By the Power of Greyskull, I have the Power

With a race on the horizon, a little discussion of goals.

Last year I raced the best ever over my 16 years of racing. Structured training of course helped immensely, but I credit a change in goals and better focus for the lion's share of the improvement.

The discussion of goals in Dave Morris' book Performance Cycling is one of the simplest yet best treatise on the subject that has hit home with me. A key element is what can be controlled and what cannot be controlled.

A typical goal and one that rears its ugly head all the time is to win or podium in a race. I constantly catch myself pre-writing race reports or pre-writing emails about winning or podiuming in a race. Lately (mostly due to this BLOG) I find my mind wandering constantly thinking of subjects to write about and dreaming of awesome BLOG entries of races won.

As Dave points out, this is not a good goal. Why? Because it is totally out of your control how you place. How can that be. I train hard, I should place well? But you really have NO control at all who your competition is going to be. Every hotshot sandbagger in the area could be there. And when you don't meet your goals it is like a small hole in a baloon. You start losing your enthusiasm slowly over time. I just get deflated.

So what can I control in a race. Here's my list. Meet these goals, and I have had a successful race. Regardless of placement. The cool thing is that good results have followed this mindset change.

Focus
-It is totally within your control to focus your mind on the task at hand. So many times over the years I've started to think about the training I should have done or the training I'm going to do during a race. The result: the bodies self preservation instinct takes over while your mind is in pity mode and you slow down. It is so easy to go into lemming mode. When you come up on a group and slow down to match their speed. It still hurts, but it's hard to break out of the mold and go faster.

The goal: Maintain focus. Sing a theme song, keep a mantra going. Focus with the pain become part of it.

Hydration/Nutrition
-Again, totally within your control to drink properly and often, and to intake energy.

The goal: drink, eat, do not bonk or dehydrate

Mechanicals
-This one is a little sticky because somethings are out of your control, but for the most part taking care of your gear and prepping your bike properly is going to keep you out of trouble. Also your riding style affects how many flats you get

the goal-No mechanicals, no flats

Dosage of effort
It is within my control how easy or how hard I go out. Too hard and you blow. Too easy and you finish with energy that should have been left on the course. Very hard thing to do. I'm still a long way off on figuring this one out.

the goal-Don't blow up, let it all hang out by the time you've finished.

Crashing
This is sticky too. Riding within your comfort zone during a race, and you're going to lose time. But riding way above your head, and you're gonna crash. I'm not sure if you lose more time crashing or if you gain more time riding above your head. I think the former esp. if you break something on the bike or body. There's a sweet spot in there where your laying it on the line but you're not OOC (out of control)

the goal: Don't be a wuss but don't be an idiot either.

Bottom line: Do the best you can in the given moment in time.


Other cardinal rules to live by in mountain bike racing:

-Thank spectators and volunteers. Even with your tongue on the ground, smile and thank them for clapping for you, pointing you in the right direction or handing out water. A cheer for a lowly vet sport rider means a hell of a lot when you're hurting.

-Encourage your competitors
A " good job" when passing or being passed goes a long way. We're all on the same course and even though we are racing against each other we're all going through the same thing

Thank the promoter
Putting a race on is a hard and thankless job. While we may bitch about promoters bending us over for $ the bottom line is w/o them we wouldn't have anything to race for.