The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast by CTS
Coach Adam Pulford delivers actionable training advice and answers your questions in short weekly episodes for time-crunched cyclists looking to improve their cycling performance. The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast (formerly The TrainRight Podcast) is brought to you by the team at CTS - the leading endurance coaching company since 2000. Coach Adam pulls from over a decade of coaching experience and the collective knowledge of over 50+ CTS Coaches to help you cut throught the noise of training information and implement proven training strategies that’ll take your performance to the next level.
The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast by CTS
Finding Motivation for Short Term and Long Term Goals, with pro cyclist Heather Fischer (#222)
OVERVIEW: Longtime pro cyclist Heather Fischer joins Adam Pulford to discuss short-term and long-term motivation, both what it takes to get out the door today and what it takes to fuel your passion for training year after year. Perfect for the end of the season and the impending winter, this conversation provides insights into how you can make the most of the coming months and put yourself on track for a great season next spring and summer.
Guest
Heather Fischer has been a professional cyclist for more than 10 years, earning Collegiate and US Pro National Championships, top-10 finishes in UCI World Tour races, and competing in gravel events like Unbound, FNLD GRVL, Crusher in the Tushar, Rock Cobbler, BWR, and The Rad Dirt Fest. A resident of Boulder, CO, Heather works as a cycling coach and is coached by "Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast" host Adam Pulford.
Links
- Heather's IG: https://www.instagram.com/heather_smash/
Host
Adam Pulford has been a CTS Coach for more nearly two decades and holds a B.S. in Exercise Physiology. He's participated in and coached hundreds of athletes for endurance events all around the world.
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From the team at CTS. This is the Time Crunch Cyclist podcast, our show dedicated to answering your training questions and providing actionable advice to help you improve your performance even if you're strapped for time. I'm your host, coach Adam Pulford, and I'm one of the over 50 professional coaches who make up the team at CTS. In each episode, I draw on our team's collective knowledge, other coaches and experts in the field to provide you with the practical ways to get the most out of your training and ultimately become the best cyclist that you can be. Now on to our show. Now onto our show. Welcome back, time Crunch fans. I'm your host, coach Adam Pulford.
Speaker 1:What moves you? What drives you? Why do you do what you do as an athlete? That's pretty cerebral, especially for this podcast, but I believe it's a worthwhile discussion to have for athletes, because when the going gets tough or the motivation starts to evaporate, you need to go somewhere deeper than just an outcome goal to get through it. On top of that, an athlete doesn't need to be stoked on motivation year round to be successful. In fact, I'd argue letting this emotion drain a little in the off season is a healthy approach. So we're going to talk about motivation today, where it comes from, how to harness it and how to handle it in different ways throughout the season. But it's not going to be a super polished, academic sort of podcast.
Speaker 1:My guest is not a sports psychologist, nor a distinguished professor of any kind. She's a professional bike racer, a coach and a real human that can speak to the ups and downs in life and the seasons of sport. Some people think being a professional bike racer is glamorous and fabulous, and at times it is, but much of the time it's not. So we'll cover that too, and we'll cover why it's important for listeners like you to remember that as you start setting goals for the new year, because there's a lot more to life than podiums, tiktok and Instagram. So, without further ado, heather Fisher, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2:Hey Adam, Thanks for having me on today.
Speaker 1:For sure. So how's the off season vibes treating you in Boulder, Colorado?
Speaker 2:It's been a pretty nice fall. We've been able to get up into the mountains a little bit, see the leaves changing up. There been hanging out with some neighbors doing some barbecues, living our best fall life.
Speaker 1:Right on Heather Well. Boulder is an amazing place to be, I would say at all times of the season. But for our listeners who don't know you as well as I do, could you give us basically the Wikipedia version of who you are and maybe why you started bike racing?
Speaker 2:Sure, yeah, I'll keep it short. I started racing when I was in college. I grew up here, just north of Boulder, in a town called Berthoud, colorado, and I did not ride a bike. I didn't race a bike, I just ran around with my friends. And once I got going with my education at CU, I studied political science I found the cycling team and that's where I really started going.
Speaker 2:I had a lot of fun, made a lot of friends, discovered that I had a lot of talent for the sport and for the game. So I, you know, worked pretty hard. I had a lot of resources here in Boulder, was able to win a national championship the year that I graduated in 2012. And that launched my professional career on the road. So I've been on. Maybe I was counting this morning. I think I've been on seven different professional programs on the road, so I've been on. Maybe I was counting this morning. I think I've been on seven different professional programs over the years since 2012. And the latest being my favorite, dna of pro cycling. They're based in Salt Lake City, utah.
