The Comfort Zone

First, there may be a part two to this. It came me yesterday as a personal reflection, whilst I was trying to do a brisk test of my ability. In essence, I think people agree that when you test yourself, you should give your all and sometimes bit more. However, I couldn't do it, which was apparent from the numbers and my action right after the effort. If you've given it all, you just don't carry on with the cool down.

I got back to my flat and had a coffee, which, in other words, means that I had a moment of reflection. The reasons behind my lack of ability in the art of suffering are apparent: no intense session due to various reasons and my aims of developing the ultimate endurance. The former reason is consequence of stuff that I've had no real control of, so I'm just having to deal with them. Yet, the latter one is increasingly interesting to me.

You build your base endurance and pile in good mileage, that is all good to a point. In my case, I mainly target races over set distance at maximal sustainable speed as in time trials. The word sustainable carries a lot of weight – as in many card games, early winnings become serious losses at the end. That means to say that overkilling a performance from the start is not optimal strategy and hence people talk about pacing strategies, negative splits, strong finished and so on.

It leaves us with a educated estimate of our pace, power or any other measure of our sustainable performance over the distance. What does one then do? Answer is monitor. Monitoring is psychological process where you interpret the existing data, feelings and markers. By monitoring you keep the performance together. It isn't bad thing by any means. Although, it can lead to situations, where one doesn't know actually the absolute limits and can practically never empty the tanks. Emptying the tanks, on the other hand, are decisive in racing. Continuous monitoring also creates a honed alarm system within the athlete. The athlete may become too aware of what is going on and thus, keeps receiving signals, interpreting them and stays on the comfort zone. Notably, comfort zone here means the maximal sustainable effort, not as in riding or running in comforting pace.

So, the alarms start to become more and more honed and accurate. They start ringing and raising questions even if there is no real need to. Athlete keeps making adjustments to keep in the desired zone. And ultimately finishes the races thinking: ”Actually, I had plenty left – maybe I should have given it more and next time surely I will.” Then comes the next time and the very same happens. To me, at least.

The monitoring develops very easily when you train alone a lot. Then you have time to interpret everything. It also develops when you get caught on numbers too much. It happens naturally, if you are that kind of person. It happens after some destructive experiences that you haven't analyzed well enough. This all applies to me. Now, I'm in the process of verifying my thoughts by reading. And yes, there will decisively be part two on how I'm to overcome my issue of monitoring overkills.

Train hard and trust your instincts.

Anton