What If We're All Training Too Hard?

Most riders can get faster, ride further, and crush all-day events with this minimalist training programme.

- A.C. SHILTON

On the first day of 2022, I did a foolish thing. Buoyed by all the shiny possibilities of a new year, I signed up for a longer, tougher endurance event than I'de ever tried before, a 100km mountain-bike race with 3 500m of ugly uphill – in the hottest part of summer. It was the last thing I needed in my life. It was the exact thing I needed in my life. I am the poster child for hustle culture run amok. I’ve monetised all my hobbies

into three very demanding jobs. I’m a full-time research producer on a true-crime TV series. I write for newspapers and magazines. In my 'free time', I manage an 18-hectare regenerative farm. That mostly means sprinting from one emergency (the sheep have worms!) to the next (the dog thinks the baby chicks are canapés!).

After 10 years as a gig-economy worker, I realised everything in my life was in service to another pay cheque. Here lies the allure of a long-distance mountain-bike race: I’ll never monetise mountain biking. I wince at anything off-camber, and creep through rock gardens. Prepping for my event would simply be in service to me.

An eternal optimist about my time-management abilities, I sent off my registration and spent about three months training sporadically. Then I panicked. Twelve weeks before the race, I enlisted the help of Christopher Harnish, PhD, an exercise physiologist, coach, and chair of the Department of Exercise Science at Mary Baldwin University. As he’s a former Triathlon Off-Road US national champion, dad, and fulltime academic, I knew he’d understand how to make the most out of minimal time. It’s entirely possible to take on any of the marquee gravel races, or a mountain