State of mind
Keeping motivated on the longer harder rides
As much as I love cycling, sometimes it can be a real grind and just a little a bit miserable.
It’s pouring with rain, I’ve got dirty water and mud flicking up at me from the road, my shoes are soaked through, and I’m starting to get cold and hungry. Or I’m climbing up a really steep hill that seems to be getting steeper, and I’m already in my lowest gear and struggling to keep pedalling. Or there’s a strong head wind, I’m feeling tired, and I’ve still got many kilometres to cycle. Even worse, the wind direction changes while I’m riding so I have a head wind on the way out and on the way home again.
At times like that, the power of the mind becomes more important than the power of the body (although, of course, good fitness and plenty of food and water help too).
Sometimes, it’s as simple of reminding myself of what’s ahead - a warm shower and a hot meal, a spectacular view from the top of the hill, or a sense of achievement for having made it to the end. Other times, I look back at previous rides as a point of reference for what I’m currently facing.
So, if there’s a strong head wind (or rain) and I’ve got some distance to cover, I’ll be thinking about a ride of similar distance that I often cycle at home. When we got caught in heavy rain on the way to Taumarunui as part of our Tour Aotearoa trip, I was thinking about how the distance was roughly equivalent to the distance of my regular ride along the Christchurch Northern Corridor. Easy. Another 40 minutes and you’re done.
If it’s a tough hill, I’ll be thinking about steeper or longer climbs I’ve done before - the Von Hill on the Around the Mountains Cycle Trail, the roads up Christchurch’s Port Hills, or the endless climb through the Pureora Forest for the Tour Aotearoa. You’ve managed harder climbs than this before, I’ll tell myself, you’ve got this one.
When Chris and I cycled the Timber Trail, we had already spent the morning on that endless climb in the Pureora Forest to get there. So, when we discovered that the Timber Trail required more of the same, it was pretty disheartening. Fortunately, just as we were feeling like giving up, we stopped to check the elevation profile and realised we were close to the high point of the ride. The change in our moods was instantaneous. Less than a kilometre before we go downhill? No problem.
Endurance cyclist Emily Chappell writes about drawing on an “invisible peloton” to help get her up Mont Ventoux late at night, alone and in the dark, during the 2015 Transcontinental Race.1 To help keep her going, she thought about other inspirational female cyclists she knew and imagined them alongside her, urging her on and pulling her up the mountain. Focusing on a different cyclist for a two-kilometre stretch enabled her to make it to the top.
I love the concept of the invisible peloton, and imagine it as a giant tow rope, but haven’t tried it for myself yet.
What I have tried is channelling various Tour de France riders. The Netflix subscribers among you might have watched last year's Tour de France: Unchained, which follows some of the teams in the 2022 race. I’ve never followed the Tour de France, but I loved this series and went through a period of imagining I was Tom Pidcock flying fearlessly downhill, or Wout van Aert paving the way for Jonas Vingegaard when grinding away uphill. Sounds silly, but it worked. (And now that the series on the 2023 Tour de France has been released, I’ll probably start doing it all over again.)
Then there’s music. I don’t listen to music when I’m riding because I like to have all my senses available to me (and find earbuds irritating anyway). But plenty of people do. And I do often find myself generating an internal soundtrack that reflects my ride (and my mood). If it’s going well, it might be the Black Eyed Peas’ I Gotta Feeling or U2’s Beautiful Day. And on steep climbs, I’ve found myself drawing on Rudimental’s Not Giving In.
That last one I borrowed from my spin class. There, music is an absolute necessity and is more about the beat than the lyrics, although both play a part. (Europe’s The Final Countdown is a popular choice among Spin instructors for keeping people motivated near the end of class.)
If I get really desperate, I might resort to bargaining - promising myself a break or an extra snack if I just keep cycling for another fifteen minutes or five or ten kilometres or to the next rise in the hill. And then do it again, and again, until I’m over the hard part or reach the end of the ride. Usually, the promise of a reward is enough though, and I’ll ride on for another fifteen minutes (or whatever the deal is) before I actually take the break.
Finally, if all else fails, I can tell myself that it’s ‘type two fun’ - that is, I might be feeling miserable right now but I’ll be able to look back and laugh about it. Maybe it will make a good story. And almost certainly it will be tucked away as a reminder of what I can get through the next time I need some motivation to keep riding.
Mont Ventoux is located in the south of France and known as one of the toughest climbs on the Tour de France, with steep gradients and strong winds near the summit. It was the first checkpoint in the 2015 Transcontinental Race, which Emily Chappell wrote about in her book, Where There’s a Will: Hope, Grief and Endurance in a Cycle Race Across a Continent.