Body over mind

Auckland waterfront at dawn in early june

Many have said that endurance sports is a matter of mind over body. I won’t probably argue with that statement, although I must say that sometimes it is a matter of body over mind. A quick example. I’ve been waking up about 6am most days in order to fit in longer rides and be able to have the rest of the day to do other stuff. The sleep hours have steadied up on 7 to 8 hours which is not bad at all. Anyway, back to my example: Woke up on Sunday at 5.45 and it was pouring down quite heavily. I said I’d better wait and see and go in a half hour (usually it takes me 10min from the alarm sound to me being on my bike outside home). Next thing I know it was 8 in the morning! I mean… it didn’t even took an effort to sleep straight 2 hours. I wanted to go out, I’ve already woken up and I was more than ready for it, but I have my body 2minutes and it just fell off to dreamland.

There is no question that my body needed the rest, and there wasn’t even a fight between mind and body, the body just went for it. It’s crazy how sometimes we forget this small lessons. I guess next Saturday I’ll be going to bed earlier, or sleeping a bit more and re-organizing my day in a better way.



Other than that it was an average winter weekend: long ride on the Saturday, long-ish ride on the Sunday. Saturday customary pizza and plenty of coffee, books and time with my other half. (We’re going for 10 years together this week… I call that endurance as well!)



On the run front, today is VO2 set days, and I am feeling more than VO1. We have to meet a very demanding target running for 7.5min. The distance to be run is taken from the infamous cooper’s test, which we did 2 weeks ago. My result? Just over 3500m in 12 minutes. How was I a year ago?

http://a-bigger-race.blogspot.com/2010/05/coopers-test-night.html Here is the answer. Does that mean I’m worst off? Nope, well…I hope so. It means I’m on a different phase of training.



Anyway, enough for today, be safe out there,