Week 9 –

You have a goal, something that encapsulates your “full potential” – what do you need to get there?

First, you need the talent. The goal needs to be within your capacity to achieve. Knowing what potential you have can help direct you towards realistic goals, but don’t let goals predefine your limits. Be realistic with goals but bold with vision and dreams; give space to surprise yourself.

Second, you need opportunity. Be in a position to take maximise the resources available to you. Create an environment that encourages and supports what you’re trying to accomplish. Make your own luck.

Third, you need to work. Show up, and work.

There are talented people who work hard, but because of bad luck or circumstance, miss (or never have) the opportunity to see things come to fruition.

There are talented people who come across great opportunities, but don’t work hard enough to make something of it.

And there are people who work hard and are given (or create) opportunities, but just don’t have the talent for what they’re trying to accomplish…

To achieve your full potential, all three pieces need to come together. It’s tough, there’s grey space, there’s luck, but it all starts with defining success. What success is, is your own definition.

Define success, identify if it is within the realm of your known abilities or part of a greater vision, allow yourself every opportunity – seek them out, and show up and work. That’s it, that’s all.

I think…

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Goal setting in an uncomfortable topic for me. I have mixed feelings about goals. It pains me to use the term “goal”, but it’s easy to understand and illustrate with. Goals – another post for another week, maybe.

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7×2:2 all outs – 30 May 2017

Translating fitness to effective race form can be tricky. Finding riding legs you’ve never had is also difficult. This was the puzzle I brought to Andrew Watson, my coach, last spring when I started to train for a compressed race season.

How to get faster all boiled down to two key points:

1. learn how to ride a bike
2. ride, fast.

And with the time we had, that’s what we did. Intensity sessions were prioritized for efforts than would get me better at actually pedalling hard. Finding ways to reduce the gap between how hard my legs were working and my heart and lungs – which were trying to figure out how to cool the hot summer air rather than warm the icy dry winter air.

This workout was 7×2:2 full gas. 2 minutes of give’r, and two minutes roll back. I did it along the same stretch of road each time, gentle uphill, to compare times on the intervals. No pacing to speak of, just effort, no powermeter either, just will power.

Interval. AVG/MAX HR, speed.
1. 150/171, 28.5
2. 156/174, 28.5
3. 155/175, 28.1
4. 161/180, 28.6
5. 163/183, 29.1
6. 165/184, 28.5
7. 165/182, 28.4

uhm, it was hard. Tried to treat each interval like the start of a race; just sprint into it then sit and try to stay on it. Gradual uphill for the first minute-ish, then there was a bit of a level and dip, then a bit more up so I could stand it and crank out the last 20-25s of each interval. Felt like I was getting some good dig, but had to think about pushing and making it hard because getting an effort on the flats is still sort of a difficult thing. Recovery felt pretty easy, HR and breathing were ramping up alright in the intervals, but efforts were short enough that they didn’t really stick, legs just slowed down