Free Road ID

I like Road ID – www.RoadID.com

I’ve been wearing one for over three years now and don’t leave for a ride without it strapped to my ankle.

If you take a look at their website you will see it makes a lot of sense, particularly for athletes who train long hours by themselves. It’s not just for road rides by the way, if I’m going out on a solo ride on the dirt I usually strap it to my ankle as well.

I like the Ankle ID, once it’s on over your sock and you’ve been riding a few minutes you forget it’s there. It’s really cheap piece of mind. If the Ankle ID isn’t your thing then look at the Shoe ID, my wife uses one for her long runs.

I like their product enough that I contacted Road ID and asked how I could help them spread the word, they just asked that I mention them in a blog post (done) and that they would offer up a little bit of schwag as a giveaway for folks reading the blog. The schwag = an eCard for a free Road ID. my choice on how I want to give it away. I thought about giving it to the first person who sent me a photo of a pineapple carved to look like a battleship but instead I’m going with the first person to send me an email gets the free Road ID offer.

Fire away…

How important is Mental Conditioning?

This week I asked Iain to do a guest post for the Coaching Blog, the subject was “think about an endurance racing topic that’s important to you”. Iain chose to write about Mental Conditioning, something which I believe can be a tipping point for every athlete in tough racing.

At some point in a race it’s not uncommon to start feeling the cracks appear, the longer and harder the race the better the chance the cracks will start surfacing. If you don’t have good mental conditioning the cracks can start to manifest into something you might not have imagined and ultimately they can really turn your event on it’s head. The cracks usually start as inner dialogue, some of it might sound like some of these… it’s too cold, it’s too hot, I’m too thirsty, I’m so tired, I can’t do this, taking a nap would be good, I’ll never catch them, I shouldn’t have signed up… the cracks come in many forms. How you manage them is dependent on how well you prepared your mental conditioning game long before you toed the line.

In just under a year of coached endurance racing Iain has made huge strides in both his physical and mental game. Competing in some tough events, he has learned a ton and become a much better racer for it. In 2009 I had the pleasure of standing on the line next to Iain at the World Solo 24 Hour Championships, for me as a coach that was a really inspiring moment. Iain exceeded his personal goals in that event, on a VERY tough Solo course, it was strong mental conditioning that defined him on that day.

Here’s ‘Iain’s homework’ reply… thanks for your insight and personal clarity on this one Iain. Now get back to charging your lights as 24hrs of Old Pueblo is almost on the horizon.

Mental Conditioning

So coach gave me some written homework this week.

What!! Written homework?

I thought I was supposed to be out on the bike or in the gym – now I have to sit down and “think about an endurance racing topic that’s important to me”. What kind of training is this? Could it be some devious mental conditioning he’s sneaking into my day off?

Absolutely! And that’s exactly the point…

When I started training about 10 months ago, I was targeting my first 24 Hour Solo event. My primary objective was training on the bike, thinking that I needed a major dose of physical conditioning to be successful. I sensed that mental conditioning was part of the equation, but I had no idea how important it would become. After three 24 hour solo races and over 100 hours of racing under my chamois, I realize now that I’ve barely scratched the surface. The longer or harder the event, the more I learned about myself at a very deep level.

Of course, every event brings a better understanding of the tactics necessary to maximize physical conditioning. When to ride and when to walk. Maintaining momentum to minimize energy output. Monitoring power output to minimize the likelihood of “blowing up” after 18 hours on the bike. Nutritional intake. Pit stop strategies. Written race strategy. And the list goes on. All important tactics that will make a difference in race performance. That noted, in every major event my performance was ultimately constrained by mental outlook and not physical conditioning. As I continue to train my body, I have to toughen my mind even more. I feel I have so much more to learn about myself mentally than physically. We are all capable of far more than most of us can ever imagine, we just don’t believe it….

Now I have to continue getting mentally prepared for my next 24 Solo, just 5 weeks away. Bring it on!

Why do you race?

I asked Sarah to do a guest post for the Coaching Blog, not because I have run out of things to say, but because I thought Sarah might have something important to offer. Nearly a week ago I gave Sarah the subject of her Blog post and it wasn’t an easy one – ‘Why do you race?’

I think most athletes have a good idea of why they race, until someone asks them to sit down and REALLY THINK ABOUT why they race. If you spend several days on this question you might find your initial answer turns out to different than the answer you end up with.

I want to thank Sarah for being so honest and insightful in her post, and I also want to thank her for allowing me to share this with all of you…

“Why do I race?”

That’s the question I’ve been asking myself for the better part of a year and the question Shaun asked me this week. It seems easy enough, right? Let’s pinpoint the question, shall we? He’s not asking me:

“Why do you ride?” (Sense of freedom and challenge).

“Why do you train?” (to feel fit and strong).

“Why do you sign up for races?” (Gives firm deadlines to my training).

Those are all easy. What’s he’s really asking is (my interpretation):

“Why, in the heat of competition, when your lungs hurt and your legs sear, do you choose to fight for victory instead of giving up?”

Ahhh…. That’s the toughie. I thought about this question for five whole days and nights. I rolled it over and over in my brain, let it simmer in my gut, and I don’t like the answer.

I didn’t race at all in 2009. Sure, I signed up for races, made half hearted attempts at getting in shape, pinned on a number, and lined up- ALOT. But, when the lungs hurt and the legs seared, I gave in.

2009 was a tough year for me. My personal life managed to fall into pieces and put itself back together, I stayed sick from stress, and my job is less than satisfying. In a lot of ways, I was desperate for a good season, but I couldn’t pull it together because I didn’t commit to the necessary work. 2009 gave me plenty of excuses:

“I’m heartbroken.”

