Winning the Mental Game of Cycling!

I was a Tour de France fanatic for years, and learned riding strategies from watching the men in spandex shorts, lycra jerseys, and bumble-bee helmets maneuver the race.  I read articles online from Bicycling and Velo News, and also took to heart whatever advice my pals sent my way.

But in 2009 I lifted my studies of cycling to higher level, focusing it more specifically on my training and diet and on my actual riding strategies.

I moved to Dubai in 2006, and immediately found my way into the active cycling community.  I was already pretty passionate and disciplined about the sport, and without fully knowing what I needed to know, I managed to break four personal bests within my first year of riding there.

• Mileage for the day, from 100 miles, to 160 miles:  on a long-distance, partly mountainous charity ride from Dubai to Fujairah.
• Mileage for the year, from a total of 3000 miles, to 3100 miles:  October 2006-October 2007.
• Average speed on a ride, from 20 MPH, to 21 MPH:  numerous times on our "leisurely" Friday morning rides through metropolitan streets and desert roads.
• Fastest speed reached, from 38 MPH, to 44 MPH:  a few times on a descent.    

Dubai-Fujairah charity ride for Emirates Association for the Blind (2007)

Improving my turning skills

For the longest time I was nervous cycling through turns.  In Dubai, there were many roundabouts to navigate, and desert sands often gathered around the inner curb.  I dialed down my speed going into these roundabouts, and took a wider turn through them to avoid those scattered sands.  To add to these two mistakes, I relied on my sprinting ability to close the gap, once we exited the roundabouts.  This misjudgment kept me in our double paceline for the first half of the ride, but I was bonked by the second half and often got dropped by the guys.  

The analogy I found most useful in altering my judgment and improving my turning skills was this:  Imagine I had a matchbox with a few matchsticks inside.  Every time I sprinted, I burned one of these matchsticks.  Because of my tentative riding on these turns, I must've sprinted more often than I kept track of and effectively emptied my matchbox of energy, before a tough ride was finished.  

So I consciously focused on my turning skills during our weekly training sessions, and made the following changes:

• I kept my speed up going into the roundabouts, instead of dialing it down.
• I followed our double paceline throughout the turn, instead of sliding off and wide.
• I kept myself more into a tightly-drafting position to minimize gaps in front of me, and thereby minimize any need to burn a matchstick (i.e., sprint).  

Looking through the rider in front

Yes, it's funny, but in our tight formations, we look to be literally on top of each other's ass and back wheel.  Through my rides in Chicago, I was often alone, and didn't have much experience with the sort of rides we did in Dubai.  So it was a novice mistake for me to concentrate too much on the ass and wheel in front of me.  Admittedly I was nervous about riding too closely, and crashing into the rider ahead.

To improve, I physically shifted my gaze from downward to straight ahead, more now on the back and head of that rider and also what was in front of him or her.  This was a dramatic change in strategy.  Now I could survey better what was going on in front of me, and ride accordingly.

One time, for example, I was well-ensconced in a lead pack, and we were burning rubber on the road at over 30 MPH.  At this speed I was in a hyper-concentration mode, or else I'd risk a terrible crash with a mental lapse.  I checked my mind (clear) and my body (strong), so no problem there.  

But the rider in front of me was "losing the wheel" in front of him.  He was struggling to keep up his speed.  I monitored this closely, because I was looking through him, and the second that the gap reached a certain point I quickly accelerated past him.  

It's not just a physical exertion, but a strict mental game, too.  Without precisely quantifying anything, I determined an allowable gap to form in front of him, beyond which I wouldn't have been able to close it myself, once I passed him, without burning off whatever matchsticks I had left in me.  

When he hit the threshold of that allowable gap, I passed him in a flash.  It took just a couple of seconds to do so, saying "On your right!" to alert him and sliding back into the double paceline in perfect stride.  

It was a terrific calculation, and a superb move on my part!

Winning the mental game

I altered quite a lot of my preparations for a ride, but most of it was physical rather than mental.  But these physical improvements helped me tremendously with that strict mental game.  The better I could rely on the endurance and strength of my body, the more I could concentrate on our ride and the better I could judge what strategy to deploy.    

