Walk on the Wild Side

At 45 one begins to think about how they will compete with kids 1/2 your age. With everything you read about how age affects endurance athletes its amazing we can get out of bed each morning. Being an engineer I started to analyze the problem. What are the factors that affect a bike race. Here is the short list I came up with.

1. Physical Fitness
2. Strategy
3. Mental Fitness
4. Equipment

Off the cuff, I am going to say that these are probably in decreasing order of importance. Unfortunately they also are probably in exponetially decreasing order. This being so, I will discount any affect equipment may make, because well its just not that important when you consider how much swing the other 3 factors have. So its probably better spending your disposable income on the first 3 rather than the last. So instead of surfing the web for Titanium front deraileur bolts, spend the time thinking about your training schedule or your mental state of mind. Of course this is all free advice and worth every penny.
There has been so much written on Physical Fitness, that I can't really add much other than sitting back and looking at training regimes now vs 30 years ago, I make the following observation on the evolotion of training. Years ago we went hard everyday, and rested only the day before a race. I suspect that getting sick was actually a blessing, as it gave you time to rest. Compared to today our "intense" times really were not as "intense" as they are now. So in actuality today we probably spend more time at or above our AT in training. I have no clue about how training has changed in the professional ranks, as thats very foreign and seductively mysterious to me. Thinking about racing, the winning move usually comes from some short intense effort that either you can match or not. Rarely does it grind on for hours until the last person standing wins. Perhaps your experiences are different.

Strategy, well again today its more of a team sport and the team dominates the strategy. And to be honest, much has been written about this aspect as well. Nothing mysterious here really. Everyone should be on the same playing field here, as there is nothing mentally challenging about it. Of course the depth of the team will make a huge difference. Coming up to speed is just a matter of reading, understanding, communicating and practising the various aspects of cycling strategy.

That leaves one facet, the mental game. Perhaps by necessity I feel that the mental preparadness aspect is one that is overlooked by many and therefore any time spent here will serve me well.

I keep going round and round on two distinct aspects of the mental game. At some points they feel as if they are separate at other times I feel they are cause and affect relationship. Probably a clue I don't know what I am talking about.

The first is what I will call Psychology of Pain. When you are suffering on the bike, how do you handle it? How do you allow yourself to minimize the affects of pain? Actually I hate the word pain, as its not like stubbing your toe or hitting your thumb with a hammer (the second time especially), now thats pain. I like the word stress. They say the eskimos have hundreds of words for snow, well because they know so much about it and therefore each different type of snow is unique to them. So is stress on the bike, there is the discomfort you feel when hammering in a 5 mile TT, there is the struggle of getting one pedal around when climbing Billy Goat Hill and then there is the rusty pain of the 5th day of 5 day stage race. Each one is different. Suffice it to say that the saying your mind quits before your body quits is very true. The trick is to divorce your mind from the problem, or better yet seduce your mind into enjoying the strss. . I've been doing this by trying to remember what it feels like when I give up and go over that in my head when I am resting to help me understand why it was so bad and hopefully keep going, probably to only encounter new and even more unpleasant words for pain.

The second thing I have been thinking about is the mounting evidence of what a positive mental attitude can have. I suspect that both illegal drugs and carbon equipment make more of difference in the "I did/got this and therefore I know I am going to be faster" category than they actually do in the physical category. I'm not suggesting either strategy only making the ovbservation of how a positive mental attitude has affected my results. There is nothing like doing well or beating your arch rival. Success breads success.