mental toughness / cross-country running

vermooten

I did my first ever cross-country race on Saturday, a rather hilly 10k in Blackburn. Man it was tough, way way tougher than any cycling event I've done. I felt more shagged than after this year's Marmotte, I collapsed at the finish line to shouts of "softy cyclist!" (true)

Thing is that if I can take this amount of effort onto the bike I'd hit my 2009 target at the first effort ("to do a 25-mile TT on course J2/9 in under one hour"). Question is: how can I do this? See, on the run there was nowhere to hide. No such thing as freewheeling (except stopping). Use a fixie?

Maybe I should continue to do XC races during the winter to get used to the mental and physical pain? Then it becomes the norm, see?

Your thoughts will be appreciated,

Andy

toshmund

For a really good sports book to read about running, highly recommend this. Goes into the inticacies involved, really good read. The greatest fell runners seem to have more major ailments, so a bit more pain is pretty much oblivious to them. Joss Naylor/Bob Graham - legends!

http://www.wainwright.org.uk/book_revie ... louds.html

Patrick1.0

climbing hard for an extended period is the same feeling.

The country is like that, you should have been forewarned by one of the athletes there. The only way to run over the country properly is to fast cruise for the first mile of the race and then hold your pace. You should really be absolutely shattered by the finish, so much that you can barely walk because your legs feel like they have no resistance left in them. The more of it you do, the less time this feeling lasts for though. So there is hope for you if you are mad enough to continue using it through the winter to stay fit.


I can't say I'll be running this winter after years of the stuff lol. Running certainly makes you hard though. I spoke to some of the guys at the club when i first started riding and some of them spoke about not going out in the biting wind and the rain as if that was normal. I used to run all year round in all conditions and I take that same approach with the bike. The cross country will help with maintaining your lung capacity and building on your lactate threshold. It'll even improve leg strength because of the mud and hills.


And, if you're going to do a few more of them, I'd advise that you do some 1k reps on the track using a heart rate monitor to judge when you start the next rep. Let your pulse come down to around 130-5 in between efforts. It'll help you deal with the harder cross country races and it's not big volume training which you probably don't want to do as a cyclist.

Edit: I should have added, if you do decide to have a go at the 1k reps, aim for just 3 to start with and don't go all out on the first one. It's different to cycling, you don't recover.

BeaconRuth

vermooten wrote:

Thing is that if I can take this amount of effort onto the bike I'd hit my 2009 target at the first effort ("to do a 25-mile TT on course J2/9 in under one hour").

I don't know how far off the hour you are but unless you are quite close I think it's a mistake to believe that 'not trying hard enough' is the reason you haven't achieved it yet. You can only do what you can do - and if your body is not yet physiologically adapted to the demands of riding a 25 in under an hour on that course, no amount of will-power will help you do it.

If you have got the ability and you are just not trying hard enough, then I'm not sure I would advise going and doing some other sport that hurts a lot to try and toughen you up. You could stick pins in your eyes every day for a month, which would hurt a lot and 'toughen you up' but I doubt it would help you go under the hour on the J2/9. Personally I would have thought that better/more cycle training is a far easier way to achieve your ambition! Some mental exercises such as visualisation might help too.

Question is: how can I do this? See, on the run there was nowhere to hide. No such thing as freewheeling (except stopping). Use a fixie?

Well, I hope you don't spend too much time freewheeling in a TT? Maybe on the approach to roundabouts or junctions, but that should be all.

Maybe I should continue to do XC races during the winter to get used to the mental and physical pain? Then it becomes the norm, see?

Yes if you enjoy it or you need/want the variety. No if your number one priority is to improve your cycling.

Ruth

vermooten

BeaconRuth wrote:

You could stick pins in your eyes every day for a month, which would hurt a lot and 'toughen you up'

Hmmm interesting...



Wise words as always, Ruth. Indeed I'm aware that it's not just a case of having to be mentally tougher to achieve my target (am 10 whole minutes off right now!) but surely it must help a cyclist to go harder for longer? And if I can feel what it's like then I could transfer that feeling to the bike?

Major diff between a TT and a x-country race - in the TT you're on your own on the road, in the x-country there are dozens of others to try and keep up with which is more motivating.

nasahapley

Hi Vermooten,

For what it's worth, from previous experience I think your experiment is worth trying. I've been fell-running for a couple of years now and in that time have learned to suffer pretty well. This has undoubtedly helped my climbing ability on the bike, and there's great cardio benefits to be had too. When I ride my own 24 mile training loop as a tt it feels very much like running up Skiddaw from Keswick; both should take roughly an hour, both require a very measured power output to avoid blowing up before the end, and both are screamingly painful.

