So you’re thinking about entering an endurance event? Congratulations, welcome to Wonder Land where there’s more sportswear than regular clothes and always room for another bite of flapjack.
Whether you’re going for your first century or you’ve completely lost the plot like yours truly and decided that long-distance triathlon is your thing – endurance training will make you feel awesome. You’ll find strength and determination you didn’t know you had and achieve things you never thought you could. You’ll find the freedom to walk right up to your perceived limits and say: ‘step aside, I’ve got adventures to embark upon!’
But endurance training also comes with its own set of challenges, that extend beyond the sessions themselves. Not only does it place demands on your body. It places demands on your time, your energy and your mind. It’s a balancing act that can quite easily become overwhelming. Left unchecked, that event you so excitedly signed up for with adventure in mind and joy in your heart can become a bit of a monster.
One of the many things that four years’ worth of Ironman training has taught me, is that you have to have strategies in place to keep the joy (and keep you sane) when you’re training hard. Here’s what I’ve learned:
Determination is more reliable than motivation
The first stage of endurance training is acceptance. It doesn’t matter how excited you are about the event itself, or how passionate you are about your sport. There will inevitably be sessions that you dread and occasional days where you just really don’t feel like training. And that’s absolutely fine. Part of the journey is accepting that you’re not going to feel 100% motivated, 100% of the time. Sometimes you’ll have to draw on determination instead of motivation. Motivation is unpredictable – here one day, gone the next. It happens to everyone.
Determination is the foundation that keeps you solid when motivation takes flight. This is where remembering why you started comes into play. What made you want to set your goal? There’s a determined little fire in your heart, and on the days where getting up and out is a struggle – that’s what will fuel you. Letting go of that expectation of yourself to feel delighted at the prospect of every gruelling session will help to make the whole process that bit more enjoyable. You’re allowed to “love to hate” your training from time-to-time.
Find ways to make the tough sessions feel fun
As someone who has spent 5 hours on a turbo trainer on more than one occasion, I am the self-proclaimed Queen of making what would be quite vile training sessions feel like a bit of a treat. It might be promising myself a stop for a nice coffee on the way home from the lake when I really don’t feel like getting into cold, murky water at 6.30am. Or, in the case of the long turbos of doom, I have a list of things on Netflix reserved specifically for when I’m on the bike. That way it’s not “Oh god, still 2 hours to go”, it’s “Oh good – I’ve got time for another few episodes of The Bold Type!” Throw in a snacky-snack every half an hour and I’m like a happy little hamster on a wheel.
Whether it’s getting a friend to join you for a section of your long run or finishing your big day in the saddle at your favourite café stop. Or even just having a top-tier snack in the cupboard for when you get home. Find little ways to add a ‘but’ to your ‘oh no’ moments. “Oh no, it’s raining, and I’ve got a 2-hour run to do. But: the sooner I get it done, the sooner I can have that peanut butter and jam crumpet I’ve already starting daydreaming about.”
When the going gets tough, the tough… bribe themselves with baked goods.
Learn to embrace the bad days as a good learning experience
Better a bad day on the bike than a good day in the office, am I right? I’m right. But still, that doesn’t make the bad days any easier to swallow when you’re right in the thick of it. It’s easy to despair when you’ve had one of those days when your legs appear to have taken unauthorised holiday from their pedalling duties. When the weather forecast has betrayed you and the “gentle breeze” is actually a howling headwind that makes you genuinely wonder if your parents were telling the truth when they told you as a child: “If the wind changes, your face will stay that way.” Because, if so, there’s a strong chance you’ll be stuck with an unfortunate grimace for the rest of your days.
If I find myself feeling low after a tough day of swim-bike-run, I try to remember that it’s precisely these moments that will help to make me stronger in the future. When things don’t go according to plan it’s a learning opportunity. Maybe you need to look at your fuelling strategy. Perhaps there’s something you’ve not been doing quite enough of in your training that you can address going forward. Even if it doesn’t feel like it – there is always something you can take away from things going wrong that will allow you to grow.
And the best part is – those horrible days where you really didn’t think you could make it, but you found a way and you did it anyway? Those are precisely the days that you will tuck away into your mental “filing cabinet”. Come race day when it starts to feel hard and the doubt creeps in you can look back and say: “I know I can do this, because I’ve done it before.” The bad days make the good days feel even better. If you can learn to embrace them, they will become far less of a weight on your shoulders.
