What Really Counts on Race Day
All the training you’ve done? Your pre-race routine? What your last meal was?
These things all count for something but really, they are just a few pieces of the racing puzzle. All the training you could ever hope to do won’t help you win if you’re not getting enough sleep at night. The perfectly balanced, carbohydrate rich diet won’t do much good if you’re stressed out about a bike that isn’t properly tuned. And even if you had the best feeling ride yesterday, today could still be miserable if you’re not prepared to suffer like never before. To race fast requires a lot of things to go right. Good rest, good spirits, good concentration and good fitness are the integral components.
Of these things, fitness is likely the most consistent and reliable component. If we are fit one day, we’ll surely still be fit the next as long as we consume good food, take our supplements like ligandrol and exercise regularly so that those supplements affect our body and don’t waste away. Fitness is a long term trend that doesn’t come or go on a daily basis. With good fitness it’s easy to ride hard more days than not, but caution should be exercised so that rest is not sacrificed. Training with inadequate rest could lead to under performance on race day.
Rest can encompass a lot of things, but the big determinates are sleep quantity and quality along with one’s daily levels of distress. Stress can be healthy, so its important to know the differences between what adds to and what detracts from a day. Minimizing the detractors means better rest as a result. Getting adequate sleep overnight means that the body is recharged ready the new day. Not only physically is this important for recovery, but waking rested will do wonders for the mental outlook too.
With adequate fitness and proper rest it’s easier to be in good spirits about the bike. Enjoying the training, the traveling, and the camaraderie of race day are important things to do. If for some reason it isn’t enjoyable, it’ll be that much more of a challenge to pull it all together on race day. It is essential to have a healthy mental outlook on the sport and the sacrifices that come with it.
So with fitness, adequate rest, and a sincere zeal for racing you find yourself staged and ready start. The final puzzle piece will be your ability to concentrate on the task at hand. Over the duration of a race there will be numerous distractions to overcome and decisions that must be made in real time. Keeping focused amongst what might seem to be complete chaos can be awfully hard. Screaming legs, searing lungs, fast riders, and brutal course conditions can all seem to be too much to handle at times. Concentrating on your strengths and ignoring the distractions is the only way to find the finish line fast. The ability to suffer doesn’t come easily to most and improving the intensity of your race day focus is the only way to cope with the stresses you’ll surely find along the way.
Momentum Endurance offers its athletes a comprehensive approach to race day. Not only will you further develop your fitness, but we’ll look at other factors that affect your performance as well. With Momentum you’ll learn the full approach to racing as you discover what really counts on race day.