Speaker 1: Endurance, it's a big part of cycling. Whether that's riding 50 miles,
100 miles, or even the Tour de France. Now, the spirit of endurance is taking hold
more and more, pushing ourselves further and harder. I'm no stranger to suffering but
Mark Beaumont and Laura Penhaul are absolute experts on the subject, fresh from writing
the GCN book on the subject. Here are their six pillars on how to improve your endurance.
[music] Laura Penhaul: Mindset is one of the
first chapters. You have to start with the mindset because we automatically jump into physical
training, which is what we know about. There are plenty of resources out there to head to but we
tend to take the mental aspect for granted when really, in endurance, this is what gets challenged
the most, I would say. Endurance is the biggest arena, which exposes yourself to self-awareness
and really strips you back to your raw behaviors. It strips you bare mentally. It really takes you
to the depths. If you're going to be going to the well, it's worth laying down some foundations in
preparation and ensuring you have a few tools in your toolkit to draw on when things get tough.
For me, I think it's about knowing. You need to know the why behind what you're doing so
that when things do get difficult, you have a really strong desire and motivation to know
why it's worthwhile, why you're there, and really get that purpose behind your actions will help
you to lead to a consistent engagement. There's other tools in the toolbox that you
can have such as focusing on your breathing or recognizing what our emotions or behaviors are
in response to how we perceive an event. All of these points, we've tried to capture in this
chapter, which is why I think it's so important because it's often the bit that gets overlooked.
Mark Beaumont: The reason that Laura and I agreed to put the mindset and the psychology
early on is that I think it's worth questioning why you go for long rides, why you push your
ability. Why not just do comfortable carefree rides? Why not just make it easy? I think
at the heart of that is that everyday life is pretty straightforward for most of us. Sure,
there's things to juggle with, family, work, and finances but, ultimately, there's not a lot
in modern living that really tests us, makes us figure out what we're made of. There's
something about endurance where you can go out and really pit yourself against the difficult.
The psychology is a reaction to the comfortable every day. The fact that life often doesn't test
us enough, therefore, we want to go out and find that stretch. At the heart of wanting to
do something difficult is a sense of living life with one eye in the mirror and going, "What is it
that's going to give me those life-affirming rides? The stuff that I'm going to look back
on really fondly." Also, reflecting on what a challenging period it's been for planet earth.
That endurance mindset, that bit of grit and resolve sets you up pretty well for everyday life.
I don't think it's too glib at all to say that if you push yourself hard as an athlete, then,
you're going to find that process and that determination and that mindset around just
knowing what a hard mile is. Pretty useful when it comes to stuff off the bike as well.
[music] Laura: Body and set up is one
of the biggest areas that we then want to look at. Again, to help to prepare us and prevent a
poor performance when we're looking at endurance. What do we mean by that? The biggest thing for us
usually around set up is looking at your bike set up. I know Mark's got some great points on this
in the book about how, actually, he's ridden for years not having looked at his bike set
up but that was one of the first things we did when we were doing around the world in 80 days.
Endurance has become more and more popular over the last decade. With that,
has meant that bikes have evolved as well, meaning there's a lot more to choose from. That
looking towards the specificness of endurance is meaning that actually, endurance is going towards
more of a comfort because you're going to need to sit in that saddle and on that bike for many more
hours. It's less about the aerodynamic and the performance nature and it's more about comfort.
Your first key things to look at when you're heading out to start to do endurance riding is
the type of bike that you're getting. Think about also your saddle, your saddle height,
and saddle being for comfort but even then, you need to try some different ones for longer rides.
Also, alongside that saddle is about that saddle height, the position it puts your feet in,
your knees in, the position it puts you on your front end. Saddle and saddle height is key.
