Well here it is folks, the final week of training to get you ready for whatever it is you want to do with your fitness. We’ll be back next week to guide you through the final taper and preparation before the event but for now here’s the last of the sweaty sessions.

If you can find the time to do both sessions in a week that’s great, if not, do the first one we list. The key is not training to exhaustion but training hard and training well. If you feel really knackered or you start to wobble all over the place then turn for home. We want you to get to the race fresh not frazzled.

To help fit two sessions into your schedule, everything we do mid-week will now take you less than an hour.

We’re continuing down the taper from where we left last week. Intervals are getting shorter and more intense to hone a final sharpness on your speed.

First session is that old favourite. Only half a minute but a whole lot of hell. However, rather than doing two sets of 3, 4 or 5, just do one set of five (unless you’ve got a note from your mum saying that you’ll be really, really sick – in which case do four). Looking on the bright side this is my last chance to make you really suffer, and frankly I don’t think I’ve made the most of it at all.

Once you’ve had a couple of days to regain the ability to stand it’s time to get on the bike for one last gasp.

Again it’s a session we’ve met before as Top ten but with a slight change of frequency. If you’ve normally been training once a week then go for eight sprints, if you’ve been hammering out the sessions twice weekly or more then a dozen ten second bursts should do the trick.

Make each one count right from the start and better to have to give up with a few to go than finish the lot feeling fresh. Now trundle home and realise that all that work you’ve put in really will make a difference when you need it.

Rest of the week
If you’ve got yourself into a team for the Red Bull then the best way to spend your last weekend’s potential riding before the event is in the pub. Yes we really did just say that.

Get the rest of your team together for a gentle ride to your favourite countryside ale house and work out your plan for the race. Who’s running? Who’s taking second lap? Whose lights are likely to fail? And most importantly, who’s bringing the food and drink?

Trying to do all this over the phone normally ends in tears at just the wrong moment when you realise that something vital is missing at 3am on race night. Just make sure you take some paper and pens to write down what everyone needs to remember and don’t get so drunk that you fall in a ditch and injure yourself on the way home.

The prize that money can’t buy!
Now you might be heartily sick of hearing about the Red Bull, but it is one of the most challenging, amusing and sociable events in the whole mountain bike calendar – certainly the nearest we’ve got to a proper mountain bike festival.

However as most of you know, entries were full a couple of days after the entry forms were released, making a place on a Red Bull team a very rare and valuable thing, that couldn’t be bought for love nor money.

With one exception!

BIKEmagic have got a full team’s worth (5 if it’s mixed) of places to give away to the people who write in with the best reasons why they should ride the Red Bull.

Email your entries to: [email protected] by end of play Sunday and we’ll let you know who’s won on Monday morning! What do you mean not much time to prepare?!

Next week is our last week, but we won’t just be bringing in board games and playing hangman. Instead we’ve got a final taper and tune up programme, and if anyone’s got any last minute questions we’ll try and answer them too.

Bye for now.