How to stay motivated this winter so you’re ready to ride your best this summer. Mountain biking requires a year-round commitment to stay in shape and hone your skills. Your mountain bike season begins with setting a goal(s) for the summer.
goal setting
“Every time someone asks me, ‘teach me something new,’ I know they’re not in the domain.” “If you want to master something, you have to do it over and over again.” Anthony Robbins
1.
With goals we create the future in advance.
2.
’53 Yale class, 3% had specific written goals. 20 years later, in 1973, when interviewed, that 3% was happier, they enjoyed their life more (which I know is a subjective measure), although what is not subjective is that that 3% was richer than the another 97% of their class combined.
3. A goal that is not written down is just a dream!
Whether you’re a weekend mountain biker just riding to get out into nature for some fresh air or a determined mountain bike racer, it’s hard to stay motivated to stay in shape during the off-season.
Like most mountain bikers, I’m not always super motivated to exercise or train on cold winter days. Riding and/or mountain bike racing season seems so far away that it’s hard to stay motivated in winter. Winter is a great time to access your riding season and goals and set new goals. Follow my season summary and goal setting worksheet, then do something I learned from Dan Milliman in his book Body Mind Mastery, he says, “Set your goals, then set them aside and focus on being the best you can be.” be on a certain day”. . He goes on to explain that by focusing on goals that are often 6 months or 5 years away, it takes us out of the moment and we don’t enjoy our everyday lives. He tells us that victory is fleeting and if we don’t enjoy the journey on the road to achieving our goals what’s the point.
An example of this in my own life is doing intervals (85-100% effort for 30 second to 6 minute intervals). I often said to myself, “God I hate intervals, feeling like you’re going to throw up for 5 minutes, rest and repeat is miserable, but if I want to win (the World Masters/Angel Fire or whatever my goal is that season) I have to do them.” As you can imagine, I didn’t make them as much as I should and every time I did I didn’t enjoy them. When I won a bronze medal at the UCI Mountain Bike Masters World Championships in 1999, it was the happiest moment of my life, until the next morning. I woke up, I was proud of my medal, then I thought about the last 9 months and my current situation. I was in Montreal in a beat up ’84 VW van with 197,000 miles on it, an exhaust leak and three smelly mountain bikers, not sure if it would get us home, I was broke (actually a couple thousand in debt on my credit cards ), I had no job, no place to live, all my “stuff” was in storage, and I had no girlfriend to come home to (and I hadn’t had a girlfriend or date for a long time). During the 9 months leading up to the World Masters, I was really focused on my goal. In those months I did my intervals, hit the gym hard, ate really well, went to bed early, and was probably not the most fun person to be around. Going to bed early meant not dating, I was sacrificing my social life, intervals are exhausting and I saw them as painful not fun, I was punishing myself. In order to train so hard and compete on the national calendar, I quit my job in April (not enough time to train, recover, travel to races and work). As I accessed these months and my current situation, the thrill of victory faded quickly.
The thrill of victory is not only short-lived, what happens when you fall short or don’t even have a chance to reach your goal (get injured, lose funds, change careers or set a different goal, etc.)? Now you made all that sacrifice for nothing! All those intervals and I’m not even running, what a waste. Well, if you did the best you could each day and enjoyed the ride, there was no sacrifice.
A year later I went back to the World Masters with the intention of winning and finished second in the qualifying round! Unfortunately, in the final run, my chain came off my chain retainer on the first turn and my race was over (I stopped, put the chain back on, pedaled furiously into the next section and the chain came off again). , I slid to 8th or 9th place). This was one of the most disappointing moments of my life. I had the Silver Medal in my bag and with a solid run I was able to easily win the Gold. When I woke up the next day I was still a little disappointed, but I took stock of my life and realized that it wasn’t a big deal, just a bicycle race. I was in the best shape of my life (which at 34 felt great!), had a great girlfriend, a great job, and a great apartment to come back to. What a difference from the previous year!
I now set my goal(s) and then focus on being the best I can be at every given task on the way there. When that task is intervals, I don’t do them to win a race, I do them because I enjoy the challenge of pushing my body so hard and the good exhausted but satisfied feeling I get afterwards. Knowing that I am 44 years old, that I am in excellent shape and that I am getting stronger with each training session is a great feeling.
Dan Millman goes on to explain that if we do our best every day, we’ll not only enjoy our lives more, but we’ll likely exceed our goals. So look out next year, I’m training hard and enjoying my life more than ever! Who thought you could still beat half the pro field at 45?
Think of training as something that will make you a better, happier, and more successful person, not as a sacrifice. The real sacrifice is spending all that time and money traveling to fun biking places like Fruita or Moab and wishing you had more energy and could ride more. There is nothing worse than finishing poorly in a race and thinking, “If only I had… practiced a little more… trained a little more… etc. Saying ‘what if’ is a sad way to go through life (and I’ve done it way too many times in my life) “He just beat me because he practices/rides more than me” than me, so he practiced more than me.
At 44, and even when I was younger, I have never raced to win. I run to give my best and there is no greater disappointment than disappointing you. So whether you’re training for a long mountain bike ride in Moab next spring or the biggest race of your life, train hard and have fun!