Your- -cleat position is key. You got to think your feet are locked into those pedals, and
they're going to be doing a number of revolutions. Again, that's something that often drives knee
injuries and niggles is about cleat position. Make sure you check that. Also, it can impact
on actually some foot soreness that we can get as well. Also, your front end setup. You're not going
to want that front end to be really low and arrow for performance when you're going to be in it for
hours. Think more about it might need to sit a little bit higher, a few risers on the front,
to give you comfort and to offload your neck and your upper body so that there's less pressure,
and you can endure your ride with comfort. There's different people out there that you
could look at but getting your bike set up just a tweak in your saddle height,
a tweak in your front-end setup might be the thing that needs to offload to prevent any injuries to
your knees or ankles, those sorts of things. The other thing to consider when we're heading
out for long rides is actually the endurance we want in our tissues, in our bodies. We often take
it for granted that we need to just sit in the saddle and kind of do the mileage but preparing
our bodies and conditioning our bodies for what we're going to be asking and tasking it to do
is key. There's some great stuff you can do off the bike that will help you to endure for longer
and prevent some of those niggles setting in. Mark: In terms of planning, I've always thought
that to make a massive leap in performance, to really shift the dial in terms of your endurance
bike riding, you need to take a quiet confidence in your own ability, a healthy dose of obsession,
and a really, really good plan. That last point, the planning,
I guess people by nature love to make it look like what they're doing is effortless,
of course, because style marks matter but being effortless as a bike rider in endurance doesn't
actually mean not making an effort. To the contrary, all that prior prep
allows you to cut the fast time during your ride, things like knowing your route,
having the confidence in your training and nutrition, having tested your kit choices.
This all adds up. Know all the things that work and all the other things that you need to think
about before you clip in. That's what actually makes you look like a pro. It gives you that calm.
What you don't want to do is to confuse this demeanor for not actually putting in the prep.
Be warned because it's really appreciated amongst your buddies to be a logistics bore. What
we're looking for here is a quiet confidence in everything that you've thought through and planned
before you start your ride. When it comes to cycling past your buddies with that poker face on,
hiding your effort, that can be good fun. But when it comes to pretending that you can actually
fall out of bed and pull off those massive endurance ride, you're only kidding yourself.
Prep like a pro and then you can pretend it's easy on the big day.
Training is probably the favorite topic for any bike rider to discuss, whether it's what you're
doing every day, how that's stacking up over the weeks and months towards the big event but
training can also be the hardest thing to actually prioritize in a busy work-life balance. I wouldn't
pretend to be able to have a off-the-shelf solution for all endurance riders because
the events you're training for are going to be so unique. If it was time trialing we were talking
about, that might be much more specific because to go 10 miles down the road as fast as you can,
it's very different from the entire spectrum of endurance events you might be training for.
In simple terms, endurance bike riders tend to test themselves really hard, train through
the ranges, use the turbo over the winter to push their top-end speed power. Do almost the opposite
to what a road racer, a crit racer might do, who would be building up over the winter with
the base miles and then sharpening their race towards the summer season. The reason that
as endurance riders tend to use reverse periodization is that we want to really
test ourselves physically and mentally over the winter months. Know that we've got a really big
range to pool from when we need it but when we get to our event, we're riding well within ourselves.
The wonderful thing about insurance you don't need to go looking for it, it will find you
somewhere down the road. What you're doing in that final two, three months towards the event is
you're actually slowing it right down, doing your much, much longer rides and building the
conditioning. That's just being used to be on the bike for a lot, lot longer periods,
building up what it feels like on your neck, your hands, your feet, your backside. That conditioning
is a completely different thing than having the physical strength to smash out the pedals.
Laura: With fueling there are some key top points that we would want to summarize that
you want to think about and plan for before you even head out for the ride
so that you maintain your energy throughout and you get the most out of your session.
Those things are first and foremost is hydration. What we mean by that is having a bottle on your
bike that's water and having a bottle on your bike that’s electrolyte. Depending on how long you're
going for, you may well also want to get some of your carbohydrates, so your macros, which we'll
come into in a second, into your drink as well. The second point, once you've got hydration that
you're looking at and thinking about what your intensity is, what your session is looking like
and the environment that you're in. If it's a hot environment, if you're going to be sweating a lot,
then those electrolytes are really key to have in your water bottle and your fluid replacement.
