FITNESS: What does it take to Enduro?

Words: Anna Beck
Photos: Sven Martin

Jack Moir is a pretty handy guy on a bike. In fact, the downhill rider-turned enduro rider took out the 2021 Enduro World Series (EWS). Now, thanks to the beauty of social media and technology, we can have a bit of an insight into the training that Jack chooses to share on Strava. 

With the 2022 EWS beginning on the 4th June in the Tweed Valley, we can check back at Jack’s training into the lead up to his 2022 campaign. I’ll go through some of the weeks a bit more generally and dive a little deeper into some of his key sessions with intervals. 

A focus on the aerobic

Want to ride gravity and think you can avoid some hard work pedalling? Think again. The 2022 EWS champion clearly shows that he has some dedicated time spent on the road bike, building base fitness and miles.

As you may already know, Jack had some time off after his thumping win in 2022 for shoulder surgery, but Jack states that preseason and early base is “normally just some longer road rides. If I didn’t have the shoulder surgery there would've been some mountain bike stuff in there too”. After a post season break we would likely see many enduro riders hitting the pavement for some base miles, so no need to be afraid of the lycra.

When Jack gets back on the bike (well, on Strava) mid-late January, his rides are pretty mellow, a few 60-90min rides on the road and mountain bike easing into time on the bike. Week two we see a few 90min-2hr rides, then his third week back his longest ride pushes out to 2:30. This 2:30 ride is at a low intensity, with a paltry peak of 405w and a normalised power (NP) of 180W. This may not mean a lot now, but in the context of further rides we can estimate Jack’s zones a little more. Needless to say, this is getting into the swing of thing and getting the body back into training.

Each week, Jack ups the volume of his longer ride and maintains his other rides in predominantly easy zones, in the early weeks with a NP of 178-185W. His files show a steady heart rate (HR), without chasing any carrots uphill or inadvertent spikes riding up steep spicy hills.

By week four of this mainly aerobic introduction, he has stretched his long ride out to a 4:45hr ride, alongside a couple of 2hr rides. It’s notable that aside from one ride that has a peak 5sec power of 785W, he has very few forays above 250W, and they have relatively low variability indexes, meaning that the ratio of normalised to average power is very low and that Jack has been emphasising time on the pedals, minimising freewheeling and sticking to a consistent, steady heart rate. Throughout the later weeks, we see Jack’s power gradually increase for similar heart rate output; a key indicator that the aerobic block has been effective and that his body is adapting to the load.

Some burgeoning intensity 

We then see a bit of a change up in his program, Jack logs some hikes at the beginning of May (Jack says “I enjoy hiking, got some cool spots near home, and it definitely helps with the track walks), followed by a week that features a 3:30h road ride, but this time he logs some sustained climbing in a higher power zone 220-260W. While we are number crunching, it’s not what Jack chooses to do with his time, opting out of controlled testing sessions and instead leaving it up to his coach, “the coach works all that (power zones) from my previous years of training. I'm not into all the numbers and stuff.

We then see some top-end efforts, 10 sprints, peak power of nearly 1300W for the workout, but almost all kicking over 1000W, each sprint between 6-10seconds from what we can discern from the data. The session was only 90min long, however marked a departure from what appeared to be almost exclusively aerobic in nature, as Jack moves towards some more specificity and building his peak power to mimic the big-wattage demands of racing stages that enduro racing throws up, amidst a massive day of liaison climbing during and EWS.

What’s notable with Jack’s sprint training is that he appears to be looking at the demands of Enduro racing, while developing an all-out sprint would usually mean full length recoveries of longer durations, however Jack pushes out ten hard sprints in around 20mins.

Below we can see these sprints of 6-15sec. With the lack of specific rest, Jack is putting out big watts with only a short break, forcing his body to use muscle glycogen to complete these efforts with <90sec recovery, and essentially mimicking the demands of enduro racing and having to produce power when not fully recovered. 

A few weeks later jack does a similar session, however the efforts are slightly longer: roughly 30sec per effort. As such we don’t see as high a peak power during this session, but a 30sec effort with slightly longer recovery is targeting anaerobic/glycolytic enhancement and adaption, compared to the shorter efforts targeting the adenosine triphosphate (ATP) system. Of course, the body doesn’t start and stop using each system at exactly X amount of seconds, and as such there is a bit of a crossover. But by increasing his recovery to around 3minutes between efforts, he is fully allowing his ATP/ phosphocreatine (CP) system to resynthesise CP and thus able to hit a much higher percentage of maximal power output for the 30sec duration than if he were to stack these closer together. (See below how the peaks are more consistent than the earlier session with shorter sprints, but with less recovery).