In other words, I kept a good reserve of matchsticks in my box, and essentially avoided getting anywhere near close to "red-lining" my body with lack of oxygen or excess of lactic acid.  This kept my head cleared.

On another ride, our double paceline had long disintegrated, and we were just a bunch of scattered riders with still a long way to go.  Fortunately I managed to draft behind one guy who was tall, and going at the right fast clip, that is, one that I could keep up with.

At this speed, we were actually passing other scattered riders up, as I safely and comfortably kept myself at his wheel.             

Then, out of nowhere, another rider sprinted past us.  Before, my impulse would've been to chase after him.  I felt strong and confident, and of course I caught up to him.  But at great cost to my energy reserves.  

In the split second on this ride, however, I decided to stay on course, and kept drafting behind the tall guy.  Again, without precisely quantifying anything, I knew we were already going at high speed, and surmised that that rider who sprinted out of nowhere had to elevate his speed even higher than ours.  I quickly determined that he was not going to be able to keep that up, and undoubtedly he burned more than a few matchsticks in that strenuous effort.   

Sure enough, in another minute or two, Mr. Tall Guy and I passed up that dude!

Me, at the top of an arduous climb in Musandam, Oman (2009)

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD

Yes to Great Cycling Performance!

The disgraced Lance Armstrong, notwithstanding, cycling is an awesome sport, and it is the one I participate in.  My form in swimming is good, but I'm way too slow, and my shins very much disagree with running, in the same way my digestive system disagrees with milk.  Cycling, on the other hand, fits my body rather well.

It was in the mid-1990s that I took up cycling, and it coincided with my discovering the Tour de France.  It was in the waning years of Miguel Indurain's reign, among his spandex-sporting, lycra-jerseyed mates.  Le Tour is grueling:  daily racing over three weeks, covering 2000+ miles of the scenic yet brutal French landscape.  My July every year was taken up by this race, and it was through telecasts and highlights that my passion took root and my learning built up.

When I moved from Chicago to Dubai in 2006, it was a sport for which I easily found fellow enthusiasts.  A friendly but cagey German - Wolfi - owned a bike shop, and organized early Friday morning rides through metropolitan streets and outlying, desert roads.  (Our weekends in the Middle East were Friday-Saturday.)  These rides were meant to be friendly and leisurely, and it was mainly so in the first half of the ride.  In the second half, though, our double paceline often disintegrated, as guys got chippy and there were bursts of speed everywhere.

Julio, me, Desmond, Janice, Olivier, and Olivier's girlfriend (Hatta mountains, 2006)

No to mountains, yes to flats

I quickly became good friends with a couple - Julio and Janice - and some of their cycling pals, too.  They often went on separate rides on Friday morning, however, mainly for mountain riding.  This was a mistake for me.  I had bulky legs that were meant more for sprinting than climbing, so while socializing was fun,  getting dropped on climbs was not fun.

One time, I was well behind my pals on the climb down and the long ride back to our starting point.  No matter how much I was gassed on the climbs, and lactic acid burning in my legs, I somehow kept my fast-twitch muscles relatively fresh.  So I out-gunned my pals, one by one, on the flats, until there was only Julio up ahead.  I managed to get into his slipstream, and told myself, Just hang on to his wheel (i.e., draft), until I could catch my breath.  Alas, he accelerated, and didn't give me enough time to recover my energy.  I smiled, breathlessly, as he disappeared once again.

After two years, I decided to concentrate on rides with Wolfi, as these were mainly the flats.

No to distance, yes to speed

For a while I couldn't understand why I'd have superb training sessions during the week, but often struggled, and even hit the wall, on those Wolfi rides.  My first instinct was to train harder, but this didn't work.  The problem?  I trained too much and rode too far during the week.  I proudly announced one time that I had ridden about 200 kilometers, and Julio suggested in a matter of fact way that I scale down.

In Chicago, also mainly flat, I worked at long distance riding, such as a century (100 miles).  I commuted to the office on bike, once a week, over 100 miles in one day.  Once or twice more, I'd bike to a train station, take the train downtown, then reverse the order on the way home.  With the riding I did on weekends, I could nail down about 250 miles a week.