“I’m tired.”

“I’m stressed.”

“I’m sick.” Again.

In August, I made a decision to make a coaching change, not because my coach wasn’t great, but he didn’t have the tools to help me put myself back together. Having met Shaun at the Ultracentric 48 hour mountain bike race in late 2008 and seen his energy, I knew he was the guy to help pull me through the abyss. Deep in my gut, I knew he would make me do the hard work, like this post.

Why do I race?

More than anything, I want to say that I race because I thrive on competition and crushing other competitors. In the past, I’ve raced to prove something. In 2008, I raced to prove that a female 20 something slightly overweight cancer survivor can do ridiculous things like riding her bike on the same terrible 7 mile singletrack course for 2 days straight or shed twenty pounds and see the podium a few times. In 2009, I tried to race on other’s expectations: my coach, my boss, my mechanic, my significant other, and my friends. That didn’t work so well.

“Why, in the heat of competition, when your lungs hurt and your legs sear, do you choose to fight for victory instead of giving up?”

A good friend told me “If you don’t sprint for the win, it’s because you don’t think you deserve it”. He’s right. I didn’t really plug in and do the work needed to form a foundation in 2009. When it came time to “race”- for position, the holeshot, the finish sprint – I didn’t feel like I deserved the win, so I gave up – without a fight.

By fits and starts, I’ve maintained some fitness, but I want to race in 2010. I want to know that in the heat of competition I will have sacrificed enough sweat and put in enough hours to do battle and deserve the victory. Let’s be honest – if I’m not fighting for victory, then it’s just an expensive training ride.

Complimentary Training

I enjoy core training, strength and resistance training, and several other forms of training. The types of associated or complimentary training I do for the kind of racing I participate in are broad reaching in nature and they apply to most sports. Complimentary training works for me, but what about other athletes as well? I think a lot of athletes get caught in a rut of specificity and that rut can be to their detriment because they miss some of the advantages provided by complimentary training.

Complimentary training can produce a more rounded kind of athlete, by using the term rounded-athlete I’m not talking about CrossFit-rounded or any other specific branded training system. I’m talking about athletes that expose themselves to their weaknesses through complimentary training without losing sight of the need to maintain the specificity of their sport. As the weakness is addressed a new weakness is engaged through creative complimentary training, all this occurs as a secondary priority to the specificity of the athletes focused sport..

Lots of competitive athletes can put on impressive displays of their particular abilities, it’s typical that a competitive athlete trains and displays to their strengths. Take a skipping rope master as an example, the better someone gets at skipping, the more comfortable they become in their skipping world and the more they like to keep skipping. A skipping rope master can skip all day but can they do a plank for 90 seconds? Without realizing the circular reinforcing nature of a narrowly focused path an athlete can soon become oblivious to their glaring weaknesses. The weaknesses aren’t obvious to them because they are, after all, a skipping master.

I like to use the balance ball as a good introductory example of a training method that will expose weaknesses. Complimentary training doesn’t have to be all about strength or power or cardio, how about demonstrating an athletes short comings regarding their fast twitch balance and center of gravity recognition – huh, what’s that? Get on the balance ball, on your hands and knees, find your center of gravity and steady the balls movement with no body part touching the ground. When things are reasonably solid… close your eyes, how long did you last before you fell over? Nothing changed, except your eyelids, so how come you fell over right away? There are lots of reasons you fell over and there are benefits in training to improve these areas, some benefits are more obvious than others.

Why learn something like fast twitch balance and center of gravity recognition? Name a sport that doesn’t use it…

Why get involved in complimentary training methods? Name a sport that doesn’t use it…

What’s in a name?

Giving something an identity should never be taken lightly. I struggled for some time trying to create a brand name for my coaching service because I believe it should represent much more than just a name. Naming a service is taking a lot of things and trying to wrap it up in one neat little package; you are trying to represent who you are, what you do, your philosophy, commitment, ideals, experience, the name doesn’t represent just me but also the athletes I coach.

And so I took the challenge of branding quite seriously.

I didn’t outsource the brand name problem, I didn’t mention to anyone I was looking for a brand name, I wanted to name it myself. So I sat and thought about it late at night, I thought about it driving the kids to school, I thought about it while on the trainer or while drinking a coffee. I gave it a lot of thought.

‘Forward Momentum Coaching’, why did I choose those three words as a brand name? Well to answer that question I would have to go back a couple of decades to a time when I was in a very demanding career path that was extreme on many levels. On nearly a daily basis I was tested, not in the written sense, it was in a physical, mental and emotional sense and sometimes things got so off the chart hard that I found myself falling back on a mantra that I didn’t know was a mantra at the time… ‘just keep going, just a few more steps, keep moving forward’. It was 20+ years ago and in those moments who I am today was being formed. As the years went by and when things got crazy hard I found myself falling into a familiar pattern of repeating ‘keep moving forward, keep the momentum’, somehow when the dust settled I would find myself unscathed and a little surprised that I was still standing. Along the way I started repeating the same thing to others that were in my charge, ‘just keep up the forward momentum’, or ‘as long as you are showing some forward momentum’.

Forward Momentum Coaching represents the lessons I’ve learned and the experience I’ve gained over a lot of years acting as a coach, teacher, mentor and willing participant across a wide range of events and challenges. The name means something to me and it acts as a guiding principle in everything I do as a coach. None of us know what we are going to be doing 10 years from now but I know with certainty whatever it is I will have kept my eye on maintaining the ‘Forward Momentum’.