But Jack reinforces that he is a happy just getting the work done, and not stressing about the training itself or work:rest durations; “the Canyon team have a trainer for all that stuff; he just sets out the exercises for us to do, and all the data gets sent back for him to analyse”.

Hot stats:

Peak Power: 1640w

Longest ride (in this block): 5hr54min/142km/2475m elevation

From the general to the specific

What we can see throughout Jack’s build into the first EWS, is that like most elite training, his pre-season training starts very generally: Jack could be a road cyclist or XCO rider or EWS rider in this phase, spending time logging low-intensity miles on the bike. As we get closer to the season’s start, we see some sprints introduced and some increasing time spent on the mountain bike on the trails. 

We see Jack leaving more specific recovery times of around 3minutes between sprint efforts, which stretch from 6-10sec to around 20sec, and he snags a bunch of PRs on the dirt, working on his speed-skill and trail feel.

Jack also sneaks a local Rocky Trail Enduro race at nearby Awaba trails, an opportunity to get back in the swing of the race mindset and mentality, and it is pretty damn cool for the rest of the amateur race field being able to race alongside a literal EWS Champion. In this week, we see a lot of intensity as Jack completes a race day on the mountain bike, another ride day/recce day, and a full gas sprint session; pretty different from what we were using only six weeks ago on the bike!

We still see some endurance rides, though they appear to be in more of a supportive role now, maintaining his earlier aerobic fitness gains rather than pushing the base fitness ride duration out further.

A few more sustained aerobic efforts around Threshold and VO2/maximal aerobic zones, placed towards the end of his long rides are pushing some fatigue resistance and mimicking the need to generate power towards the end of a tough day at the EWS. After racing the Tweed Valley EWS (where he placed 26th after some mid race controversies for the whole field) we see good old VO2/anaerobic capacity efforts smattered in: 40/20’s with 40sec hard and 20sec rest, as well as 4x4min efforts: where Jack is pushing around 360w or ~4.5w/kg. No doubt if he had the focus and will, Jack could be a tidy road cyclist if he desired!

40/20 session into a sustained VO2 effort? Much ow. 

Time on the big bike

While we have seen a little of Jack’s mountain bike training, after the Fox Superflow Event at Awaba, Jack went to Thredbo for a bigger mountain experience. Jack doesn’t use power on the mountain bike and believes it isn’t necessary for gravity performance, but we can tell from his rides that he’s testing the limits on some segments while on the dirt. 

Likewise, when Jack’s overseas while he appears to bang out some substantial road rides, it appears his focus is on speed on the big bike. And speed and feel is key for Jack, he explains when he rides the mountain bike “I try to have fun as well, but a lot of the time I am riding at speed. I’ll do some more cruisey e-bike stuff in the off season when I just want to chill and have fun”.

What we don’t know

For all the armchair analysis we can do from nerding out on Strava, there is a lot more that we don’t know. Jack has confirmed that Strava is only a small sneak peak of his weekly training, stating that  “I don’t really Strava unless I’m on a decent roadie or mountain bike ride. I also do gym and sprint sessions, and also a lot of swimming when I was rehabbing the shoulder. I love surfing but don’t have that much time to fit it in, maybe on the weekend before or after a shuttle day.”

What are the takeaways from studying Jack’s training?

From what we can see with Jack’s training, it follows a pretty traditional periodisation model. Jack keeps it easy to begin with and stretches out his ride time, then he focuses on some big watt/top end anaerobic and sprint efforts along side getting the big bike ‘feel’ back. Road cycling isn’t just for underfed lycra weenies, as we can see Jack does a big proportion of early season on the skinny wheels.

He uses some local enduro races to build some race intensity, but maintains his aerobic base during this period by keeping in one long, easy ride per week. In essence, his training starts by being general and moves towards the specific, even in terms of his efforts, as harder anaerobic capacity efforts are peppered in later during his rides when he has already amassed a little fatigue; similar to the demands of a big day on the mountain at the EWS.

While Tweed Valley wasn’t his best race, Jack was really able to display his fitness and skill with a third place in the Austrian/Slovenian round of EWS at Petzen Jamaica late June behind some riders you may have heard of, Jesse Melamed and Richie Rude. We can’t wait to see what the rest of the year’s series will bring for Jack, hopefully many of his favourite sessions on the bike, which he thinks is “probably an enduro bike session… anything but road”.