Speaker 1:Yeah for sure. Yeah, you've. You've had a storied career, and you know for all of our listeners going back all the way to 2012, until now. That's a long time. It's a long time to be racing bikes. It's a long time to be racing bikes at the level that Heather races. So I'm just going to get down to it, Heather. What motivates you to be an athlete? What motivates you to keep on coming back year after year, racing bikes, going to the same crits, maybe throwing in a different race here and there, but like what drives you as an athlete?
Speaker 2:I think what I love most about racing is just this like it's a special space that you can be in and it doesn't last for very long, like most of the races that I do are shorter. I'm more of a crit specialist, so we'll say an hour. There's this hour, magic hour, where you get to be kind of a different person, like you get to step away from all the stuff that's going on in your life and you can just solely focus on this one pursuit, on that finish line or on your teammates or whatever the game plan is for the day, and I think that's what I love most about. It is and that's why I keep going back it's this like really unique mental, physical space that racing takes you to and that's what I keep hungering after.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you find flow at the races.
Speaker 2:Sometimes, on the good days, on the good days, we're in flow state, but not every day is a good day. Sometimes you're a nervous wreck, sometimes you get in a physical wreck.
Speaker 1:Um, but yeah, that's the goal and that's when, when you get those moments like there's nothing like it, and that's why I keep going back team like DNA, when you get it all working together and you're working together as a team, it gets super flowy and being motivated to to seek out that flow again or kind of like chase that flowy high. So that's, that's like what trips your trigger.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that and the adventure. Like I do go to a lot of races over and over again and that's cool because I've been able to build relationships with either the host families that we see year after year, or the race promoters or the sponsors of the race, and it just feels like this big traveling summer camp and that's the social aspect that I really like.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you become a family when you're just traveling around as a circus together doing that.
Speaker 1:For sure, um, I'm going to ask you some kind of some sneaky questions and for, for those uh listeners out there that don't know, I actually coach Heather as well.
Speaker 1:So, uh, she's not only a professional bike racer, she's a coach herself. Uh, but I do coach her and I can, I can corner her into conversations like this and ask her some trick questions every once in a while, because I think it's really interesting, um, to explore it with not only somebody that I talk to on a regular basis, weekly, um throughout the year, but then also getting her take on it from, kind of the coaching side of things, from the athlete side of things, and also it's going to help me to learn a little bit more too. So that gives you a little bit of background on this. So this question I'm going to pitch over to you because I've talked about it with Jim Miller before, I've talked about it with other CTS coaches, and it's really like where does motivation come from? Do you think that a coach can motivate an athlete, or do you think that the motivation needs to come from within the athlete?
Speaker 2:No, that's a good question.
Speaker 2:I think, of course, a coach can motivate an athlete and I say that from experience because I think my biggest successes throughout my career have been a result of having the right people around me at the right moments.
Speaker 2:And so I think, of course, you have to put in the work and you have to make your own luck, but having those words or having that physical or emotional support, motivation from the people around you, especially a coach, because that's a pretty strong relationship and a consistent relationship that you have throughout the season I think a coach can certainly motivate an athlete, and I think there are differences. When I put my coaching hat on, I have to look, and my job or one of my goals is to figure out what kind of personality am I dealing with in this athlete. Are they someone that's going to be motivated by something that I say or something that I do, or is this someone that's really more inward focused and so like we'll allow that to happen more naturally. So, of course, I think coaches can motivate their athletes to great success, but I do believe that an athlete needs an individual needs to be internally motivated in order for that to happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's. It's a tricky question, but that was a hell of an answer there, heather, um and I and I definitely agree with you I think it it is both like um, it's. It's kind of like that circle that keeps on going. Like motivation comes from kind of an external source, uh, from coach or or you know, something goes into the athlete. The athlete kind of gets inspired and then finds kind of confidence in self, kind of gets pumped up, and then the intrinsic motivation starts going. But the coach can also, can always guide that. I think that there's some level at which you know, if there is absolute zero motivation, I think it does need to kickstart somewhere in the athlete. You know, because there is absolute zero motivation, I think it does need to kickstart somewhere in the athlete. You know, because I can write the best training program or say the the the coolest quotes in the world, but if the athlete doesn't have a desire right, if the horse just wants to lay down, I don't know if he can do much with that.
Speaker 2:And when I think about motivation, um, I also think about like values and self-belief, and I think maybe guiding someone towards having more of those conversations or just encouraging them to think about those things and identify what those things are for them, can help them then find motivation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, couldn't say it better. And in that way, as we're having this conversation, as our listeners are hopefully getting some insights on how you think and how we operate. You know it's both. It's it's seeking kind of inspiration from outside yourself, cultivating, cultivating it within yourself and getting that momentum building, because you need both, in my opinion, to do this for the long-term and the short-term. So let's talk about the duration of that, because, long-term, what I think of is long-term is racing your bike since 2012,. Right, racing your bike for 10 years, 20 years, something like that, or let's just say a season after season, versus short-term, say, getting pumped up for a crit. So I'll go to you, heather is, how are those different from you? How do you get pumped up from for a twilight crit and how is that different from keeping the fire stoked all season?
Speaker 2:I think maybe for the short-term stuff, it's being a lot more specific with what I'm doing with my time and my energy.
Speaker 2:So if I have an event that's coming up and I need to, you know I'll be doing specific prep for it and that's motivating. Say, I probably have to do some stuff in the gym or I need to do some stuff with, like, sprint skills and maybe I have to get some other people to help me with that. Or an example at the beginning of this year I had taken the whole off season, the winter off, and then I was going to go and do Athens Twilight and I just knew like it's been a while, like I'm really good at going through corners but everybody gets rusty. So the few weeks before the event I called a friend of mine who I know is really fast going through corners and the goal was just to go as fast as we could through this tight parking lot where I wasn't coming off his wheel. So I think in the short term for events, when we're preparing that, the motivation can come from. What can I do now to specifically prepare me to give my best effort on race day? And that could also be mental, like do I need space with myself? Do I need space with certain people in my life to get me in the right mental space? So that's what I think about. For short term motivation, it's like fueling yourself in, like kind of a zoomed in approach, like we're really looking at the details. And then I think, when we zoom out and we're thinking about an entire season or an entire career of pursuing a sport, we're looking at at least I look at like what are those bigger picture things? Like there's going to be a time in the season where I need to focus less on my training, I need to not have so much pressure on myself, and so I need to like purposely, like allow myself that time and communicate with my people that like I'm I'm checking out or I'm going to be focusing on something else.
Speaker 2:I think when we're finding motivation for the really long-term stuff, it's looking at the balance of like what do I value?
Speaker 2:What do I need to keep going so that I have a better chance of getting closer to my goals, and things for me that I've looked at are the relationships. So that's like some bigger picture stuff. Like what time of year? Like I don't have much time mid season to go spend time with my family and close friends. So when I do have those moments, um, when life is less busy, that's a huge priority for me because it's going to help me in the longterm, um, when things are going really fast. So I think the longterm bigger picture motivation, stuff like you got to figure out what is it that you need, what really like is exciting for you Is it spending more time on your bike and going on adventure rides, or is it doing silly things with your friends and then also realizing like there is going to be a time in the season where there's going to be less of that and it's going to be more of a narrow focus and just giving yourself like planning, like Good planning, is a big part of the recipe for success.
Speaker 1:Couldn't agree more with that. And I think, while you were talking, some of the thoughts I had is like the plan in. We call it an annual plan, as we kind of craft where we want to go, where we want the athlete to go over time. And I would overdo annual plans at some point in my career, then I kind of underdid them and now I find like I spend an adequate time on that, meaning start really well and map out where we want to go. So the road roadmap is there. Stuff always happens, you know, and we need to, we need to pivot and navigate when that stuff happens, and we'll talk about that in a second. But when you have that map both you and the athlete, when something happens, you can come back to that and I think that's what's pretty crucial from a planning standpoint. And if you're a self-coached athlete, I would still encourage you to sketch out where you want the season to go. It could be a full year, it just could be like eight months until that transition phase and then you know you take that break, but that's going to be part of the plan too.
Speaker 1:Additionally, what what Heather was talking about? About getting pumped up for a race or getting prepped for a specific something. It's really like kind of follows the general principles of intensity. Okay, so throughout the whole season you're doing a lot of endurance work, a lot of base work and you're training to train, as I say, and it kind of doesn't matter, it's like a slurry of intensity. But as we get into that race mode we need specificity of racing and that's usually high intensity, skill work, high speed work, and that's what Heather was talking about, because once she does one or two of those sessions, the brain starts to light up again.
Speaker 1:You get that muscle memory coming back of how to move on the bike and that can also cue motivation. It's like, oh, it's crit season, time to go Right, or speed intervals, or VO2 max. It ignites those systems. That, I think, gives you energy, gives you some motivation. In that way, as opposed to, maybe December, january was just I'm just zone twoing, just going along. It's not super motivating. But it's also like relaxing too, because I can just go out on long fall rides in Boulder or wherever you are and kind of enjoy the process of that plan that you mapped out Okay. So, yeah, really, really good answer on that, and I think too, that's that's when it all goes smooth. That's when it all goes swimmingly, but I think we can get some perspective on when shit happens and shit always happens, even to the best of us. So, heather, can you tell us about some poopy seasons and how you were able to navigate that? Anything from concussions to French teams to support networks and anything else that you want to throw in there?
Speaker 2:Well, french teams are not poo-poo, french teams are really fun.
Speaker 1:I agree with that.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I've certainly had my fair share of low moments and I think it's fun to talk about the beginnings, because I went on my first trip with USA Cycling in 2013. And I went to the spring opener at Newsblood and then I did a bunch of other races in, like in that same block, in that same part of Europe, and I didn't finish a single race. And so it's funny looking back because that's a great question Like wait, why did I not quit? How did I keep going? Like what? Who was that? Like what was she thinking? Um, and it's hard to remember, but I think I just had.
Speaker 2:I went into new experiences or maybe some really difficult like races, knowing that like it's okay to to mess it up, uh, and it's okay to have a bad day, uh, but man, like not finishing a single race, that whole block, like that. That was hard to deal with. Um, I think I really only got through it because I made a really close friend with one of my teammates on that racing block and we just had a ton of fun. Like we knew that we were in over our heads and she had her struggles as well. I think I broke five shifters in one of my blocks over there with USA Cycling, there was a. This is pretty funny. There was a bet going on like how many bike parts I would break in this season at the service course.
Speaker 1:Um so so is that where, uh, the nickname heather smash potentially comes from?
Speaker 2:you got it ding, ding. Yeah, people think that heather smash is because I was just came out smashing things. But um, I, I did, I smashed myself, I smashed my equipment. Like that it was a self-deprecating joke. Uh, that nickname smash and I think it's an important part of my story because like going and having that really like galvanizing experience over there in Europe, like I came back to the U?
Speaker 2:S and did the tour of the Gila and I was just like no one would mess with me, I knew exactly where I didn't need to be, I was a really dependable teammate. I was smashing in a good way, like not crashing, but like being a real good professional athlete. So I think, for coming back to your question, like how do you stay motivated in those really low moments, those tough times? I think it helps to have a friend, it helps to have some humor about the situation. I think, in the end, like the only thing I control on a bad day is my attitude. So like if I can get a good handle on that and, you know, find some type of positive, some type some type of thing I can learn from the bad experience or the extremely embarrassing thing that I just did, then I can come out of it and be better for it, and then it gives me a better chance for those good days later on.
Speaker 1:And I think the you know the life of a bike racer as you described. You got to go through those moments and those low moments and those crappy moments and I think you know, for a time crunched athlete listening to this, you know you're going through the thick of um work, family and kind of the struggles of life in that way, while while pursuing and chasing some of your, your bike goals, and oftentimes like the people I ride with and and and some other like masters athletes, they they think that the bike race or life is what they want, right, and it's like try to live like that. But I would say my perspective, and hopefully what you're seeing here from Heather as well, is like actually those things that we just talked about, like your stable job, your family, your spouse, those can all be things that ground you and give you balance so that you can actually become a really good athlete. Because when you don't have that, when you're over in a foreign country, or when you're chasing these goals and everything goes south, it's like there's no bottom underneath you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's nice to have support.
Speaker 1:My whole point in that is like again, like I said in my intro, is a lot of people view professional bike racing as kind of something else and it's not. And I do think for a time crunched athlete. We always say we and we preach like do more volume, oh, do a lot of racing, cause that'll make you better, and all these things. It's like the reality is is you have different constraints, but lean into that because it can actually help stoke that motivation and stoke that fire, so to speak, because you have a lot of these kind of fallbacks that can bring balance over time. And that's really my point.
Speaker 2:I think that none of us are in the exact same situation right, All of us are going to be different. But I think where we can draw strength or motivation or an improvement in our attitude is to focus on, or spending some time on being grateful for the things that we already have been reminded and have had to practice, even though it's difficult in those really bad seasons or low moments of my life where, okay, yeah, everything really sucks. But if I can find one thing or a few things that I'm really grateful for, that I'm happy about, then it kind of helps reignite that fire and helps you keep going a little bit longer.
Speaker 1:Gratitude is probably that, that spark plug, right that gets the intrinsic motivation fired up again, right, so that you know the coach can come in and add a little inspiration, your spouse can come in and say you can do it, and it creates the momentum of motivation. I mean, gratitude is part of that, part of finding motivation and one of the things that I tell my athletes. I don't know if I've specifically told you this, uh, but I I try to tell my athletes why we do what we do in training blocks, why why we're doing threshold, why we're in training blocks, why we're doing threshold, why we're doing VO2, why we're doing zone two and everything in between. And in that way it reminded me of one of my favorite quotes, which is he or she who knows a why to live for can bear almost any how, and that's Viktor Frankl. That's getting a little deep. Anybody who knows Viktor Frankl knows that he survived a Nazi concentration camp and he went on to pursue his career as a psychiatrist and he developed something called the theory of logotherapy. So it's like the logic that leads to finding purpose, the reason I bring that up on this podcast. And again, it's getting cerebral and we usually have like actionable things going on where you can go out and crush some intervals. But I bring this up because it's training your brain, okay, and if you know why you're doing what you're doing in a training block, why you're doing VO two max intervals, why you're following your friend who's way faster than you through corners and you think that you're going to die, if you know why you're going to do that, you can get through it. And it's almost comical from a bike racing and endurance training standpoint. I mean it's crazy how lucky we are to take concepts like this and apply it to our racing.
Speaker 1:But I think, too, it's what the people who are into racing need to bring balance to some of this. Because when it all goes south, when you have the crappiest race possible and you trained all year for this one race, or you decided to make the leap as a professional bike racer, like Heather did, and you're in some foreign country crashing, breaking everything, it's like you need to know why, why you're there, why you're at mile 50 in a hundred mile race and 10,000 feet of climbing to go in some goofy gravel race. Why did I sign up for this? If you know why you did, you can smile, you can have gratitude and say you know what?
Speaker 1:I'm doing this because I want to challenge myself. I'm doing this because my friend, heather, signed me up for it and she said it'd be fun. I guess it is and it'll help push you through those dark times, those challenging times where you just want to quit, you just want to throw your bike off a cliff, right. But that's not why you signed up and that's why I think too, there's no. We can talk about annual plans, we can talk about training blocks, we can talk about this, but, like, until you do some work of thinking and using your brain to go a little deeper about why you spend 400 hours, 500 hours, 800 hours on your bike training each year, I mean that will bring a lot of grounding and depth to this whole training program that we're talking about.
Speaker 2:I think, just from the practical standpoint, as an athlete that's trying to follow a training plan or trying to prepare for something, it certainly helps to know why we're doing something. I'm going to be, the quality of my work is going to be elevated because I know why. It's going to help me and sometimes that's the only reason I'm going to go out and do those like time to exhaustion efforts that you give me For sure, because, like, I certainly don't want to be doing that, especially not by myself, especially not on a climb but I know why we're doing them and that helps motivate me because I know I want to be better, I know I want to find another like depth of like, how far, how hard I can go, and that can be really motivating, just instead of just thinking, oh, I have to do this effort this hard for this long. It's like I'm going to do this effort because I want to be this person effort, because I want to be this person.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, and that betterment is also what a lot of uh endurance athletes seek out, like we don't. We don't train 10 hours a week to get worse. We want to get better, and knowing why we're doing it, all this specific stuff is really going to help you punch through it, and I think, too, in that way it's like okay, so, okay, great, figure out my why, how do I do that.