Resilience is a finite resource: don’t forget to re-fill the bucket
When you’re training hard and your body starts to respond, you can feel superhuman. Keep the challenges coming, let me at ‘em! But it’s important to remember that you can’t do everything and be everything all at once. Resilience is the thing we draw upon to keep going, keep moving and keep pushing ourselves forward – even when we doubt ourselves. Think of your resilience as a bucket of water. Training, stress, chores, commitments – they all drain the bucket. Throwing endurance training into an already busy schedule can make life feel like a bit of a circus. It’s easy to overlook that you’re going to get tired mentally, as well as physically from all the training. Making yourself do that last interval or hill rep takes up as much mental energy as it does physical. And so that resilience bucket is going to get emptied.
So how do we keep it topped up so we can stay positive and functional? First up is knowing for yourself what “fills your bucket”. For me, it’s quiet time. Half an hour on my own in a quiet space with a book is my brain’s equivalent of sticking my phone on charge. It’s different for everyone but knowing what you need is key. Finding time to do it is another challenge and that’s where creating a support system and having honest conversations come in. Unless they’ve experienced it for themselves, people won’t necessarily understand the juggling act of life vs training vs fatigue that you’re trying to balance. Don’t be afraid to ask for help (you’ll be surprised how often it’s willingly given if you just ask) and to allow yourself to accept it. Have a good idea of what the ‘must-dos’ and the ‘nice-to-dos’ are and give yourself the freedom to accept that some of the latter will have to be dropped every now and again. The world won’t stop spinning if the clean laundry spends another night in the basket instead of in the wardrobe, so try not to be too hard on yourself.
Celebrate the little successes
A wise woman (or in actual fact – the CEO of a busy digital marketing agency!) once told me: ‘Look at the mountain you’ve already climbed up.’ It was in the context of her journey into entrepreneurship, but it actually really resonated with me in terms of triathlon training. When you’re training for an event, that one day becomes this big thing on the horizon that you’re constantly striving towards. And that means it’s easy to lose sight of everything you’ve achieved along the way. To constantly look ahead and measure yourself against where you should be instead of taking a second to be proud of where you’ve got to so far.
Every training session is a mini mountain that you conquer. My ‘A’ race this year went drastically wrong and at first that broke me a little bit. But then I looked back at the mountain I’d climbed up. I reframed that ‘failure’ and instead looked at every single thing I’d been able to achieve on the journey just to get to the start line. The new personal bests, the “yes I can” moments. When the big goal feels overwhelming, when the doubts creep in. Just stop, have a cup of tea and look back at what you’ve already achieved. Chances are, six months ago you wouldn’t have believed you’d have been capable of ticking off that training session you smashed yesterday. And just look at you now. Have a biscuit with that cup of tea my friend, you’ve earned it.
Top-notch cycling gear is always a good idea
You’re going to be spending a lot of time training. Which means you’re going to be spending a lot of time in cycling kit. And believe me, as someone who in the early days (before I saw the light and purchased my first ever bits of Stolen Goat kit) used to ride around in a pair of my husband’s old bib shorts held up by a questionable pair of even older leggings. There is nothing worse than kit that doesn’t fit, doesn’t function and doesn’t make you feel awesome. Those long, sometimes lonely, days in the saddle are tough enough without an unholy chafe situation developing downstairs. If you know, you know. A hard ride in wet, windy conditions is going to be far less resilience-sapping if you’ve got the right kit to keep you warm and dry. Plus – the more kit you have, the less often you have to do laundry so really, it’s a no-brainer. My top four essentials would be:
- A good base layer: extra warmth in the winter, wicks the sweat away during the summer and is also great worn on its own for sweaty turbo sessions so you don’t have to stink up your favourite jersey.
- Shorts, glorious shorts: happy undercarriage, happy life. Investing in a good pair of bib shorts will make racking up the miles far more comfortable. The pad on our Epic shorts is next level. And if you’re riding a TT bike, our Tri shorts feature a pad which is supportive enough to keep you comfortable without creating excess material when you’re in the aero position.
- A go-to jersey that instantly makes you feel awesome: I know, choosing your favourite SG jersey is like having to choose a favourite child. But we’ve secretly all got one. That one jersey that whenever you pull it out of the drawer just makes you feel like you’ve got this. Mine is the Fitch Pink long-sleeved jersey – all the pink power ranger vibes to get me up and at ‘em.
- A water-repellent and wind-resistant jacket or jersey to help you battle the grim weather: our Orkaan jerseys are perfect for autumn rides (or summer rides that feel like autumn because the weather is trolling us all). And when things get really chilly, the Climb & Conquer jackets are warm enough to keep even the likes of me – who is forever moaning about the cold – riding through the winter.
Ditch the pressure to keep the joy
This blog post has become a bit of an endurance event in its own right. I hope you remembered to fuel up halfway through reading! Training hard is never going to feel easy. But it’s important to embrace the challenges as opportunities. Be grateful for what you can achieve and cut yourself some slack when it’s needed. Ditch the pressure to keep the joy.