You have to keep a positive mental relationship with your cycling

One of our Sans Chaine taglines is that every ride should be amazing. Essentially they should all be enjoyable (even the hard ones). We want to have a positive mental relationship with our cycling.

I experienced losing that positive mental relationship. I didn’t realise how mentally cooked I was when I finished my cycling career. For eight years after I finished racing full-time I could not bring myself to do a VO2 workout - or any workout that was hard. My mental capacity to go hard was gone. It is important to finish your hard sessions with a bit left in the tank. A “yeah, I could have done one more” feeling.

Photo: @kathyl_photography

We also need positive mental energy to race well. Without it you can’t use your potential. There is always a moment where it is more mental than physical, where it would be easy to give up. You can be the fittest rider but to perform you need to have the ability to push mentally.

I experienced this recently at a local gravel race. The group had split on a long hard gravel section, and making a slow left hand turn out onto the road I was just off the back. I would have to accelerate to get back on. In that moment, where I was tired and ready to stop, it was all mental. Rather than sitting up I gritted my teeth and made it back to the group. And funnily enough, from there the race wasn’t that bad. Everyone else was just as tired as I was!

Burn your mental relationship with the sport and you won’t keep riding for long.You want to perform, and keeping fresh mentally is as important as being your fittest.