The Mental Game of Endurance: Staying Motivated on Long Rides

Hello and welcome to the Athletes Compass podcast, where we navigate training, fitness and health for everyday athletes. Today, we're tackling a number of listener questions, including one for our own Marjaana Rakai about mental focus for long rides, fitness numbers, and dealing with injury and sickness. If you have questions about your training, ask them on

social media pages, or please connect with us in the forum at athletica.ai

share your questions or thoughts. So here's our first question from Jim

is something that I can relate to. How can I maintain mental focus for long solo bike rides? 90 minutes or so I'm fine, but if I'm going out for three, four to six hours, the last half seems to be a lot harder mentally. My mind wanders and my power numbers go down unless I remember to push a little. My secret is listening to the Training Science Podcast. That's my secret.

Well, I would go back in time a little bit when I was building to be able to do those four to six hour rides. I would actually, while you still have the mental strength, I would just ride no podcasts, no music, just use that mental energy to focus on how I was feeling. And then when I felt like this is getting boring, then I would put a music on that, you know,

elevates my energy or start to listen. So it was kind of like a little carrot for myself. Now that I'm doing trainer in on the train, I'm doing six hour rides. yeah, it's just sometimes just got it out. Just sometimes I need to be focused. So I do it without music, without podcasts, just watching the Full Gas

course because I want to remember when I'm actually on the race course. I want to remember all some details.

Maybe just pause there. What is full gas, Marjaana, for the listener?

Yeah, so Full Gas has the video of the actual course. It looks like you're actually on the course compared to other platforms like Zwift, which is more graphic. So Full Gas has the Ironman World Championships, Nice and Kona courses in there, so you can practice. So depending on how much I need to focus on details,

But yeah, same time, like listening to audio books, listening to podcasts and learning. Sometimes it's Iron Man motivational videos, like, you know, the Iron War, that's a classic. And some other motivational videos that really, you know, distracts you from how much pain you are feeling.

But I also like think making it into a game, like if you're riding outside, you can play the games with data, guessing your heart rate, like you were doing Paul and intervals always help, keep focus.

Yep. Yeah. Those are all great, great strategies. I think it really does depend on the context here. you know, we don't really have a, you know, a description here from Jim on whether we're talking about the indoor or the outdoor ride. mean, four to six hours on the trainer is really, really tough. think mentally, you know, and Marjaana, I guess I just like, take my hat off you doing that.

That's just, and I know others that have done this too. I've got a friend when I was living in New Zealand, he trained for the New Zealand Ironman in the Calgary winter, right? Like there's just no other option. You're not going outdoors and training in the, you know, training outdoors for that because yeah, he had to do all of his stuff indoors. He did it and, he, and he actually, he, I couldn't believe it. He actually performed like really well. you know, basically like his, he did like one warmup ride, you know,

on the course and then everything else was just on the course on the day and he did exceptional. So it can be done where you just doing all indoors and then you go to execute on the outdoors. And you remember your road riding skills from other times that you've had in your life. So that blows me away, but it's hard as. When I'm outdoors, I don't really have too much of a struggle. I have a hard...

hard time kind of relating to the issue because, and I guess I also do, I do myself a favor where I'll do potentially even like out and back courses where, you know, if I ride out for three hours, I, you know, definitely it takes me three hours to get back as well, right? So I strand myself and you kind of, can, you can sort of force the issue. So look at those types of little tricks, you know, bring, bring fuel and water.

as needed or resources like money to go to store, cetera. Those are good little tricks that you can kind of do. Remember also the purpose when we're doing four to six hours is often to get the duration in. So with the exception of moderate intensity efforts like your zone 3A or zone 3B efforts.

that might be specific to your event where we're usually riding and that you're doing pieces of zone 3A, zone 3B, that's actually like Ironman pace or 70 .3 pace or grand Fondo pace if you're doing grand Fondo kind of thing, or a mountain bike, a moderate intensity mountain bike. These are pieces of that in the build phase that you're probably doing to get yourself both mentally and physically ready to do that prolonged stuff.

you

For those, you have a time duration usually, and those moderate intensity efforts in an intensity of 3A, B are usually going to be anywhere from as short as five to as long as 45 minutes in that, depending on where you're at in your ability and your progression.

Marjaana mentioned the principle of progression as well, right? So don't go and do six hours out of the gates. Make sure you've built up to that steady over consecutive weeks. You're just adding maybe one hour at a time, for example. So, because otherwise, it's just too much too soon. It's just a classic mistake that everyone makes. So make sure there's been good progression in your program.

Yeah.

Athletica should do that. Yeah, otherwise from the wandering mind standpoint, we can go back to some of the mindfulness conversations that we had. There's really good tricks on that as well to use. So be mindful and be aware of those signals that are coming back to you. Recognize that they are unpleasant. They are trying to help you in terms of your own physiology, but

you

the goal of the workout is to stress yourself somewhat. Fine line in terms of how much is too much, how much is not enough. So you play around with the mindfulness techniques as well. So those have been my two cents.

Can I add one more thing? Nutrition. Sometimes you start losing focus when you need a little extra nutrition. So your brain is asking for, hey, give me some fuel.

Of course.

Of course.

agree, agree. I think that's a good one to play with. I would try some of these, even these moderate intensity efforts, try them without and try them with and see what's a better outcome for you. like Marjaana says too, even like, you know, if you're feeling more for this four to six hour ride, is that making you feel better? Is that helping you lose that wandering mind a little bit more? Are you able to keep your focus more? So yeah, super, super out on.

Thank

Yeah. And Jim, for me with, you know, my adult ADHD, I don't even try anymore really to be focused. just use my long rides as an opportunity to catch up on podcasts. And that's, you know, that's how I am able to focus for that long is that I just, I listen to a variety of cycling and running and lifestyle kind of podcasts. And that gives me.

You know, I just have them in earbuds so that they're not covering my ears. And so I'm able to still hear traffic and hear the people around me. and, that seems to help a lot.

Yeah. And I'll just add also on this. we're clear, Jim. If, know, I would make sure you're using more heart rate as a guide. Don't worry if your power is kind of coming off for these four to six hour rides, especially if they're, you know, an aerobic development kind of session. Because the purpose is to get the duration in more, more than anything. That's why the smart coach with Athletica actually, if you use that feature, it pushes to heart rate.

I actually just did that session right now before we started this podcast, right? So I was doing an aerobic recovery kind of session and I was just riding to heart rate. And that was the feedback that I was getting on my Garmin watch while I was out there. And my power can really be whatever it wants to be, but I had to keep my heart rate in a range because the purpose is really fat burning, time in the saddle for that ride.

And it's okay for the mind to wander a little bit and the power to go down. You don't always have to push. So, and you can listen to podcasts like Paul said. So, so yeah, the con the time to really not really focus is the hit sessions, the quality work. that's, that's where that's when you want to not have your mind wander. You want to do the, again, classic polarization theory or do the easy stuff, easy and the hard stuff, hard. So save you for hard focus for the hard stuff.

was just thinking when you were talking about power and heart rate, I wonder if Jim starts too hard and then fades away. So Jim, if you're using the athleticus workout reserve, pay attention to that and don't let it drop too fast so that you can, you can have something in the tank for the

Totally.

That is awesome, awesome reminder, Marjaana So remember just everyone, the Athletica Workout Reserve, this is the brainchild of our AI guru that we're going to have on the podcast eventually, Dr. Andrea Zignoli. He's on the forum. You can speak to him there. And this is this really cool feature that is on both in a Garmin IQ app. So you can actually look at almost like the percentage of your battery at any given intensity of exercise. And you can...

like to Marjaana's point, you can watch that actually falling down as you go through any duration of work. you can also see that on your session analysis chart in Athletica after you've done it. It's the green line that comes up as default. And it's just a brilliant invention that's taking gains. And yeah, just so everyone's aware as well, we're getting...

Thank

We're getting calls from Olympic programs, national governing bodies, and professional cycling teams to actually begin collaborating with these sorts of things. So that feature is already there for you. And yeah, it's incredibly novel and certainly effective. And yeah, make sure you're trying to leverage that and understand that for yourself. It relates exactly to you, the individual.

It's looking at a fingerprint of your past performance over the last six weeks. And it's looking at how you're doing in the moment with the Garmin app in relation to that last six weeks. So it's specific to you, the listener.

All right, have another question from Camilo. Is fitness in Atletica the same value as training peaks created with the same formula 42 days weighted average? If not, do you consider that the same number represents the same athletic level?

you

So yeah, let's just start with what we're talking about, Camilla. We're talking about, in Training Peaks, it's called the PMC, the Performance Management Chart. In Athletica, we call it our performance potential. And it is, we're leveraging this foundational exercise physiologist named Bannister. He was just down the road from me at one of my former universities, Simon Fraser University.

Burnaby BC, he, this is back in the seventies and he created basically this mathematical represent representation of how you develop your fitness where you, you, you stress yourself. And then you recover from that stress, right? You get fatigued when you get stressed, right? And that is, and then you, then you also get

like this feature called form or freshness. So these are all, these are the key, the three key variables, fitness that you develop and you build up with stress over time, fatigue that you get in a short window, and then form or freshness that you get after you recover from that stress. So the main stress that's typically been thought of from this mathematical construction.

The others, including ourselves, have done similar versions of that. So the short answer to Camilla's question is that, yes, we do use 42 -day weighted average of the fitness development. So on training peaks, this would be your CTL number, which stands for chronic training load. So that's a 42 -day weighted average.

In Athletica, we just call that fitness. It's the same as what Bannister used in the 70s. And this is really, it's 42 days of how much stress you've accumulated in your body. And that's the, if you go to your, what is it? Your plan overview, you'll see that chart right there. You can also see this chart isolated as well in your performance potential.

And it's, I believe it's the blue line and you can just see this building, building, building up over time as you continue to add more and more theoretical fitness into your body. yeah, that's a, and that's a super useful look at a roadmap measure of how you're going to perform from today to your race. And you'll see that fitness goes up.

We then in the taper, we remove that fatigue aspect. That's the seven day average. And then you'll see form, which is freshness that returns and comes back up. So you're no longer as fatigued. So Marjaana is in a great kind of position right now where she has built up, built up, built up her fitness, that 42 day average that Camilla was talking about.

And then right now she's in a taper, a bit of a force taper we're gonna talk about next. But now her freshness, because that fatigue is no longer there, that freshness is kind of is returning a little bit in her body. And now she's ready to express all of the fitness that she has gained over time.

Want to add anything on that, Marjaana?

That was a lot to dig in. I want to talk about some of what you just mentioned at the end there, the freshness and being able to express that fitness. Because when we're just looking at the numbers and if you're looking at either one athlete historically,

or I was at 140 back at that time, like I need to push past 140, doesn't always mean that your body is able to express the fitness. Because there's so many. Yes.

Correct. It's just a theoretical number. It's just a guardrail we can use and that's all it is. What matters the most is your health. So that's going to be the most important thing. that's, again, I'm segueing nicely into the next question that we'll speak about, but it's like the health is the most important aspect of all of this.

Yes.

But these are just guidelines, and they're helpful guidelines. Paul as a coach, yourself as a coach, you can talk about these with your athletes. again, as coaches, we can use these numbers to help provide confidence. But in the situation where it's maybe not even as ideal, we can always remind our athletes that being healthy as an athlete is the most important thing.

Mm

So that's what we're gonna focus on being healthy first and foremost. Don't focus on your number. Don't just go chasing these fitness numbers. That's not what you want to do. You want to, principle of consistent training and being a healthy athlete. Those are what you should be focusing on.

Yeah, totally. If you're consistent, the numbers will come and they will get higher and higher. And if you can just be patient, you're also going to notice that your body is able to handle more without it being so run down that you get constantly sick.

Thank

Yeah. And there's loads of limitations with these numbers too, right? Don't forget they're very duration biased. So, you you can do, if you do all zone two work, you're going to get really high fitness levels basically. But are you necessarily the strongest and best athlete? You might've totally missed any of your top end training in this whole thing. So again, it's because what we're doing are endurance events. It's a very good overall kind of gauge.

of the general program, but it's not everything. So don't just look at this one number and say this one number is going to dictate how I'm gonna do in that race. It's not, but it's one marker we keep in, we keep check on.

Yeah, or somebody could argue that doing a lot of heat work would increase the number even faster and then they find themselves overtrained or, yeah.

Thank

And Camillo, it's important also to understand that these numbers are very individualized and you can't compare them to another friend of yours. It's just a matter of your number is your number based on the consistency of your training. Also back in episode 28, we did a pretty deep dive into these fitness numbers. So, if you want to explore more, go back and take a listen to that.

You got it.

Perfect.

Our third question comes from Marjaana because Marjaana, you are preparing for Ironman Worlds in France in a couple of weeks and you promptly got sick. I've had a couple of athletes who tested positive for COVID and got sick. So let's bring up this general discussion of what should everyday endurance athletes do when they get sick. Obviously we're not

talking about, you know, major illnesses that derail us completely, but we're talking about colds, mild COVID. How should we progress?

Yeah, so yeah, for sure. There's just a common one. When I peruse the various forums that are out there, I always take note of this question being asked. So think it's relevant to so many of us. Ultimately, if something has happened where we're fighting some infection of some sort,

you know, when that happens, the immune system takes hold and all of our resources must go towards protecting the survival of the organism, right? You. So that's definitely way more important than going out and performing your exercise, even though that's in your mind, that's, you know, you're pretty unhappy about that situation. But oftentimes in that situation, it

puts you flat on your ass, right, Marjaana? And there's nothing you can really do about it. And that's your body's way of saying, no way. You sit back and you get well. We've got to fight whatever is going on around our body. And this is, of course, many different forms of this, right? Whether it's largely affected in our respiratory system, our gastrointestinal system, just an overall central fatigue or all of the above, right? So it's like...

Mm.

But it's like you're clearly fighting something and you've got to deal with that. I guess, what do you do? What do you do? What can you do? And maybe I'll just pause and ask Marjaana, what have you done?

What have I done? Not much. I... Yes.

and a little more context, you're in like, you're in the two to three week phase out from from Iron Man, right? Where ideally in a perfect world, we would have kind of been in the very last build phase, the very last sort of, you know, long, hard kind of work. But that wasn't gonna happen, was it?

Yeah.

No, so today at the time of recording I have 13 days left and last week was supposed to be the last of last long ride and long run. None of that happened because I got sick with head cold. Not too bad, but just I guess I've gained some wisdom to understand when not to push anymore. So

I have not done much, which actually ended up being good thing. I've been riding my bike with my little one outside just to get some vitamin D and some movements. I'm not just going hot nut at home. And then today I feel a lot better. So this is kind of like the first day of actually having okay energy. And I did some

strength training, that's usually what I do when I start feeling better. I want to do something, so I hit the weights a little bit. Nothing too serious, but it's a start. then, know, lots of walking and mindfulness, yoga, meditation, telling myself that it's going to be okay. It's probably better that this happened.

Perfect.

Yep. Yeah, no, perfect. And that, and again, that goes right to my, my recommendation. So it's like, what can you do? Ask yourself that at any given moment. And, know, if you're right in the thick of it, then the answer might be nothing. And that's fine. That's, that's what you should do. Do nothing kind of thing. But can you go for a walk? You know, that would be a good start. could you lift, lift a couple of heavy things that aren't going to hurt you just as a, something a little short and short and sharp to, to activate the central nervous system. can you

go outside and get vitamin D on your system, which we know is the, you know, the biggest stimulator of your, of your immune system. That vitamin D is so paramount. fresh air, you know, time in nature walks in nature. Do you have any access to anything in nature? That's, that's, that's immense if you can get it. and then nutrition, course, but you know, we've got podcasts on nutrition. We've got an exciting podcast on nutrition coming up.

Mickey Willingdon and so focusing on all those aspects of nutrition as well.

I forgot to mention one thing, and that's ice bath. I've been dipping in my ice bath just enjoying cold.

Perfect.

