Mental block .

[Hamstring]

First take the slicks off your MTB and take note of above all good advise been there, just have fun and it will come back.

[FirstV8]

Some real good advice ,thanks members   and i will use some of it and also work on my mental attitude .  

[Escapee..]

Or this, Calvin took 4 months off the bike probably the best thing he did I think, now he enjoys the rides again. 

 

Wont lie though, miss the mates in the mornings though. (Because I have to buy my own coffee)

 

Didnt you start a thread about him?

[DJR]

Some real good advice ,thanks members   and i will use some of it and also work on my mental attitude .  

About that competitiveness thing:

 

I doubt that one can ever manage to ignore it if it is in your genetic and mental makeup. It doesn't just disappear as we get older, but hopefully wisdom helps to temper it a bit. But really. I just wanted to share a true story:

 

I rode the Argus with my 80 year old father last year. There are very few 80+ riders in the field and they mostly know each other from many years of cycling. So, there we were in the starting block and my dad recognized one of his "rivals" about 50 m in front of us in the crowd, but there was no way to greet. So, he said that if he ever sees him again out on the route, he wanted to say hi and chat a bit, because although they are friends, they live far apart and really only see each other once a year at the Argus. I played domestique for him and was leading up Chappies, when I noticed said friend of his sitting on the side of the road taking a little rest about halfway op the climb. I asked whether he wanted to stop and say hello? Hell no! Was the answer, this is my chance to put some time into him! We moved over into the stream of cyclists to get passed unnoticed and from there put foot to the finish line!

[Pure Savage]

Didnt you start a thread about him?

Yes

[rudi-h]

i shouldn't be giving someone 30 years my senior any advice... but here goes

 

1)  remember why you're riding your bike...  because its fun!

2)  don't obsess about any training data, whether it's speed, distance, power, hours in the saddle or whatever you are measuring.  some weeks' you'll be faster, some weeks you'll have more time, some weeks you'll feel broken etc. even pro's are not in top form all year round, so you shouldn't aim to achieve this either.

3)  train smart - if you can't do the distance this week for whatever reason, rather opt to do some specific interval training that demands you to start your session with fresh legs.  that allows you to see a slow training week (or even a mild illness) as an opportunity to rest up rather than a mental block about not giving enough

4)  get yourself a Garmin (any model with the stress test and recovery advisor), a power meter and subscribe to trainingpeaks or any other system (e.g. strava elevate) that will give you a fatigue / fitness / form graph.  these tools (used correctly) are great to tell you if you're feeling good or bad, also whether you should cut down on training intensity, increase your base fitness etc.

[DJR]

I have a mental block ii a don't train my set target of hours or kilometers per week . The next week  when i then go training i cant perform / push myself as hard as i would do due to me thinking that the kilometers i lost last week have cost me and my legs feel heavy . I generally do 250 km per week a mixture of road and Mtb off road . I have a circuit of 40km with 600m of climbing  ( its in a residential area so a lot of cross roads to slow down at ) that i do on a monday and can comfortably average 28kph on my mtb bike with slicks . Today and a few times before in the rainy season when training is not possible i battle to average 22 to 24 kph . What am i doing to myself to cause this .

Have you considered the possibility that over training may be behind your problem?

 

It is not always so easy to diagnose. As we get older we need more recovery time, if we don't give the body enough time to heal between hard training sessions, a slow downward spiral will start. It happens easily if you always ride with a competitive group and even your slow easy rides become "races".

 

A few years ago I had one big year filled with too many big races. I tried to peak too many times in too quick succession (used to be able to easily do this a decade ago) and started getting bad colds and flu. I constantly felt exhausted and frustrated. So, I changed my programme to allow for more recovery time. Where I previously did 3 hard weeks and 1 easy week, I then changed to 2 hard weeks and 1 easy week. Initially it felt like I wasn't doing enough, but it worked like a charm. The extra recovery time allowed me to fully use the hard weeks and my fitness surpassed what I managed to do with the previous programme.

 

Worth considering?

 

My 2c 

[Skubarra]

 

2)  don't obsess about any training data, whether it's speed, distance, power, hours in the saddle or whatever you are measuring.  

 

4)  get yourself a Garmin (any model with the stress test and recovery advisor), a power meter and subscribe to trainingpeaks or any other system 

 

   

[rudi-h]

   

 

haha... having good training data available and using it in the right way is completely different to obsessing over selected parts of it (i.e. speed, distance, tss or average power)...

 

if your garmin tells you you're on a bad day (performance indicator <0), you can look at your other training data to find out why and what you should do to get back to your best again.

 

if you're going to use power data just to have another target to hit with every workout, well then it's going to worsen the situation.