WOPAS part 1

"A person's potential is confined only by self-imposed limitations and the irrationality of others" -Brent Bender

When I was a kid my mother had this saying that really upset me, "It's not IQ it's I CAN", of course my response was always, that's because you don't have a very high IQ, then it was off to my room.
As I've gotten older, my mother has become more wise. That saying is always in the back of my head when I work with really smart people who can't seem to get anything done. Its also hit home to me after I got a Power Meter for my bike.

At first the Power Meter was yet another cycling toy, then it became a slave. I was the child and it was the master. I was constantly not doing my best. The numbers didn't lie. I rarely lived up to my expectation. For days I would grimace as I looked at the PT computer, much like people who don't want to get on the scales to weigh themselves, I never wanted to ride my hardest, because the numbers never lived up to my expectations. This turned into a self fulfilling prophesy, as I became more depressed over my lack of power, my performance likewise suffered.

Being an engineer I recognized this as a negative feedback loop. I also began to realize what a powerful governor the mind is. Our mind has the potential to slash our performance, perhaps it also has the ability to augment our performance just as much. Hopefully the chart below explains my thoughts

There is a continuum of cycling performance, somewhere between the abilities of my mother (sorry mom) and Lance is my average ability. I am sure I am closer to my Mom than Lance, heck I never even met Lance. But my athletic ability is not constant from day to day, independent of my physical fitness, my mind plays a relatively unforgiving role in my ability. This area below and above my average ability I define as the Window Of Potential Athletic Success or WOPAS.

I think people underestimate the size of the window. I can surely confirm the window stretches very far to the left. Screaming at the kids, being kicked by the boss, and late for a deadline will move your abilities to the left of the window. What remains relatively unexplored, yet through symmetry most likely exists is the area to the right side of the window.

The Power Meter is a great tool for understanding your fitness at times throughout the year. It provides a crisp language for describing exercises and for reporting results. It is not a tool to compare one riders potential with another. Fortunately there is more to cycling than pure physical power. The brain gets involved in race strategy and in pushing you body beyond where its thinks it should quit. The body is an hourly worker, the brain can pay huge bonuses for overtime.

A friend of mine told me that it only takes 2 people to have a bike race, with the Power Tap, it only takes one, me and the computer. Its hard to constantly beat your best, and I'm working on that not getting me down, but looking for some way to use it as mental motivation. I've got some ideas, but you will have to wait for the book.

"Neo, sooner or later you're going to realize that there's adifference between knowing the path and walking the path." -Morpheus- from "The Matrix"