When it comes to Enduro racing it has long been recognised that these athletes are fit. But what does the elite physiology look like? Just how fit is the modern day enduro athlete?

We've gone looking for a proper answer. Some of what follows comes from published research on elite enduro racers. Some of it comes from our own season long research project, tracking the physiological profiles of ten UCI EDR World Cup elite athletes across the 2026 season. And because "fit" only means something in comparison to something else, we've lined the numbers up against elite road cycling too, arguably the most heavily researched endurance sport there is.

Nobody sees the off season. There's no result, no leaderboard, no one watching. It's roughly 20 hours a week through the winter months, when it's wet, cold and miserable, training in the dark before work and training in the dark after it. That's where the engine that carries an athlete through a World Cup season actually gets built. By the time a race number goes on, that work is months old and largely invisible to everyone except the athlete who did it.