Learning from spam

Friday, Cinco de Mayo

Like most of us, I get rather too much email that I don't want and didn't sign up for. But one today from Predator: Cycling's Journal of Mental Conditioning hits one of my pet peeves squarely on the head. Plus, the pithy words come from Davis Phinney, whom I was lucky enough to meet when he was here in February. Take heed, all ye who live by your heart rate monitors and power meters and hour-by-hour, mile-by-mile training programs:

"I think there is so much information and focus and attention paid to physical work in sport and training, and somewhat technique, but ultimately what has really been bypassed to a large extent is the mental part in the process and the preparation to be successful. It’s been touched on by a lot of people but people go for the salient bullet points and then say “ok, but tell me what to do. I gotta go out and train so tell me how high my heart rate should be, etc. etc.” People just want to be told what to do. They sort of want to click off their brain and just be programmed and then hey, I’ll be successful. I’ll be a good cyclist or runner or what have you. I see that and I’m like, you don’t get it. You actually have to start with your thought process and everything comes from that, everything originates from the power that you have in your mind.

"The most important tool I had was my brain."