It’s a randonneuring truism that most failures are mental. The bike is good, the body passable but the mind, well, it is tricky. This truism floated through my brain this morning as I happily buzzed along through the near freezing rain. It certainly wasn’t the prospect of visiting my doctor. Just a day earlier I’d had a private pity parade while searching for that day’s elusive riding joy. Today it was colder, wetter and featured more traffic. I still buzzed along feeling great.
Kent “not a nutritional role model” Peterson’s #1 bit of advice to aspiring distance riders is “figure out the food thing.” Food is pretty physical stuff. You can track it and measure it and take notes on it. It’s easy to see the difference when you read ride notes like “had big hamburger, legs felt like lead, puked after eight miles” vs. “two apple fritters, a Coke and a coffee had me cruising along 3mph above my average speed for the day.” On future rides visions of fritters will dance in your head as you approach a town.
I’m sure Kent would advice people to “figure out the head thing” if there was any type of follow up. Standard advice is to make incremental goals (the next town, control or in tough times the next telephone pole), remember that downers happen (tough to recall when your mood is plummeting), and stay on top of nutrition so your brain gets all its glucose. In contrast to food there’s not much physical stuff you can track about mental states.
Having said that … here’s what I believe about mental states. The three quarter mark in a long ride is dangerous to my mental buoyancy. Falling behind on food intake is a sure way to quash good thoughts. Concentrating on how sore/tired/hungry/cold/hot/uncomfortable you are distracts from riding onward. None of this explains the difference between yesterday and today. I’m gonna need to study this one some more.
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