just stopped and had a gel, I had a bar,
that had about thirty grams of carbohydrate in.
- Wow
- Okay, so what we're looking to do,
you want to take on board,
when you're riding a long steady ride, like fifty,
to sixty grams an hour.
- Wow we've just missed one
- We've missed one, alright,
so we've got some catching up to do in the car.
- But it we have one of those,
so one of those is about thirty, so two bits of food,
and a food could be, a small bar, it could be a banana,
it could be a gel, like Blake just had, all those add up.
But if we're having that and taking that every hour,
on a long ride we're not going to have that energy low,
in the backend of the ride.Fluid wise, you want to have about
one water bottle, that's about 500ml, at least an hour.
More on a hotter day
- Yeah
- But if we're taking in the carbohydrate,
we're taking in the fluid, it means we're not going to get that
low in the last hour of the ride, we can finish strong,
and enjoy the descent. As soon as we start running out,
of energy, dehydrating, punctures, bad descending,
and the fun times end.
- (Blake whispers) I don't want that
(sound of bikes on a dirt path)
(smooth upbeat jazz playing)
(smooth upbeat jazz playing
(sound of cominng downhill )
(Blake's bike drifting to a stop)
- That was - That was a hell of a trail
- That was a good end right. - Yeah, yeah
(Oli breathes heavily) - Is there more of that
- There's more mate, we still
- Got another two like that,
- Really
- Proper trail, You were gapping me on those big bits
- Oh yeah, yeah
- But the thing to bare in mind obviously, cross country,
it's good to have a bit of a blast on the trails,
but we are about an hour from the end. Alright,
so bare in mind, you're not on your big downhill trail bike
we're on 130mm,
twenty niners, slightly light tyres.
So the key on those descents, is a bit of preservation,
we're still going to have a bit of fun, but big rocks,
big roots, try and think a bit XC, smooth line,
not necessarily tyres on the floor, but think smooth.
- Yes, right
- As soon as we've taken off those big rock jumps,
punctures, not just crashes,
we just want to try and keep things a little smoother,
a little Nino Schurter, less Blake Samson.
(joyful laughter)
- [Oli] Okay so we hear Blake here,
his natural style is to jump off pretty much everything,
you can see he's using the rock here, to kind of make,
a little gap jump, which is all cool, the downside is,
it's not so smooth and we're risking flat tyres,
and buckling wheels, so you can see on my style,
coming through, hopefully still carrying some speed,
but smooth, a bit more XC style, than trail center star,
bare in mind we still got, a long way to ride.
- Alright (Blake whispers) I've been told off
(Oli laughs)
- Okay so take it easy
- Conservation
- I Think is a good word for it
- And if we get again, again it's about getting from A to B,
as quick as we can, pace our efforts over the three hours,
- I'm going to follow you down - Keeping air in the tyres
- So I'll go first this time
- Yeah
- I'll stick behind
(Oli chuckles)
- It's good actually, a good key to know
(bike tyres)(smooth upbeat jazz playing)
(sound of bikes wheels and gears)
- So we made it,
- Through here cafe
- Survive, well I survived
- Cafe, coffee, cake,
- Three hours in the bag, and you got it done.
- Do you know if it wasn't
- When was the last time you did a three hour,
mountain bike ride.
- Aye I don't, without stopping, like on a caden,
not, I haven't, but
- But we did it
- But what I have learnt, a hell of a lot,
within those three hours, I've learnt a lot.
- So the key is today we did, we controlled the pace,
so the best way from A to B is steady speed.
Obviously we can't do that,
- All the time because we've got, the hills on the way,
so the key is just to try and stop the peaks and troughs,
of that effort, so on the climbs,
you trying to hold back a little bit, which we did.
And on the flats,
that's when we could carry some good speed. On the descent,
having loads of fun,
but just trying to keep our spikes in one piece
- But not have too much fun, because you got to conserve,
your bike, not yourself, but your bike.
- Conserve your bike, conserve your energy.
- Cause it's the long game. It's all about the long game
- That's what I'm learning to slow down,
(Oli Laughs)
- When it comes to long rides, slow down.
- So it's not about being a fun hater,
it's just about keeping, wheels round, air in the tyres,
gets the finish, the main this is we had our gel stop,
that saved your arse,
- Yep, this is saving me right now
- Yeah and now, it's the payback time,
but we got through it, main thing is, pacing on the climbs
keeping the breathing,
and being able to have a conversation,
some energy and water, taking in
and then just trying to stop those, unless it's,
little surges, on the climbs,
- Just when
- Steady, use the gears, so
- Yeah, yeah - But that was a great ride,
- So good, thank you very much Oli
- Cheers man
- And thank you so much for giving us all that input,
and you viewers as well, to help you gain a lot more,
you know, a lot more experience on going for a longer,
longer rides, out there. Now if you want to stick around,
and you haven't subscribed, cause you missing out,
on some rad, click that globe, to subscribe,
cause you missing out and if you want to, watch another epic,
ride or, challenge, click just down here for that video,
give us a thumbs like, and we'll see you the next time.
Well, how far do we have to go home?
- (Inhales) Five minutes, easy life mate. (Oli chuckles)