The second thing is looking at what we call the macros across your ride
and also the preparation for it. Macros are made up of carbohydrate, fat and protein.
When you're going into an endurance ride, it's key that you have the energy that you need to fulfill
what you're training to do and what the event is. Where we talk about carbohydrate, that's often
your bulk of your energy source but we also draw on the fat in our carb in those macros, which is
more of a longer acting. When you're cycling at a slower state, we will draw on the fat resource
that we've ingested. Then when you're wanting to push up a hill, when you're needing to put
the hammer down, when you're increasing that pace, you're going to draw on that carbohydrate store.
You want to make sure that you're fueling and that you've got some in the tank
before you head out to do that because it's going to be short-lived or it's going to be
ineffective if you're wanting to draw on those carbohydrate stores and there's nothing there.
Finally, with the protein that's absolutely essential for rebuilding as well and
protect our body both from an infection point of view but also
rebuilding muscle and tendons and all of those things to minimize our risk of injury and illness.
Then the final point but definitely not by least is micronutrients, which basically keep our body
moving and again, protect ourselves from injury and illness. Those micronutrients are where we
look to go for the basic of six fruit and veg at least a day and including some berries.
This is where we've seen the success of the vegan diets because basically they're ingesting
about up to eight, nine portions of fruit and veg a day and definitely having a boost in their
energy and their feel. Get those fruit and veg in. If you're going out on a ride, that can be as
simple as some dried fruit, which can also give you a bit of a sugar hit,
which helps with that carbohydrate and that hit for when you hit a hill. That might be
some mangoes or dried mangoes that is, or dried apricots. A handful of nuts can give you the fats
and it might be say a flapjack you've got in your back pocket to give you that carbohydrate. Those
micronutrients can come from having a banana. It can also come from those apricots or anything like
that, dried fruit whilst you're out riding. Keeping it simple, look after your hydration,
think about your macros, breaking it down to carbohydrate, your fat and your protein
and think about the micronutrient source that you're going to get
Recovery for any endurance athlete is the area that is most overlooked or out of balance.
When we start to underperform, we think it's because we haven't trained hard enough
so we train more and yet our numbers get worse. Then we think we need to train more again rather
than actually pausing and resting. At this point, there's a great quote from Peak Performance,
which is stress plus rest equals growth. What that means is without giving adequate stress
and just resting you're never going to grow. With all that sort of stress constantly, if you don't
rest you're just leading to failure, not growth. The word rest tends to grate on most of us that
love endurance training. I've just wondered, I've toyed with the idea of whether we change the word
so it's more in line with all the aspects of training. We do high intensity training,
we do low intensity training, we do strength training. What actually if we called recovery
adaptation training, because that's what recovery is, it allows the body time to adapt and grow.
The key points in recovery to really plan and think about is one, is planning your recovery time
so you maintain control. It's not forced on top of you and you think it's a last minute thing that
you have to do. It's planned ahead of time so you know it's coming and you can actually switch off.
Secondly, it's about your fueling. Make sure that recovery is all about what's in the tank
and it's all about how we prepare and protect our bodies with what we're putting in,
ingesting and hydrating. Thirdly, sleep is hugely important for our recovery cycle. Make sure
we're optimizing our sleep, you're getting the most hours, you're protecting the time and you're
getting the most out of it. Above all, there's definitely other adjuncts that you can add in.
There are the ice-cold baths, the compression socks, there's going to get a massage,
all of those things. Plan them ahead of time but don't compromise those three core things,
planning ahead, fueling well, and sleeping well. Mark: Those were Laura and my top pillars for
endurance. Of course, it's a massive topic. It’s so expansive. I'd love to know your thoughts. What
are the key things you think about to push your bike further on those big adventures? Remember
to leave some comments below. Let us know what gives you the skills to ride those big distances.
Laura: Give us a big thumbs up if you enjoyed that. Head to the description below where you
can find the link to get the Endurance book for yourselves. Otherwise, enjoy your endurance riding
and get out there. Enjoy your adventures. [00:16:05] [END OF AUDIO]