Last Saturday I found myself hollering, “heads up,” as riders dropped their form during harder efforts.  Although it’s tempting and easy to drop your form during harder efforts – especially on the trainer, one mustn’t, for perfect practice is the key to perfect performance.

Each time you mount your bike and begin to pedal, you’re reinforcing habits — good and bad. Drop your head during hard efforts on the trainer and you increase the likelihood you’ll drop that head out on the road, perhaps crashing yourself or someone else in the process. Pedal sloppily on your commute every day, and it’s hard to become efficient on the weekends.

Tomorrow, and the subsequent week, before you swing your leg over the saddle, I challenge you to summon a mental picture of the smoothest looking rider you’ve ever watched and ask the same of your own body. Cadence quick and light. Balance perfect. Relaxed, but poised for action. Aware, but not antsy. You get the picture, now focus on it.

Along this theme is a story from NPR on the mental fitness of Olympians…

“Try to make every day the Olympics,” Stone suggests, recalling her own mental preparation for the games. “I would jump [during training] like it was the Olympic Games. I would imagine that there are 40,000 people at the bottom of the hill.” read or listen to the story