Three down, one to go … thoughts
Submitted by Competitive Cycling Blog
I happened to look at my Mt Coot-tha climbing interval stats of the past two weeks this morning and something woke my curiosity. It seems that my second interval is commonly slower than the third. This correlates with a higher power output in interval three compared with interval two. As expected, interval one is always the strongest and fastest. The legs are fresh. Equally expected, interval four is always the slowest as I’m completely spent.
What I would have expected to see, however, would have been a gradual decline in speed and power output over the four intervals in line with the rising level of fatigue. Wouldn’t you have thought so, too?
First I didn’t have an obvious or easy explanation for this phenomenon. I was pondering this all day and a minor detail came to my mind that could serve as a possible explanation.
How big a role does the head play in this, I was wondering. Habitually there are thoughts going through my head during interval two along the lines of “Only one down, three to go” “Oh no, the hurt is never going to end.” “I can’t do another two of those after this one” “I’m not even half way.”
The self talk during interval three is very different. “It’s only one more after this.” “I’m almost done.” “This is actually quite fun, I’m enjoying this.”
Is this the clue? Am I onto something here? I will put this theory to the test tomorrow … let’s see how successfully I can change negative self-talk.
