The mind of a champion?

joeyhalloran

I've been doing a couple of 10 mile TT recently. Although while i am going round the course my legs hurt, they seem to recover remarkably quickly while cycling home. I have come to the conclusion this is probabily because i am not pushing hard enough while going round.

Does anyone have any advice/experiance about how to push past the pain barrier? how do you get the most out of your legs and quiten the bit in your brain thats screaming 'this hurts'? Whats going through your mind as you're pushing your hardest during a TT?

I assume the more racing/tt you do the better you get at pushing to the limit and by all means i intend to carry on pushing myself, by i am curious as to other ways.

Thanks

Flandrianfield

I think you will find that research indicates that there are two approaches that athletes use to deal with the feelings of discomfort that go with intense physical efforts. One is to "dissociate" from the feelings; the other, which is felt to be more effective, is to focus on those feelings and address them to urge yourself to deal with the pain and sufferring and overcome those feelings.

On reading your post I am not sure that your question is entirely about the mental approach given that you mention that your legs hurt. At maximum efforts, the limit on physiological performance will be your cardiovascular system. That being the case, your concentration will be on the physical discomfort associated with being totally out of breath. You make no mention of such feelings of discomfort.

From your post I presume that you are not working with either a powermeter or heart rate monitor. It may be that if you have a clear idea of your physiological capabilities, that you can focus on those and thus improve your performance.

I hope this helps. I'm sure that ther are others who use this forum who ar ebetter qualified than I am to address your question.

joeyhalloran

My question was really on what different motivation methods people use to push harder and dig deeper? I guess its quite a personal thing.

Richie G

Well i'm certainly no champion, but i do find the psychology of pushing yourself interesting. It's only my second year of TTing and i didn't realise until recently how much the fast guys can hurt themselves. One tip i've picked up is to not think too far ahead on a time trial. I'm now trying to keep the pressure on for the next 200 yards - by the time i've got there i've already decided to keep going to the next lamp post, etc, etc. By avoiding thinking about the next 5 miles of pain and concentrating on lots of small goals instead, i feel i've been wringing a bit more out of myself. Fear of failure seems to help too! Our club 10 times are normally on the website by 10pm that night - there's no where to hide if you back off! I'm quite prone to doubt myself, so normally spend most of the ride telling myself that i'm not going fast enough and that if i don't keep pushing i'm gonna do a crap time! Whether this is right way to go about it i don't know, but the PB's have been coming down so far and i finally feel that i'm getting my pacing right in 10's.

Rich

16simon

Richie, if you correctly pace yourself in a TT you shouldn't really reach this level of pain until the last quarter or so. The most efficient way to ride it is to go out easy (ish), aim to be up to just under threshold pace after a minute. Ride at this pace for the first half (eg to the turn) then you should feel fresh enough to start to up the pace. If you ride like this then you'll be able to again up the pace and really bury yourself towards the end.

This might sound counter-intuitive - and it is a blalancing act, obviously going too slow isn't any good - but give it a try on a club event and see how it affects your times. If you go too hard too early you'll lose time towards the end as you start to fade.

Also try training just under your threshold, this will help your body to work more efficiently and raise your threshold.

My best 10m time last year was 20:00 (aim this year is a 19), so riding like this does work.

teagar

Split up with your girl/boyfriend. Never went deeper than in the weeks after that happend.

joeyhalloran

teagar, brilliant advice but not sure my girlfriend would be to pleaseed :P ! Interesting advice Simon and i certainly will give it ago, how would wind affect this? e.g. say its a head wind going out and a tail wind coming back, do you always ease off for the first half regardless of wind direction and accept you have a lot to do in the second half? or do you try and even it out a bit.

teagar

JoeyHalloran wrote:

teagar, brilliant advice but not sure my girlfriend would be to pleaseed :P ! Interesting advice Simon and i certainly will give it ago, how would wind affect this? e.g. say its a head wind going out and a tail wind coming back, do you always ease off for the first half regardless of wind direction and accept you have a lot to do in the second half? or do you try and even it out a bit.

Why else d'ya think Lance kept divorcing?










Only joking...

Jeff Jones

JoeyHalloran wrote:

I've been doing a couple of 10 mile TT recently. Although while i am going round the course my legs hurt, they seem to recover remarkably quickly while cycling home. I have come to the conclusion this is probabily because i am not pushing hard enough while going round.

I've had similar experiences doing 10s. I think it's because they're so short you can't actually exhaust your reserves. But during the event, you can't physically go faster no matter how much pain you put yourself through because you are limited by your energy systems. In fact, my quickest 10s have only hurt in the second half.

After a 25, I'm a lot more knackered. And even more so for a 50 (only done one), despite the fact that it didn't really hurt until the final third.

Does anyone have any advice/experiance about how to push past the pain barrier? how do you get the most out of your legs and quiten the bit in your brain thats screaming 'this hurts'? Whats going through your mind as you're pushing your hardest during a TT?

I assume the more racing/tt you do the better you get at pushing to the limit and by all means i intend to carry on pushing myself, by i am curious as to other ways.

Practice helps. Dissociation (not thinking about the pain, but focusing on your breathing, pedalling, position, a song) helps, I've found. Pacing (not starting too hard so you don't build up too much lactic acid too quickly) helps. And training helps :-)

joeyhalloran

good advice, i haven't tried a 25 yet but will soon hopefully. I think ineed to experiment with association and dissociation to see which works for me.

16simon

JoeyHalloran wrote:

Interesting advice Simon and i certainly will give it ago, how would wind affect this? e.g. say its a head wind going out and a tail wind coming back, do you always ease off for the first half regardless of wind direction and accept you have a lot to do in the second half? or do you try and even it out a bit.

If you've got a headwind out, I'd say there's even more reason to not go too hard, that way you'll have the energy to take advantage of the tailwind on the way back and really fly.

The easiest and cheapest way to pace yourself is to use a heart rate monitor (a power meter is more accurate and has no lag, but isn't cheap). You'll probably overestimate your threshold heart rate at first so think of a number then take 5 (or more) BPM off. I think the figure of 90% of max HR for lactate threshold is only really for pro or top amateur riders, so you probably won't start out with it this high. It is trainable though, so you can improve it.

BeaconRuth

I used to think that somehow the very fast guys and girls managed to suffer much more than me and get into some 'higher zone' which enabled them to push through the pain barrier better than me..................... but now I know that they were just fitter than me .

For me, the most remarkable thing about going fast and winning races compared to going slow and coming in at the bottom of the field is that (at the time of racing) they feel exactly the same. The difference is what came before ie. the training.

Ruth