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- [Marc] Enduro racing is possibly the most complete form of mountain biking with
the downhills being as difficult as World Cup DHs, and they need the fitness of the
cross-country riders to ride the long days.
- [Neil] Not only do you need to be really fast downhill, be really fit,
there's also a lot of strategy involved. We've got young Enduro World Series star
Martin Maes to tell us how to do it.
- [Martin] Hey, guys.
- Tell us everything you know, Martin.
- Come on, let's go.
- Let's go ride it.
- So Martin, practice is a really important part of Enduro.
You're trying to remember the stages. How many times do you try and ride stages
before you race them?
- I would say I usually do one practice each stage because to me I think
it's more important to keep energy for the weekend racing. So I usually do one.
And of course we have the camera to help us to remember the stage,
but yeah, it's never easy to remember everything, but it's more like I try to
remember the profile of the race to pace myself on it.
- So you know that there's climbs coming up and you need to save some energy for
those climbs, that sort of thing.
- Yeah, exactly, yeah.
- Right, Martin, so here we are. We're on a section here,
it's really wide but also very technical. Is this one of the places you'd stop and
have a look and do a little bit on foot?
- Yeah, of course. As soon as I see something really tricky.
I always try to stop, and you can make...if you shoot a good line,
you can make easily one or two seconds. So I think it's really important,
but at the same time you know we have a few stages to practice, so it's important
to do not stop too often. Just as I say, when you really need it.
- There would be many sections like this, so you don't want to lose too much time.
- Yeah, exactly, you don't want to do a 10-hour day.
- So Martin, here we are, we've got a big liaison ahead of us.
A lot of climbing. It's quite long. How are we going to...what do I need to do.
- Wel,l I think it's really important to pace yourself and to
make it really steady, to keep the energy for the rest of the day.
And also eating and drinking and...
- What would we eat?
- It depends, really. I like banana and little snacks...
you see, if you go too fast, you crash. So no, I like bananas and all that kind of
stuff. Drinking not only water, of course.
- Electrolyte?
- Yeah, yeah, it's perfect. All that kind of stuff is good.
- What about resting? Do we want to be stopping for a rest,
trying to keep our legs fresh, or are we in a rush? Because
obviously you want time as well.
- Yeah, it's never good to rush, if you have a bit of time,
you can stop every 30 minutes and even two or three minutes makes a massive
difference, you know. So, yeah, I think in a long day like this,
everything is [inaudible 00:03:16], so yeah, that's how I usually do.
- I guess any energy that you can save here, you can use on the trail
to your advantage.
- Okay, so Martin, we're getting close to the top, so what do you like to
do as we're getting close to here?
- Yeah, as I'm approaching the gate, I usually do sprint, or
spin my legs, try to get in a routines.
- So you're trying to get warm, ready before you get to the top, or do you
get to the top and then try and get warm?
- No, before to get to the top and I usually like to be there around 15
minutes before my start time. So yeah, that's all.
- And it gives you time to prepare for what the stage might hold for
you and I guess you can rest and forget about the climb that you've just done.
- Yeah, exactly, it's important also to recover a little bit
and so I think 15 minutes is just perfect, yeah.
- This is the start of the stage, this is where the racing happens.
This is where it's won or lost. Does your riding change at all from stage one to the
last stage of the day?
- Yeah, I think, to me, it's really important to do a good stage .
Especially the first one because it set up your day after and all the stages,
so I might try the first stage to ride 90% of myself and then to build up
the confident to maybe 95% at the end of the day.
- Right, Martin, it's time to race. Three, two, one, at it.
- So, as you can see Neil is giving 100% his climb and he might be very
tired for the rest of the descent . So now you can see Marc is probably giving 90% of
himself. Sprinting when he has to, but he's kind of pacing himself after,
to recover better, and he might be way faster on the descent after.
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- Cheers, Martin, some awesome tips there.
- Pleasure.
- So most of your events are a two-day event, would you be looking
to maybe save a little bit of energy on the first day, ready for the second day?
Or 100% both days?
- I will say 100% on both days, you have all the night to recover
on Saturday night, so yeah, I always try to finish 100% on the last stage.
And yeah, give everything at the end of the weekend, yeah.
- [Marc] So that's it for how to race Enduro with Martin Maes, and if you would
like to see more videos with the pros, you should click down here to see how to
manual rollers with Brendan Fairclough.
- If you click right up there for my "How to train for Enduro,"
I could probably get some more tips from Martin for that one.
- Or click on me to subscribe to GMBN and give us a thumbs-up like.
- Thumbs-up like.