Our Wolfi rides were mainly about speed, on the other hand.  For which, as it turned out, my body was much better suited, than either long-distance or mountain climbing.  But this meant altering my training mindset and regimen altogether.  I was unwilling to scale down, at first, but in time I underwent that change:

• Saturday.  Easy recovery workout, usually on the elliptical machine, for just 30 minutes.
• Sunday.  This evening training session was the most crucial.  I managed to hitch onto a small group of fast riders, and our riding mimicked that of Friday mornings, that is, a combination of break-the-lactic-threshold and VO₂ max periods.  The distance I biked was a half to a third of what I normally did.  
• Monday.  Another recovery workout, either on the bike or in the gym.
• Tuesday.  A workout of moderate intensity and duration.  If my body still needed to recover from the Sunday session, I dialed this workout down a notch or two.  
• Wednesday and Thursday.  Rest days, mainly just T'ai Chi and stretching, plus of course mental and dietary preparations.
• Friday.  Those awesome but tough Wolfi rides.

Me, training for the Gulf for Good - Borneo Challenge (Emirates Today, 2007)

Yes to full-body weight training

Lifting weights was not a priority for me, but I know it was important to keep my upper body strong.  My lower body, I reasoned, had more than sufficient workouts from cycling.  So I dispensed with squats, leg extensions and hamstring curls, and standing dead lifts.  This was also a mistake.  So how did I alter my training?

I systematically added those lower body workouts, making sure I developed those large muscle groups: hips, buttocks, and thighs.  Such balanced workouts, coupled with my scaled down, but better-honed training rides, made a difference.

I engaged in core exercises, geared specifically for cyclists.  I used to dismissed such exercises as unnecessary, until I learned that the power I exerted on the pedals originated from the core and my core wasn't strong after all.

In addition, a few times I got feedback from my pals that my upper body position on the bike was too extended.  It took a handful of iterations, but I adjusted the handle bars closer in and also shifted my seat forwarded a couple of notches.

Yes to better diet preparations

Dubai was fabulous, because we could all ride year round.  In the winter months, the temperatures hovered in the 70s F, and while the summer was blistering hot, we avoided the peak of it by riding as early as 5:30 AM on those Fridays.  In any season, however, Dubai was often dry, and it served to expose my bad hydration habit.  This was one reason I performed poorly on those Friday rides, and it prompted me to make changes in the quantity and frequency of drinking water.  I'd drink two or three, sometimes four liters, in the office, for example.

My main focus was on complex carbohydrates, but it took a lot of studying my body and performance, and correcting and tweaking my dietary regimen, to come up with this:

One pal wondered if I was consuming enough protein.  I hadn't thought about it very much vis-a-vis cycling.  But in doing research, I realized that my typical diet was relatively low on protein for the amount of strenuous activity I was engaged in.  As an athlete I ate six, sometimes seven small meals a day.  I got into a habit, for example, of eating my meals in a bowl, as opposed to a plate.  But it was unreasonable to expect me to consume 75 grams of protein (one gram per one kilogram of weigh), so I supplemented my diet with protein drinks.

As the week progressed, I shifted to more complex carbohydrates - spaghetti, pasta or macaroni - and less protein.  On most days it was one or two protein drinks a day, but just one or none on Wednesday and Thursday.

Me, after another awesome ride (2009)

Yes to great results!

In my next article, I will detail how I altered my riding strategy.  But for now suffice it to say that these changes to my training resulted in a night-and-day difference in my performance:  From hitting the wall on a regular basis, to consistently hanging with the lead pack.

One time, for example, I was riding well ensconced in our double paceline.  The lead guys and I stayed together, even as we lifted our speed dramatically.  I remember it seeming to be very quiet, as I could hear the purr of wheel, chain and gears.  I remember having to slow down a bit, in fact, as I would've otherwise run into the rider in front of me.  I also remember feeling calm in my breath and pulse, as if we were actually riding slowly.

I was in the zone! 

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD