Cresting the Summit

The hardest part of cycling is never the last 100 yards, it's the first couple steps to get ready and head out the door. One of the things I've learned about myself is I'm able to come up with just about any and every excuse not to head out of the door. Getting yourself to take those first few steps to change clothes and go, are by far the hardest.

I've tried all sorts of things to overcome this. Lay out your clothes so all you have to do is put them on, this especially works well if you plan to exercise first thing in the morning. There are other tricks. One that works well for me is to tell others I'm going for a ride. This creates a sense of commit for me, I told them I'm going, now I have to go. Even better is to invite someone else to join you. Having a cycling buddy will get you out the door way more often. This is especially a challenge for me, because I seem to ride at all different days and times.

Last year one of the things that really worked for me was having each ride and the structure of the ride on my calendar. I had made a huge goal of doing Death Ride 2015. It took dieting, 6 days of riding a week and more than a ride of planing for me to the starting line of that ride. Having a coach, John Cheetham, really kept me on track. There were several weeks where I was hit with business travel or sickness that made me feel like canceling the ride. Especially in those weeks, having a commitment to my coach and a relationship with him helped me stay committed. I knew having a coach would help me, but I thought it would be the sharing of wisdom, those details, that would be so valuable. What I learned was it's never the details you anticipate.

Its like having a guide, sure they know the path, but they know where to stop and take a break, and they know when to push it to the top. Without the guide you end up taking breaks in precarious locations and not really enjoying the trip. Having a cycling coach helped me push it on those bad days and also got me out the door on days I never would have before. It also helped me stay humble. I'd go out and have a great day, and then I'd be asked to push it even harder or farther.

So when I finally approached the summit of Carson Pass last year, on literally the worst 3 or 4 miles of freshly ground tarmac for repaving you've ever experienced, it wasn't hard to finish. Sure the road was unbelievable difficult and I was exhausted climbing 15,000 vertical feet over 110 miles, but that was the easy part. I'd trained for that summit for a year. The hard part was getting out of bed when the goal was so far off. Pushing the pedals around was the only option as I neared the summit.

Put the effort and work into getting yourself to that big ride, and you won't ever have to worry about finishing.