lEidENSCHaFt - Storck Bicycle GmbH

A zest for endurance: When Michael Kochendörfermounts his bike it could well turn into an all-night ride.The man from the Oldenwald region is a German24-hour MTB race champion.>>> The day that Heiko Kochendörfer took his brother along on a mountain bike tourwas a dark day for the TSV Billigheim soccer club. Despite the fact that Michael, thesuccessful state league player, was totally drained after a 20-kilometer ride, he wasn’tabout to quickly part again with this unfamiliar piece of sporting equipment. Hisambition had been kindled – this just had to be doable! So the man in his late twentiesbought his own MTB and started riding longer and longer distances. Soccer continuedto be his main sport though – at least until the two brothers did a 120-kilometercross-country run in the Saarland a day before an important match. The Billigheimteam lost the game and Michael Kochendörfer started biking in earnest.“At some point in time, we had the idea of riding from here to Lake Constance – that’s320 kilometers,” he recalls. “We rode that distance in two days and a year later I saidto myself, well you can that in one day.”That was 16 years ago and Kochendörfer has long joined the German enduranceriders’ elite. 24-hour races on the mountain bike have been his specialty ever since hetook fifth place right in his first competition of this kind. By now he’s got an amazingeleven wins in these ultra-long races under his belt and the last one, which he clinchedat the end of May, was arguably the sweetest: victory in the German championshipin constant rain, cold and difficult track conditions.or three hours. The next stint starts when it gets dark; you drain the first battery,and then the second one. When the day breaks, the worst phase begins. By thattime, you’ve actually taken your mind off the distance and think, okay, you’ve gotfour or five more hours to go. But that’s still a big chunk and then you really starthurting.” Naturally, the fact that the 24 hours are also a matter of the mind has tobe considered in training. “Training scientists tell us that there’s no point in ridingfor more than six hours. They tend to recommend blocks of training. But there’sthe mental track too,” says Kochendörfer. “So I went ahead and rode from here toThuringia. That was twelve and a half hours in the rain. And back the next day – twelvehours.” On tours like these, he acquires what racers call ‘toughness’ – the ability tojust keep on riding even though body and mind are screaming ‘stop!’ in unison.But despite such training volumes Michael Kochendörfer doesn’t underrate thechallenges of shorter tours – MTB marathons involving around three hours of ridingtime. On the one hand, this has to do with the highly different types of strains, as heexplains, “You enter a range there that, as endurance athletes, we’re not used to. Incross-country races, I’m lacking the kind of zip that others have trained to acquirefrom their early days.” Besides, says the former soccer player, “If you start as late asI did you’ve almost got no chance anymore in the fast disciplines.” And, of course, themind plays a part in this, too. “If I know that I’m going to be riding 60 kilometers24 hours on the bike – that’s even hard to imagine for well-practiced athletes. Butwhen asked about the greatest hurdle that exists in the ultra-marathon discipline,Michael Kochendörfer has a surprising answer: “Nutrition. A lot of very good crosscountryriders have failed because they didn’t manage to consume these 15,000calories,” he explains. “You reach a point where you just don’t know what to eatanymore. Although you really don’t want anything, you’ve got to keep stuffing yourself.If you’re not used to that …”The fatigue that sets in at some point in time was less of a problem, explains theGerman champion. “Well, you’re in a state of euphoria.But there comes a point whenyou start feeling the pain. Your body is constantly in the same position, and then thepalms start hurting, the feet … You’ve got to overcome all that.”Kochendörfer has a smart recipe for making the extremely long duration of thecompetition more palatable. “You should never think about the 24 hours, that’s theway I see it – just think about the stints, there’s the starting phase, that’s about two74