Yep. And even sauna as well, like not in a certain phase, but like as you're on the back of it and whatnot, like sauna is a good little stimulator too, or the combo of a sauna and a cold kind of thing, right? So you're controlling that, but you're just starting to give these small little stimulants as well to the system to try to help it through what it's got to do. again, it's...

Remember, there's a function that's going on. It's your immune system that is fighting and getting rid of or healing whatever the infection is, wherever that is in the body. And you've got to let it go through its process. then, big question, when can I get back? Listen to the body. The body's going to tell you when you can get back. in the cases, we hear long COVID and stuff. Maybe it's a really long period of time. You haven't quite kicked it. And it could be as short as

one or two days. So it's everything and it's everything else in between.

And it's important to pay attention to the fatigue because that is, you know, that is a sign that you aren't quite ready yet. There's that line between fatigue and just like, I'm kind of, kind of feeling a little lazy today. But if you're feeling fatigued, that's a really good sign that you are simply not ready to handle training today. So that's a, that's a good way of paying attention to what you've got.

couldn't agree more, Paul. When we were at High Performance Sport New Zealand, I remember we just, one of the things we found is motivation to train. Like one of the question there, we did like this little research on what were the key things that really was associated with like successful training and consistent training. it is just, if a person woke up and they were actually hungry to train, motivation to train. So.

Mm

If you're fatigued and you've lost your hunger to train, that's a good sign that you shouldn't train.

for take a walk.

That's exactly what happened. A week ago, just before I got sick, I had a really big weekend with eight hours one day and then a long run that I pushed one day forward. And then after the long run, I got sick. But I was texting Paul and like, I don't know how I'm going to do it.

you

My motivation to, like just the thought of another one of these big weekends, it was really, really hard to imagine that I could pull through. And I think now in retrospective, it was a sign that I had had enough. Like it was enough and my body was sitting my butt down on a couch.

Mm -hmm.

Totally. Yeah.

Because I could, you know, as a motivated athlete, you know, you can will yourself through a lot of things, but you have to sometimes learn the wisdom to pull back when you have these alarm bells going on. And it is really hard to do when you have three weeks to World Champs, to listen to that little bell.

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

you

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, I'm glad that you're feeling better. so what are you going to do for these next 13 days? I mean, how are you going to be ready for that?

Well, listen to my body and my mind before I jump on a big ride again. Hopefully get a few longish, at least one longer ride in and just getting back to some movement. So I guess my taper is quite interesting this time because I was forced to taper quite passively the last few days. And then I travel Tuesday.

before the Sunday's race, so not too many days left.

Paul, I want to interrupt because while you guys have been answering that question, because I kind of had a thought. like, you know, because we're working on this feature with heart rate variability. And it's so interesting. like, you know, we don't have this hooked up yet, but we've got like a new stoplight system that we're working on in the backend with Andrea and his team. And one of the things that really

help picks that up is a suppressed heart rate variability overnight and a raised resting heart rate. And I'm just looking at Marjaana's profile and it pretty much nails. She's got, in those days after her big training, she's got this pretty depressed heart rate variability and then her heart rate really starts to rise. So, Athletica did not...

help you in time, Marjaana, and I'm sorry with that, but these are the lessons that we're learning in real time, and we're going to improve on that and try to make those red flags a little louder next time. So for you next World Champs, Marjaana, we're gonna get this right for you.

It's not it's not over yet. It's not over yet. It's

Well, no, it's not right. Like that is a really important aspect. Like you have nailed that. Again, you go back to the sessions that you did. Like you, nailed your six hour ride and you nailed your long run and your swimming is incredible right now. Like all the pieces of the puzzle are in place and you should be going into worlds with every bit of confidence that you can, you can do that race on a very hard Nice course and, and compete well.

there.

the best in the world.

I feel confident, yeah, so good.

Bye now, girl.

Well, that is all for this week. Thank you for listening. Join us next week on the Athlete's Compass podcast. Ask your training question in the comments or on our social media. And if you enjoyed this episode, we'd appreciate it if you would take a moment to give us a five star review. For more information or to schedule a consultation with Paul, Marjaana or myself, check the links in the show notes. From Marjaana Rakai and Dr. Paul Laursen I'm Paul Warloski and this has been the Athlete's Compass podcast.