And besides, you might learn to 'enjoy' the running events (it has been known), which would give you something to do if you fancy a change from the cycling.

BeaconRuth

vermooten wrote:

Wise words as always, Ruth. Indeed I'm aware that it's not just a case of having to be mentally tougher to achieve my target (am 10 whole minutes off right now!) but surely it must help a cyclist to go harder for longer? And if I can feel what it's like then I could transfer that feeling to the bike?

If it makes you feel any better, Andy, the 'feeling' of going under the hour is identical to the feeling of not going under the hour. For years I didn't get anywhere near going under and I had a friend who said things like "ah, you haven't learned how to really try in a TT." This was the most unhelpful advice imaginable because it made me think I somehow wasn't doing it right on the day of the event. The fact of the matter was that I was nowhere near fit enough, and when I did get under the hour I realised that the feeling (of the effort involved) is absolutely identical to when I was still doing 1.06's and 1.07's. The difference was that I had trained so that my body could take enough oxygen and convert it to enough useful energy to generate enough power. That was all. It felt IDENTICAL.

Major diff between a TT and a x-country race - in the TT you're on your own on the road, in the x-country there are dozens of others to try and keep up with which is more motivating.

In which case maybe club training bashes would be good for you? Find a group of fast road racing guys and try to stay with them!

Ruth

BeaconRuth

nasahapley wrote:

When I ride my own 24 mile training loop as a tt it feels very much like running up Skiddaw from Keswick; both should take roughly an hour, both require a very measured power output to avoid blowing up before the end, and both are screamingly painful.

For exactly those reasons you could equally encourage Andy to take part in a hard hour-long canoeing event. Would it help him to get closer to going under the hour? No, I don't think so. It's his physiology that's holding him back and his fitness for the specific task of riding a bike, not his tolerance of pain.

And besides, you might learn to 'enjoy' the running events (it has been known), which would give you something to do if you fancy a change from the cycling.

Always possible. But I think people have to be pretty single-minded and focused to get good at something. 'Fancying a change' isn't the mindset of champions!

Ruth

vermooten

Yes my coach wants me to stop running after February so that I can focus on cycling. I suspect that doing XC might help me to understand going into the red a bit more but, as Ruth points out, there's no substitute for sport-specific training.

nasahapley

BeaconRuth wrote:

nasahapley wrote:

When I ride my own 24 mile training loop as a tt it feels very much like running up Skiddaw from Keswick; both should take roughly an hour, both require a very measured power output to avoid blowing up before the end, and both are screamingly painful.

For exactly those reasons you could equally encourage Andy to take part in a hard hour-long canoeing event. Would it help him to get closer to going under the hour? No, I don't think so. It's his physiology that's holding him back and his fitness for the specific task of riding a bike, not his tolerance of pain.

And besides, you might learn to 'enjoy' the running events (it has been known), which would give you something to do if you fancy a change from the cycling.

Always possible. But I think people have to be pretty single-minded and focused to get good at something. 'Fancying a change' isn't the mindset of champions!

Ruth

I see your point re the first quote above, and I agree a bit, but not entirely! I guess we differ in our belief as to just how specific a discipline cycling is, and whether it's so specific that other forms of training can have any impact. If you had a fell-runners v canoers (canoeists?) bike race I know who my £ would be on.

Re the second quote, I can't really agree. I suppose it depends on your definition of 'good'; would you deny that Rob Jebb is both a 'good' cyclist and a 'good' runner? I would say that anyone that can get under the hour for a 25tt is a 'good' cyclist, but there's plenty of triathletes who could do that and run a sub 3-hour marathon (also 'good' in my book). I've gleaned from this for that you're a bl**dy handy tt-er yourself, so maybe we just have different standards! I would mention Rebecca Romero too, but that's a bit different as she didn't do the two sports simultaneously.

vermooten

nasahapley wrote:

I've gleaned from this for that you're a bl**dy handy tt-er yourself..

Indeed Ruth knows her onions.

