The Story of N1NO – The Hunt for Glory

Nino Schurter belongs on the list of the most successful mountain bike athletes in history. The UCI MTB World Champion and World Cup dominator is the leader of SCOTT Odlo MTB Racing, the international XC team run by bike legend Thomas Frischknecht.

“N1NO – The Hunt for Glory” is Nino`s first set of webisodes. The video series features various chapters illustrating Nino`s colorful life as a professional mountain bike athlete during the pre-olympic year. It´s not only about how Nino prepares for the biggest goal of his career, the gold medal in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, but it‘s also about shredding trails, travelling around the world, and all the fun that mountain biking brings.

The main characteristics of Nino’s endurance training

Endurance training is the base for every professional cyclist. Regardless of the discipline, professional riders spend hours and hours in the saddle. When it comes to Mountain Biking and especially Cross-Country, things have become slightly different. Athletes are now training at a higher frequency. This means that instead of one long training session they are doing several short sessions a day. For World Champion Nino Schurter, long rides are important, but as XC is super intense, shorter painful training sessions are a huge aspect of his training routine.

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“I train 950 to 1000 hours per year, six days a week. I mostly do one to two sessions a day, sometimes three. 75% of my entire training is endurance, 25% more intensive workouts like intervals. Learn more details in chapter 11 of my #HUNTFORGLORY and check out our Story Page to get some more inside views into my endurance training.”

Nino Schurter, SCOTT-Odlo MTB Racing

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His training program is composed of 85% endurance and 15% of strength training, which is conducted in a mixed training fashion. In an average week he does 12 training sessions and has one rest day. The overall intensity distribution is according to the polarized training model. That means 25% of the training sessions include high intensity workouts like interval sessions witch are rated as “hard.”

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A particular aspect in his endurance training program is the high portion of running workouts, which accounts on average for two sessions per week. With regard to target races he follows a peaking and tapering scheme.

The Importance Of Interval Training

Keep in mind that for racers the aim of all activities is to improve their sport specific performance. Thus the XCO performance is highly related to the athlete’s endurance capacity. A major goal is therefore to maximise power output. An interval pattern enables the body to sustain a high rate of energy delivery over long durations of time. This high activity of the aerobic metabolism is the most effective way to improve limiting factors like VO2max, fractional utilisation of VO2max and efficiency. Additionally, during interval sessions the athlete learns on a mental level how tolerate these uncomfortable situations.

Stay tuned for the next chapter and get more information about Nino’s way to glory at the: Hunt-For-Glory website.


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Words: Beat Müller Photos: Jochen Haar I Gary Perkin I Gaudenz Danuser