Mental Training

I've read lots of books and articles about how to physically train for a race. Everything from how to plan out your whole year of training down to how to position your foot while riding for optimal power. Something that I never gave much thought to until a few months ago was the mental aspect of training and racing. After not meeting my goal times in a few races, I began to wonder what was going on. I knew that I had done the training necessary to get my body ready to race and I knew that my nutrition was right...so what was the problem??

I figured it was time to explore the aspect that I had been ignoring...my mental preparation.

For Father's Day this year, Jessica bought me a book called "The Triathlete's Guide to Mental Training" by Jim Taylor and Terri Schneider.

This book discussed six mental factors that influence performance the most: motivation, confidence, intensity, focus, emotions, and my favorite, pain. Although it's obviously marketed to Triathlete's, these principles are true for any athlete that competes....no matter what your sport. I'll look at each of these factors in more detail in my next few blog posts. I learned a lot from this book and I would like to think that things I learned from reading it helped me get through the disaster at Cardinal Harbour and contributed to my two best races of the year, Tri Indy and Tom Sawyer.



SATURDAY'S WORKOUT:

Run

5.32 miles in 39:06 for a pace of 7:21 min/mile (10K race pace)
The purpose of this run is to get my body used to running at a fast rate. Once a week, I'll do a long run in zone 2 to build my endurance, but I will also incorporate some speed work through intervals and these shorter runs.

YESTERDAY'S WORKOUT:

Bike

20.33 miles in 1:00:19 for a pace of 20.2 mph
This ride was very similar to the run I did on Saturday. Once a week I'm still going to do a long endurance-building ride, but I'm also going to mix in a hard effort at a shorter distance. This ride had lots of rolling hills with a monster decline at the beginning and incline at the end.
Avg HR = 144 bpm
Max HR = 164 bpm
Here's some data from my ride:

Elevation Only Graph

Heart Rate with zones

Elevation combined with speed - fast going down (39 mph), slow going up (9 mph)...it's called gravity.

TODAY'S WORKOUT:

Bike

10 minute warm-up, 15 minutes in zone 2, 45 minute spin class with hill intervals, 10 minutes in zone 2, 10 minute cool-down

Total workout: 90 minutes, approx. 28 miles

Avg HR = 129 bpm

Max HR = 144 bpm