"Thank God training is over!" Me, at end of 2015 training for TD
"So, what, now you can go ride 2,700 miles?" Wife
Getting out on the bike takes effort, even if I look forward to riding. When I view it as a chore, it's even more of an effort. Don't let the Trail Fairy fool you, sometimes riding is a bit of a pain. Decision making theory that says people make their decisions several seconds before they are conscious of doing so. That gap is critical. Being aware of the process allows me to (sometimes) intercept the excuses for not riding, and steer my decision. Another way of dealing with it is to program my auto-pilot (logical brain response center) to always jump to the "I will ride today" decisions, before any excuses get in the way. Rituals help ( not the kind that involve reading chicken entrails) such as getting my kit on before I have a chance to make excuses.
This process is critical on long ultra rides. Waking up before dawn, or when it's really butt numbing cold, is a daily process. One trick I used was to exit my tent when I first woke up. Squirt out of the bunker before thinking, naked or not! Being outside takes away the excuse to hit the snooze button, and makes the decision to get on the bike easier. I also open the air valve on my pad when the GPS alarm goes off - and if I try to go back to sleep I'm on hard cold ground.
I guess I've drifted into the mental aspect of riding. Those who have raced the TD know that the mental and emotional part of the ride is much tougher than the physical. Ye who have not yet raced are wondering what the heck I mean. Was it Yogi Berra who said, "Baseball is 90% mental and the other half is physical."? Ditto racing the TD.
Discipline in both my riding routine and decision making makes the difference. That means practicing how I want to race when training. Back when I used to fall out of airplanes with my buddies, and teach others to do the same, we would rehearse the skydive on the ground (called 'dirt diving') several times before the jump. Our motto was "What you do on the ground you will do in the air" (our other motto was "Blue sky, Black death!", but I digress). Point is that making muscle memory and mental response meld together into an unconscious routine really helps when things get tough in the air, er, on the trail.
Lemme tell ya about three times my discipline failed on my last TD attempt:
(Oh Trail Fairy, it has been months since my last confession, forgive me as I rode SRAM components)
- Day three I stopped early because I was tired, and a campground was handy. Turns out I couldn't get to sleep anyway until way late. Cost me at least 30 miles of riding.
- After lunch one day I had no energy - still don't know why - and stopped 40 miles short of my goal. I could have kept going, albeit slow, but let my discipline down.
- On the day I had a target of > 150 miles, I stopped early at 100 miles because a recent riding friend had rented a motel room and offered to share it with me. I had clear sailing, plenty of time left in the day.
(Trail Fairy: "The Trail forgives you. Say five hail Shimanos and switch to XT")
So what 'rules' did I violate? First one is keep making forward progress until you fall off the bike. Second, no matter how you feel, keep going and things will change: either for the worse or better. Third, ride at your own pace. There are a slew of 'rules' to ride by. These are a few.
I'm a sucker for witty moral boosters, hoping that chanting them will help develop mental discipline to the Nth degree. I've found some good quotes that help. Perhaps the best one for the TD is, "Get comfortable being uncomfortable". I also like, "Not dead, can't quit!", and the motto carved on the Navy Seal Training Center welcome sign, "The only easy day was yesterday!". (If you are wondering, no, I was an Army medic!)
Linking back to training, what you do in training you will do on the race. The decision making process during training follows you like a puppy on the race. If your puppy isn't 'paper trained', expect to suffer! I think of my decision and response process like a pile of round boulders: Solid and unshakable...until I pull one of the bottom rocks out, and then two fall, then four... It's not only essential that the 'pile' is made of solid decisions, it is crucial that they're cemented together (by practice), keeping one from undermining the whole stack. Let one fall, and others follow. Turns out my pile collapsed several times during the race. At this point you're asking yourself, "Do I want ideas from people who have been there and failed, or those who have never been there"? Yer choose.
I'm not even training yet, but I decided this year to keep up a 100 mile per week base level of riding. I ride my mountain bike on the road, mostly. Typically base mile rides are 30-40 miles each, elevation gain averaging 1,500 feet per ride, and I'm riding three times per week. Add a weight session each week at the gym, and a spin class, plus walks around the neighborhood. Sometimes I'm pooped! Compounding it all is that I use several standard routes, and they get boring.
I didn't want to ride today. There, I said it. Blasphemy! This morning, after ingesting my HSF (Heart Starting Fluid - coffee), I automatically dressed to ride before I let myself make the 'Ride/No Ride' decision. Seemed kinda stupid not to ride, after being dressed and all! Turns out that the ride was pretty neat! For instance, I found that my max heart rate was higher than I've ever measured (I charged a long hill until collapse), and I felt positive on the rest of the ride.
That brings up a maxim I've kept since my long distance running days, to paraphrase, "Never judge a ride until it is over." - similar to rule #2. Point is that the mental and physical perceptions can change rapidly. So a crappy ride turns out to be a good one after all. Many times during the TD I felt weak, tired, or emotionally wiped out, only to have a sudden change to the better. (This can happen both ways though!) If you read up on enough blogs by TD riders you'll find this paradoxical change happens quite often.
Of course, all of this 'ride regardless' is subject to real concerns of over-training stress, or making allowance for injuries or illness. I struggle keeping it real between actual reasons to not ride and excuses.
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