Training can in turn be so empowering – and then also so demoralizing.

I lamented to a friend a few weeks ago about not seeing any progress from my training. She came back with, “What would getting stronger look like to you?”

I’m not sure if I love it or hate it when friends ask hard questions.

I whined about planks still being so challenging, about not getting faster, about the workouts on the spin bike still being so hard. This lack of progress played on my mind for a few days.

My next workout on the spin bike felt brutal – but then they always do. When I took a moment to think about it, I recognized that I was doing (almost) the same workout as I did 2 years ago, but now my output was 40-50 watts higher. Of course it still felt hard. New level, new devil I’d read in a book once.

My Friday routine is some resistance training followed by a workout on the spin bike followed by two days of endurance training. Saturday is usually around 3.5 hours, followed by 3 hours on Sunday. Looking over training records, I see how much more climbing I put into these rides now. Often one of them will run longer and I’ll stay out for an extra hour because I’m feeling good and the having too much fun to wrap it up just yet. So there’s the additional elevation that’s a measurable result and there’s the duration that’s extending as well.

Perhaps the best indicator of progress is that I’m not quite as exhausted after 3 big (for me) days on pedals. Early on in my training, those 3 days in a row would be exhausting. Now I feel way less fatigued, but am always happy for a recovery day on Monday.

I am still no faster. I don’t know where that starts to happen.

My last two workouts on the spin bike felt so hard – but my heart rate did not reflect the effort. I was disappointed so see the low numbers knowing how hard I’d worked.

Change can take years—before it
happens all at once.

James Clear – Atomic Habits

I’m putting that down to good days, bad days and head games. I don’t even know the rules of the head games, so I should not play them. My strategy is to tune out the doubting self talk and just keep doing the work. Consistency is the key.

We’re 9 weeks out from SBT GRVL with my All Bodies on Bikes team now, and 100 miles still feels like a long freakin’ way to ride my bike – at altitude! But I’ve got 2 more solid training blocks ahead of me and I’ll just keeping doing the work.