For this blog I wanted to talk about something different, as well as my races this month, due to having a bit of a gap between the nationals. I’ve recently found out how important your mind is towards reaching your goals within any sport, especially cycling. It’s such a physically demanding sport, people don’t always look at the psychological impacts of it. It requires being so confident within yourself, prior and during races, in some cases it can be more vital than someone’s physical ability.
I knew how important the mind was to achieve results, but I’ve noticed it even more recently. I‘m sharing a personal experience of mine which occurred 3 years ago in calpe on a training ride. This was from descending too confidently with cars on the road, and ending up crashing into one. I snapped the fork, on a hired bike, but I came off very lightly, considering the speed I took into the car.
Ever since this happened, descending on open roads have been a huge weakness of mine. Especially in races. When there’s a decently sized bunch on the road going max, I will be towards the front up climbs and on the flats, but as soon as we go down a descent, my mind stops me from going as fast, placing me towards the back. This has resulted with me having to use more energy than others in the bunch, to get towards the front, after the descents, causing me to become more fatigued within the final kilometres of the race. National championships, yesterday, caused me my whole race from being too cautious on descents. I finished 19th in the end, which wasn’t too bad, but I believe I could have done a lot better with more confidence.
So even though this experinece occurred 3 years ago, it can still have an effect on my performance within races. I never set myself realistic goals, as I didn’t realise how much this accident would effect me in the future . My confidence has definitely progressed now though and hopefully it will show this coming weekend, as I have north west tour, which I’m super excited about!
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