How on earth are the guys at the head of these categories so bloody fast?

Supposing you take your average weekend rider, send them on a diet, give them a £3000 race bike etc, how many years of dedicated training would it take for them get on the podium in elite/expert/master categories at events such as the Southern xc series?

I am just amazed at how fast and consistent these xc racers are.

2 years if you could be arsed- I gave a good go at sport last year with serious training from being a plodder. Now I’ve sort of plateau’d because I still want to dick about on bikes as well as go fast.

Essentially, I can’t be arsed.

dave henderson winning expert races after 3 years racing 2 in sport and straight jump to elite.

i moved up to expert after 1 season sxc – but had previously done(well) lots of endurance events on SS

The jump from sport to expert is quite a jump imho and will take alot of work to get to the sharp end of expert (for me anyway)

ive kinda gone stale in the xc racing cause my winter training was very biased towards endurance…..

depends what you have under the bonnet. you cannae polish a turd, etc.

i dont know but it amazes me too, i can only imagine that their training is very strict. They do what they have planned to do unlike my own rides which is based around work/social/weather/mood etc

Genetics…… 😀

Genetics + training. Might do some training next year.

Sport races start fast then settle down a bit, Expert races start fast and stay fast! It took me about a year from moving up to Expert from Sport to feeling “comfortable” with it and even then I was never much more than a mid-pack Expert. I did watch my diet and this was just after uni (so I’d had loads of time there to ride/train) and during a job where I worked week on/week off shifts (so again, loads of time to ride).

Eventually I got bored of the competitiveness and seriousness of it all, got more into road & crit racing for a bit (easier, cheaper and more local so much less time spent travelling and camping in a field). Haven’t done much in the way of racing for a while now, dabbled briefly in the Enduro stuff (10 Under/10 Around and a few podium places at SITS and MM). It takes a lot of time and commitment to make it happen as well as a good dose of natural ability. Even at my best I was still finishing a good 10-15 mins down on the winner.

trail_rat ain’t seen you on here for some time!

Ride with faster people, this time last year was your average weekend warrior, then started riding with a fast club constantly being left behind now I’m with the fast guys, and not doing to bad in races either. Still have the heaviest bike mind!

Genetics is still the key. 2 years and jump to elite: that’s genetics and some dedication.

I’ve been watching local racing scene for quite a long time (not in the UK) and the guys who have THE ability can get reach their limit in 2-3 years and then they practically plateau for years until their mid 40s (some can maintain the same speed practically up to their early 50s). I’d say that any adult reach their limit in 2-3 years of consistent (or rather VERY CONSISTENT) training. Ive been training and racing for years, my fitness level stalled years ago, nonetheless every year I still make tiny incremental gains just due to improvement in skills and experience. The older and more experienced I get the better I am at endurance races.

Fairly sure I just can’t be bothered trying, but if I could I reckon it would take at least 2 years to get me there. When I rode hard on my own, alomst daily, I entered a sport race and came about half way through the finishers in the category, a LOT dropped out and the race was cancelled, however the elites lapped me by my 3rd lap (laps were a couple of miles each). I was bouncing off max heart rate constantly but eventually settled down into a plod that let me progress – I’d started too fast and tried to maintain the pace.

Being a lanky whippet seems to help massively, being not at all whippet-like I concluded I’d never get anywhere in XC.

Most of the guys at the pointy end of Expert and Masters aren’t doing particularly serious training, they’re hardly pros. Scott Forbes who does rather well at Gorricks and things particularly is an airline pilot, which makes for some sporadic training. Martin Delves who’s thrashing everyone in sport and most in expert rides 3-4 times a week, not training per se, just goes out and rides.

A lot of the elite guys are only doing 8-10 hours a week at most, they’ve done the work to get that quick, they just need to hold that level!

How on earth are the guys at the head of these categories so bloody fast?

