Increasing enduro endurance: Essential tips for long rides

Enduro is not just a question of skill and technique: endurance plays a key role and helps us tackle long and demanding tours. In fact, the tours we take with our friends often last the whole day, and falling behind due to a lack of fitness can be frustrating. Today we will try to give you some tips to help you develop your endurance in enduro riding, so that you don’t have to give up halfway through the tour and make the most of the experience.

What enduro endurance means

Endurance in enduro refers to the ability to sustain physical exertion for prolonged periods while maintaining control and concentration. To understand this better, try watching an enduro or motocross race. Sure, technique is important, but do you think that riding a motorbike on enduro courses doesn’t demand energy from your body? Quite the opposite. From this we can deduce that improved endurance leads to better performance and reduced fatigue. This then equates to greater enjoyment during rides and above all a lower risk of injury.

We first assess our current level of enduro endurance

There are several ways of assessing our fitness. Each of us is more or less aware of the level at which we are. Sometimes all it takes is three or four flights of stairs taken quickly to know the unvarnished truth. But today we also have other, far more scientific methods at our disposal, such as a heart rate monitor that can be worn while running and that monitors the effort, allowing us to assess the course once we get home.

Of course, our fitness and endurance will not always be the same and we can also try to track our progress. We can try to note down distances, the difficulty of the route and record our impressions together. This will help us to see improvements should we decide to adopt an improvement path.

And how can we make improvements?

There are several useful ways, let’s look at some of them:

– Cardiovascular fitness: Try incorporating activities such as running, cycling or swimming into your routine. Aim for at least 30 minutes of cardio exercise. Ideally, do this at least three times a week if you can. This way you will really see results very quickly, with endurance in the endurance laps increasing significantly.

– Strength training: This type of exercise aims at the stability of the core part of the body. Focus on exercises that strengthen the legs, such as squats, lunges and deadlifts. Strong legs and core promote better control on the bike and will be very useful on your enduro rides.

– Flexibility and stretching: Regular stretching can improve flexibility, reduce muscle tension and prevent injuries. Think you don’t need it in enduro riding? Try putting yourself in the shoes of someone who isn’t lucky enough to be six feet tall… I assure you that leg flexibility is more than useful.

And we come to nutrition to help our endurance

It sounds banal, but a balanced diet helps substantially to increase our endurance during exercise, and therefore also our endurance during our enduro rides. The usual advice applies here, favour whole foods, lean proteins, complex carbohydrates and healthy fats. Before the enduro tour, a combined meal of complex carbohydrates and protein, eaten a couple of hours before the start of the tour, could be helpful. Finally, the super important thing is hydration. Whether water or an electrolyte-rich drink, equip yourself with a camelback pack to always have a source of fluids available during an enduro tour.

Mental preparation and concentration

A topic on which there is a lot of attention today is mindfulness and meditation to improve concentration. Try to develop a positive mindset, setting achievable goals and always keeping past successes or progress in mind.

Managing energy during an enduro ride

Start with a manageable pace and, especially at the beginning, avoid going overboard. Listen to your body and adjust your speed as needed. It is clear that when touring in a group, this is a difficult step, but it is vital to find your own pace that is sustainable throughout the tour. We advise against going out on an enduro tour if you are particularly tired or have physical problems of any kind. Not only will you risk not enjoying yourself, but you could also jeopardise the safety of the tour.

And after the day spent on the bike?

We know that after the ride there’s a whole series of motorbike maintenance tasks ahead of us. Washing, changing oil if necessary, chain maintenance, greasing moving parts are all things that need to be done. But let’s still take a moment to recover. To build endurance, recovery is essential. On days when you don’t go out, try doing a different sport that will prepare you for the day’s enduro. It will help improve your cardiovascular endurance and thus your performance on the bike.

Our guides are pretty well trained, they go to the gym to be able to sustain many consecutive days on the bike. We look forward to seeing you in Enduro Experience Croatia, the guys will be happy to share their experiences with you.

And you, what tricks do you have for increasing enduro endurance?