BeaconRuth

nasahapley wrote:

I see your point re the first quote above, and I agree a bit, but not entirely! I guess we differ in our belief as to just how specific a discipline cycling is, and whether it's so specific that other forms of training can have any impact. If you had a fell-runners v canoers (canoeists?) bike race I know who my £ would be on.

Yes, I'd put my money on the fell-runner too, but that wasn't my point. My point was only that for the reasons you gave you could equally try to persuade Andy to do some canoeing - hence they don't seem like very good reasons to do cross country running to me.

Re the second quote, I can't really agree. I suppose it depends on your definition of 'good'; would you deny that Rob Jebb is both a 'good' cyclist and a 'good' runner? I would say that anyone that can get under the hour for a 25tt is a 'good' cyclist, but there's plenty of triathletes who could do that and run a sub 3-hour marathon (also 'good' in my book). I've gleaned from this for that you're a bl**dy handy tt-er yourself, so maybe we just have different standards! I would mention Rebecca Romero too, but that's a bit different as she didn't do the two sports simultaneously.

Agreed - a lot here hangs on the definition of 'good'. Of course Rob Jebb is both a very good cyclist and a very good runner - the two aren't mutually exclusive and it was misleading of me to imply that everyone can only be good at one thing if they focus on it to the exclusion of all else. However, that doesn't mean that the best advice for an individual who is trying to be good at one thing (ie. Andy trying to get under the hour as a cyclist) is to diversify their efforts into another sport.

Thanks for the compliment, Andy, but I wish you'd chosen different onions to highlight - I'd like to think that wasn't me at my best!

Ruth

Richie G

If it makes you feel any better, Andy, the 'feeling' of going under the hour is identical to the feeling of not going under the hour. For years I didn't get anywhere near going under and I had a friend who said things like "ah, you haven't learned how to really try in a TT." This was the most unhelpful advice imaginable because it made me think I somehow wasn't doing it right on the day of the event. The fact of the matter was that I was nowhere near fit enough, and when I did get under the hour I realised that the feeling (of the effort involved) is absolutely identical to when I was still doing 1.06's and 1.07's. The difference was that I had trained so that my body could take enough oxygen and convert it to enough useful energy to generate enough power. That was all. It felt IDENTICAL.

At the risk of a rookie TTer wading in with his ill-informed ideas, i think Ruth makes a very good point here. Like you Vermooten, i'm after cracking the hour next season. My early TT's this year were a real struggle and i really didn't see how my times would improve. Surely it couldn't have to hurt even more?! And as i got fitter, thankfully, it didn't, i just got faster. Now since early August i've switched over to marathon training and the way i feel after a run now compared to 4 months ago is night and day. Yet i know i can't turn in a decent time trial at the moment cos i've had to halve my mileage to make time for running. I never expected this to be the case - i always assumed if you were fit you were, well, fit! I still intent to keep running once a week after the marathon cos i enjoy it (and there's less to clean afterwards if it's raining!), but i've accepted that if i want my TT times to come down i'm gonna have to put the miles in.

Having said all that it surely can't hurt to do a little cross-training? I know if my day's not gone to plan and i'm tight on time a quick run can at least make you feel like you've done something.

Cheers
Rich

Patrick1.0

It all depends on you. We do what we need to do to get to the standard we desire. There are more ways than one and if you feel the cross country will help you to better form your resolve (not the same as pain) and give you a bit of variety during the off season, then you should not deny yourself just because others plough a different furrow.

As Ruth has said, you'll need to do the right work on the bike to get yourself fit enough to achieve your target. But have some fun, too. We have more time when we're comfortable enough to focus.

gavbarron

I'm a runner first and a cyclist second so I could sing the praise of running all day long but then consider the increased injury risk just for a start, then a new training programme to make maximum benefit of running sessions, and of course you don't want this to clash with your riding so somehow you'll need to fit the two together.
Have you considered mountain biking? This way you can get out even when the weather is too bad for the road bike, there's always somewhere to ride and you can still maintain/improve bike specific fitness. I did a little mtb'ing over the summer and didn't see any spinning, just powering up hills which really made a difference to me as I can now keep my cadence up up a hill in a slightly higher gear.
I'm by no means an expert nor do I profess to be, just merely a runner who took up cycling to allow him to train more so essentially the opposite to you but the principle remains.
I hope that helps somewhat

hammerite

I've never done a TT, but have done quite a number of cross country races.

