Today is the first 'cross race of the season, but unfortunately it is 95 miles away, so I still got a hard workout on the trainer this morning while watching the latest World Superbike Races from Germany. Hard workouts are hard for everybody. It doesn't matter if your a top European professional or a CAT 4 racer. Everyone goes through the same pain and mental hardships when doing a hard workout.
Case in point, this morning I attempted my 4x14min interval workout and had a breakdown on the 4th interval. After reviewing the power data, I can see exactly when I get mentally broken. Here's my workout data from Thursday of this week. I thought I was recovered enough, but you can see that 10 minutes into the 3rd interval I crack and struggle to maintain my power for the rest of the interval. I rested 5 minutes, then tried the 4th interval, but I was mentally broken and gave up.
Today, I did the same workout and met the same mental breakdown in the 4th interval at about the 8th minute. You can't see very well in the screenshot because the data is smoothed out, but I stopped pedalling for about 10 seconds, then got my head back into it and finished it off. My heart rate was 187bpm when I cracked on both workouts.
This kind of mental and physical breakdown happens all the time during bike races. Typically, it happens during the critical points of the race. There is usually a good 5-15 minutes in the middle of the race that you're at your absolute maximum and struggling to keep the pace and if you back off for just a second, you can lose a wheel, slip back, and get dropped from the pack. It takes the mental toughness you develop from doing really hard workouts in training that will help you push just that little bit longer to keep stay with it during the critical points in a bike race. Of course, there are also times when no matter what you do, you get dropped, but these training experiences will then help limit your damages on the GC.
I've heard that the pros can ride at their absolute maximum for over an hour while most amateurs can only last 10-15 minutes before breaking down mentally and back off the pace. That's mental toughness.
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