Regardless of whether you are ready or not, the Washington State road racing season is rapidly approaching (about two months away!). At this point, you’re probably well underway with your training for the 2010 season. Putting in the miles and the intervals now are important to your success this upcoming season, but besides the physical aspects of cycling, mental preparation is equally important. Have you spent any time thinking about the mental side of the sport and the training you could be doing now to help set you up for your best season yet? It’s easy to neglect, but spending some time thinking about preparing your mind can make the difference between cracking under pressure and having a great season.
For many people, early season races come with big expectations. During all these cold, wet winter months of training, you have probably been getting really excited to race and anxious to see where your hard work has gotten you. With all that build up, it’s easy to show up to the race and be completely nervous about what the outcome will be. All those nerves, and the expectation you have placed on yourself to perform is a huge waste of energy, and can negatively impact your performance. Putting so much focus into a result you want to get can be a frustrating and disappointing habit. On the results end of things, there are WAY more losers in cycling than winners. Some people rarely win. Does that make them a bad cyclist? Not by any means. Part of what is so exciting about bike racing is that there are many things that have to come together to have a great race, and many outside influences that can impact your result. Focus your energy on having the best race possible and those results will come.
Last year at the first of the Mason Lake races, I was pretty pumped to get some early season results. I was riding well throughout the race, and was in several moves. None of those moves stuck, but with a couple miles to go, I knew it was going to come down to a sprint (even better for me!) so I started to get pretty excited about how I could win the race. Well, that excitement led to me starting my sprint way, way too early when someone else went and finished with being passed by a couple girls. I was focusing so much on winning and worrying about someone else, that I didn’t really think about how I could do best. The next week, I was much more relaxed, and instead of worrying about when someone else would make a move in the last couple of miles of the race, I was planning when I would make MY move to start the sprint. Unfortunately, I flatted with less than 1K to go and wasn’t able to contest the sprint. Lame, but the fact that the rest of the race had gone well for me up to that point, and that I had been setting myself up to do well helped alleviate some of my frustration. I had controlled as much as I could about my race, and that is much better than hanging on and worrying about things that you can’t control, or basing your race off of someone else.
A few things to get you thinking:
- Confidence. If you aren’t confident in yourself, it is really hard to do well. Sometimes you have to convince yourself that you’re confident, and that in turn helps you to perform better and develop that confidence for the future. On the other hand, overconfidence is super lame, and can be detrimental too, so walk that fine line.
- Set goals. Make sure to be specific, set a timeline, and have some way to measure your success. Realistic expectations are important (otherwise, you’re setting yourself up for failure) but don’t be too conservative.
- You get more of what you think about. While doing intervals, if you’re constantly thinking about how hard it is, you’re probably just going to be hanging on to the end. If you think about how strong they are making you, you’re more likely to attack the interval. Which is going to be a higher quality effort?
- Take control. Focus on things you can control in your preparation and racing. ( Have you been good about taking care of yourself off the bike?!). Don’t spend an entire race sitting in and waiting for someone else to do something, take control of your own race!
- Figure out what is the best level of nerves for your success. If you’ve ever taken a psychology class, you’ve probably seen the standard curve showing the relationship between arousal (stress) and performance. For most people, a certain level of stress helps them perform better. From experience, I know that if I’m not nervous at all, that I probably won’t do well, because it usually means that I’m not invested in the race- but when I get too nervous or start to put a lot of pressure on myself, things go to hell. It helps me to avoid thinking about the race until close to the start time; otherwise I have too much time to get worked up. TH says he does best when he is mad, and Richter says he does better if he is relatively calm. Figure out where you need to be, and how you can help yourself reach that perfect level. For some people, being quiet and listening to music can help them keep nerves from getting in the way, but for others being distracted by conversation helps.
- Rituals can be calming, but be careful that you don’t become too attached to that certain pre-race meal or a pair of lucky socks. Flexibility when things happen that make it so you can’t follow your normal routine can make your experience go much more smoothly and set you up for a better race.
My favorite Yogi Berra quote sums up the importance of mental training in sport “Baseball is ninety percent mental and the other half is physical.” Think about it.