Whilst it might not be the best thing to do for your specific goal of beating 1hr for 25 miles, it will help you to keep a very good level of general fitness over the winter. If your target was a fast road race (running) in spring then there's very little that would get you as strong as a cross country.

As for fun and satisfaction, very little matches getting caked waist high in mud, up and down hills, and busting your balls for 35-60 mins!!! There also seems to be a strange therapeutic feeling washing all the mud off in the shower afterwards!!

djaeggi

I agree with a lot of the comments here regarding specificity of training, but can I add a slightly different perspective, because I think the situation is a bit more subtle? In my experience, there are a small proportion of people who a super-competitive and can regularly push themselves to the limit and suffer with apparant ease. (I don't count myself as a member of this group!) However, the majority of people find this hard to do - I think mental toughness/tenacity is definitely something that you can train, and is worthwhile training because it can be used to give you a little boost, particularly while training when the extra competitive drive isn't there.

I think the two implicit questions in the original post were:

Does finding your true limits and going there help you go to the limit again?

Are there any sports which make the limit easier to find, and is this transferable to cycling?

Let me give my view of the second point first. Consider those sports which have an element of survival in them (Hemmingway's "Ture Sports", if you will! Max vs Man/Nature/Animal): climbing/mountaineering, sailing, "fighting sports", etc. At some point, if you participate in those sports, you will get to a point (not by chosing) where you will be right up against it, and forced to fight literally for survival. My main sport is climbing & mountaineering. (I first got into cycling as a means of keeping fit for the mountains without knacking my knees!). As a result of, what, 15 years of climbing, I've got a little collection of "experiences", times where I've been absolutely gripped and have pulled myself out of a situation through physical effort I never thought possible: nailing it up a mountain flat out for 30-40mins to seek shelter from a particularly frightening electrical storm; running out of strength on a route not wanting to face the consequences of a fall and having to dig really deep; abseiling off a winter route that melted on us due to a freak weather inversion, and being wet, very cold, exhausted, & scared. The list goes on a little (but thankfully not too much!).

The point is this. Simply invoking the memory of these experiences *really* fires me up and really allows me to push myself because the fear factor that was present then and got me through the situation just isn't present normally for me. So, my internal dialogue goes something like, "Remember the time when..." and this evokes the same feeling and physiological response (e.g. adreneline!), and allows me to really suffer and push myself. I'm getting stoked just writing this!

This is really just a variation of visualisation techniques, it's just having the experience/memories in the first place helps you in the visualisation process. Anger is the same deal, fear & anger produce the same response - I'm not an "angry" person (hence I need fear to provide some drive!) but I know a couple of really driven sportsmen who push themselves massively in order to prove something to themselves, forget past pain, or simply to address low self esteem.

Again, as I said before, this is possibly more useful in training than competition or a "real" sitatuation. Particularly doing "harder" workouts, intervals or gym work, where it's all to easy to back off a little. I find I can catch myself and say, "No, remember the time when...." and find a little more within me, and noticably, say, crank a couple more reps out where I (and my training partners!) thought I was done for.

So, yes, I absolutely think it's worth exploring issues of tenacity/toughness, because it's really personal and it's not simply a case of "If you're motivated to achieve a particular goal, you've got all the tenacity/toughness you require", it's far more subtle than that. And this applies far more to motivation in training than in competition. In this respect I absolutely agree with Ruth, ability to suffer during your 25mile TT isn't the issue, it's physiology - but it may be an issue with respect to training. One for you to explore!

And I'd highly recommend doing some other "committing" sports (not that cycling isn't, especially in the mountains), because they're fun and you also learn interesting things about yourself. In this respect, fell running is probably closest to cycling.

Sorry, this has become a bit of a ramble, but I find sports psychology really interesting, and this is a really interesting question because, among my group of climbing friends in particular, I see quite different levels of tenacity.

Dan

BeaconRuth

Superb post, Dan. Very interesting and thought provoking.

djaeggi wrote:

So, yes, I absolutely think it's worth exploring issues of tenacity/toughness, because it's really personal and it's not simply a case of "If you're motivated to achieve a particular goal, you've got all the tenacity/toughness you require", it's far more subtle than that. And this applies far more to motivation in training than in competition. In this respect I absolutely agree with Ruth, ability to suffer during your 25mile TT isn't the issue, it's physiology - but it may be an issue with respect to training. One for you to explore!