It’s not just that, it’s the gap between categories at the top levels that bewilders me (not that I’m ever going to be at the top of any category, mind)

As example; there’s a local junior that has been holding his own with the experts in the Gorrick spring series, including some reasonably decent riders like Jody Crawforth, etc., and has been doing well in the Juniors at national level too. I’ve ridden with him when he used to come out with our club and he was fast then but he’s so much quicker now, I can’t imagine how people can actually be that much faster.

He was offered a ride by British cycling in the Juniors at Houffalize for the World Cup XC, and was handed his legs to take home in a bag at the end! It’s a huge credit that with relatively little in the way of support / training he can ride in that company but to finish more than 20 mins down in a race lasting 90 mins!

[defence – compared to another British rider who he is there and thereabouts with, who came in 10 mins faster, I suspect he may have had a bad day, but even so]

I suspect I know who you’re talking about Jon, in which case he punctured 3 times in Houffalize, which tends to hamper ones progress!

fair comment then. In which case he deserves far more credit than i initially gave.

I’m still astounded (back to my original comment), if you compare him as thereabouts with one of the other british riders that there are 18 y.o’s that are 10 mins faster still! I just can’t conceive how fast that is.

Indeed it is odd, and there’s rarely an obvious pattern with nationality, it’s not like football or whatever where some countries consistently produce excellent players.

If you’re not nearly puking you aren’t racing/training hard enough.

At 18 a large amount will be genetics, as no really training base will have been built. After that it’s down to luck and effort.

No reason to stop trying if your off the pace though!

I agree, and endurance athletes seem to hit their peak later on so maybe physically there is more growing to do / more strength to gain and so on.

But again. 10 mins faster! I couldn’t lap that fast if I had a motor!

You often find that some juniors are extremely quick when they’re 16, then everyone else around them catches up with them and they end up chucking it in. It’s like some mature much younger than others.

I used to race, Scottish Masters xc, First season 10th ish after just riding the mtb a lot. Second season into the top ten, now with more structured training – intervals, hrm, etc. Third season podiums! after a winter of road training, Majorca training camp, diet, etc, etc.
Averaged 8 odd hours a week, 3hr sunday, 2 saturday, 2 evenings on turbo, 1 on mtb with lights (winter).
Now got two young kids and self employed, so just ride when I can for the fun of it.
Mind you, would like a crack at the vets one day!

njee, I know what you mean! There was a guy in my cycle club like that, won all the Junior MTB races for a year or 2 then everyone else caught up with him and that was it, he was nowhere after that. He packed it in soon afterwards, couldn’t cope with not winning.

The levels thing is interesting too, again I’ve seen very good GB riders who would easily win/place in National races get their arses kicked at Euro/Worlds events. You get it in road racing too, even the 1st Cat/Elite guys in the local/National road race scene wouldn’t last long in an average Euro race never mind something like the Tour. Depressing really…

The levels thing is interesting too, again I’ve seen very good GB riders who would easily win/place in National races get their arses kicked at Euro/Worlds events. You get it in road racing too, even the 1st Cat/Elite guys in the local/National road race scene wouldn’t last long in an average Euro race never mind something like the Tour. Depressing really…

That’s one of the biggest problems with UK based racers. I reckon if more of them had the chance to go to Europe when younger, they’d do better on the pro scene over there.

But, it does seem to be genetics. I ride with a 15 year old who has just broken the junior 10 record (with a 19.56), and he just gets stronger with every ride. And, we have a visitor to our club from Switzerland who conseiders himself to be quite average over there, but (road) races at an equivalent to elite over here, and came 27th in the Swiss cross champs last year. A couple of weeks ago, I watched him ride Winnats in 39×14 (broken mech), without weaving up the road.

I’d never get out of sport, even if I did train loads (and raced XC). So much is down to physiology.

I dunno, I think you can get further than you think without the physiology. I was rubbish as a young un, usually near the back, but I’m now a mid-pack Expert without all that much effort. Probably won’t get much further, but I’m gonna bloody well try!