Mental Game

It's quite common for people to wax poetic about the physical demands of bike racing and training, but the physical aspect is only part of the story.

What I'm talking about is the "mental game", your attitude, if you will. Your attitude is what really enables you to push harder, or at least your desire to push harder. If you've raced more than once, then you've got that competitive spirit, and pushing yourself in a race takes care of itself. But what about training?

Training can be much tougher mentally than racing. You're by yourself, and when you're doing intense efforts you have nothing to focus on but the pain. At least in a race you have many things to focus on; fellow competitors, the terrain, just to name a few. With training though, it's just you and the hurt locker. It takes a supreme effort to ignore the pleadings of your mind to end the pain as you are 1.5 min into a 3 min V02 max interval.

I had such a moment yesterday. I was doing some great V02 max intervals, in addition to eliciting improvements in your V02 max, it also makes for an excellent neuromuscular workout as well. This specific workout mimics a race winning effort.
You start with a 30 sec sprint (15 sec out of the saddle) to establish a gap, then 3 min at your Functional Threshold Power to maintain the gap, and ending with a 10 sec burst to shoot for the finish line. The workout is as follows:
30 sec sprint (15 sec out of saddle)- Avg 200% FTP w/Max 300%
3 min- 100% FTP
10 sec burst- 200-250% FTP
Recover 5-6 min

Do that 5-8 times.

Now, going into yesterday's workout, I knew that going for 8 of those badboys was not very realistic, but I thought I could handle 5.
The first two go as planned. I hit all my wattage goals for the first two intervals, but by the end of the 2nd one I was beginning to feel the effects of the sprinting in my legs. The 3rd interval starts and I'm out of the saddle, and as I sit back down for the final 15 sec I'm not in the right gear and my power is dropping as I begin to "spin out". At this point my mind and body is already crying "uncle", but as my power drops off, the damned logical side of my brain starts using that as concrete proof that I have reached my limit and to cut my intervals short. I hate to admit it, but I listened to my brain. I could've easily clicked up a gear and finished that initial hard effort... I was only a few seconds away from the more manageable 3 min @ FTP. There's no telling if I would've been able to complete 5 of those intervals, but I definitely could've finished that 3rd interval. Unfortunately though, I didn't have my head on straight. I was already filling my head with self doubt as I contemplated being able to do 8 intervals, and as the 2nd interval was wrapping up, the 5 was coming into doubt.
I had given up before I even started.

I'd like to say that it will never happen again, but the mind isn't something you can turn off and on like a light switch. It looks like I've got another form of training to undertake between now and race season.