I couldn't agree more strongly that tenacity is a massive issue in training and the psychology behind it is fascinating. But I think it's worth clarifying that there is a difference between "tenacity" and "tolerance of pain." The OP seemed to be asking whether getting used to tolerating pain would make him a better cyclist, which is a different issue from having sufficient tenacity to stick at arduous (but possibly not painful) training. I think there are times when suffering some pain in training is important, but it is certainly not a feature of all good training. For instance there are many months of the year when I don't go anywhere near my pain threshold. Races scare me because they always involve pain - perhaps I have a low tolerance to pain - whereas I should think my tenacity is fairly exceptional. I think they are very different things.

And I'd highly recommend doing some other "committing" sports (not that cycling isn't, especially in the mountains), because they're fun and you also learn interesting things about yourself. In this respect, fell running is probably closest to cycling.

I could have fun going to the cinema and learn a lot about myself by going on a self-improvement course - I still need convincing that there are good reasons to do other sports for the benefit of my cycling. I agree there are dozens of other good reasons to do other sports, but the point of this thread was all about going under the hour in a 25 mile TT, not general self-improvement or having fun.

Sorry, this has become a bit of a ramble, but I find sports psychology really interesting, and this is a really interesting question because, among my group of climbing friends in particular, I see quite different levels of tenacity.

I'm sure you do. I think tenacity is a far more important issue for most cyclists than pain tolerance - and probably for most sportspeople. Next question: how to improve tenacity?

Ruth

andrewgturnbull

Hi folks.

Interesting thread, especially as I've just bought a set of xc spikes and am looking forward to some 'pain' tomorrow afternoon.

Dan and Ruth make some good points. My take on it is that the ability to push yourself, and keep pushing yourself beyond what you thought possible, day after day in training is the key factor. I guess this is what Ruth calls tenacity.

The pain you feel during an interval on the turbo, or a 400m rep on the running track isn't real pain - it's not like when you're injured, or have fallen off your bike. No, its the kind of pain that burns like pride at the end of a good session. Suck it up! Dig in! Bring it on! Or remembering past experiences (as Dan said) can get you through this.

I think of your psychology enabling you to get the most out of your physiology - which is probably why people can excel at different sports (e.g. Rebecca Romero).

BeaconRuth wrote:

Next question: how to improve tenacity?

Everyone has their own psychological cue words, my current favourite is:

HTFU

Cheers, Andy

BeaconRuth

andrewgturnbull wrote:

Everyone has their own psychological cue words, my current favourite is:

HTFU

Cheers, Andy

Uggh! I can assure you I never ever tell myself (or anyone else) to HTFU. Or to 'suck it up' for that matter. Uggh! Nope, I'd probably get off my bike and refuse to do anything if anyone tried to 'harden me up' with such phrases.

Ruth

BeaconRuth

andrewgturnbull wrote:

I think of your psychology enabling you to get the most out of your physiology - which is probably why people can excel at different sports (e.g. Rebecca Romero).

Doubtless.

Ruth

andrewgturnbull

Psychology is a very personal thing - whatever works for you is good!

djaeggi

I'd rather not get into a debate about semantics, and I suspect we'd all agree anyway, but in my book:

Pain is something I rarely go through and have no desire to go through.
Toughness is the ability to endure arduous circumstances.
Tenacity is the determination to succeed in a tough situation.

My take on the original question was that it wasn't asking about "pain", it was asking about whether exposure to tough situations could improve tenacity, and thus performance on the bike.

I could have fun going to the cinema and learn a lot about myself by going on a self-improvement course - I still need convincing that there are good reasons to do other sports for the benefit of my cycling. I agree there are dozens of other good reasons to do other sports, but the point of this thread was all about going under the hour in a 25 mile TT, not general self-improvement or having fun.

I think this misses my point a little. Going to the cinema or self improvement course would have zero (or negative due to the wasted time!) effect on performance. My take on tenacity is that you need to have a memory bank of experiences in which you succeeded that are tougher than the one you find yourself in. This gives you the ability to stick it. Of course, this may come to you naturally through cycling, or you might already have a range of life experiences you can use, in which case, great! But my main observation was that some other sports provide tough experiences more readily and without the need to chose to push yourself - choosing not to push yourself in a solo situation on a bike (or even in a group if you're not particularly psyched) is relatively easy. The more experiences you have and the more often you deploy them as a visualisation aid, the better (after all, that's the basis of all training!).

Dan