Speaker 1:I I'd say read Simon Sinek's book. Start with why. By the way, that was a really good book and kind of elevates, I would say, uh, viktor Frankl's message, um, in a way. So if anybody's looking for a good book, definitely read that. But I don't think you need to even like like if this is scary for you and you're like man, this is like self-help, adjacent type stuff, coach, ap, like why are we talking about this? It doesn't have to be like that academic or that like sophisticated. In fact, the more simple it is, the better it is in terms of finding your why. Cause when I ask some of my athletes this, they think about it, come back, and then I give them like a week or more or whatever, as long as you need, and they come back.
Speaker 1:It's like I love to win, I'm like perfect, that's great, or I just want to, I want it to be fun. Okay, some athletes say it keeps me healthy, brilliant and those simple things. Because if you're trying to lose weight, if you're a master's level athlete and you have a desk job and you don't really move a whole lot, but cycling it like motivates you and gets you out and gets you training 10 hours, 10 hours a week, that's going to help you live longer, have a higher quality life, and when it's going to give you more fitness. When you're more fit, everything's more fun. And all of these like very simple things are actually pretty hard to do when you put them into action. Because I love to win. Winning, heather, I'll put it to you, is winning easy or statistically probable in your sport?
Speaker 2:Well for me? No, I mean I'm very proud of the wins that I have, um, but no, it's like a very small number for the number of race days that I've completed.
Speaker 1:So, but not not only you. I mean, outside of Tadek Pogacar and Walt Van Aert, I would say, statistically speaking, a bike racer, amateur or professional, that toes a line are likely to lose a race more than they're going to win a race. Little deeper into that, because some people say, well, I'd love to win, that's good. You got to go deeper with that and start to pick apart what that actually means and how to actually win. And that's how I would do it If someone, when someone has come to me and said that in terms of identifying why. So sometimes we need to change that why? Because maybe it's not as applicable, because you'll never win a bike race again or you'll only win twice in the next five years. Is that doable for you? Is that going to be motivating to you? So then we can break it down from there.
Speaker 1:But my whole point with that is keep it simple, but make it yours. Because if you find a why and say, oh, that sounds pretty good and I'm just going to say this and give it to the coach, but it's not yours, guess what? When the going stuff, when the bottom falls out, you're going to say that why to you and nothing's going to happen. It's not going to inspire you. It's not going to motivate you. So you got to figure it out, but it's got to be for yourself. So, heather, we, we are talking right now in your off season and a lot of people's off season where, uh, anything from my athletes doing a surf camp and just getting away from bike racing entirely to chilling out on the couch and maybe starting some strength training. Overall, my message to you and a lot of the athletes in off season is let the motivation go. How are you doing with that?
Speaker 2:I struggle with the off season and I think that's why I'm on this podcast. Adam and I would assume anyone that would click and listen to this podcast might also be struggling with motivation in the off season. So I'll just share some of the stuff that I have found helpful or just yeah, like where I find myself this time of year. It's tough because you're kind of going, going, going and everything's really busy and then things aren't so busy and maybe you don't have things scheduled. And I think I have certainly struggled I know some of my friends have struggled with just that emotional space of like, okay, we were going and now we're not going anywhere, and now I just feel down, Like I just feel sad or out of it, or like I'm just drifting in the wind. So I'm prone to feel that way, Like I definitely am. Like either 100 miles per hour or zero. I like to go from like doing everything I can to then I just want to sit on the couch and it's really hard for me to get off the couch and get doing something again. So I just have to first be aware of that Like that's my first step is knowing like these are my tendencies, these are my habits and then having a plan or an intention like, okay, I will allow myself this downtime, but I need to be doing the strength work, need to take some part of the season where there's a different focus to your training, especially if you want to be faster. I think if you want to keep doing the same thing all season long, that's fine and I think a lot of people are happy doing that. But I think if your expectations are higher performance, we need to have times where we're doing less training or we're doing a wider variety of activities.
Speaker 2:So how I try to stay motivated in this time of year is like we plan camping trips or we plan hikes with friends, or I tried to go in the pool but I'm not very good at breathing and swimming, Like I just haven't figured it out because I was never a swimmer. But this time of year is always like I try to get into the pool. I'll do it once or twice and then I really don't like it because I can't breathe and I'm just swallowing a bunch of chlorine water and someone looks like they look at me like I need help. So I just try to do different things at this time of year and that has helped me. But I'm not going to lie Like I always struggle at this time of year. Like mentally I struggle and like socially I struggle because all of my social connections are out on the road, at events, with friends, and then you come home and you're like wait, I haven't maintained anything here, so it's tough.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's tough and I think a lot of people can resonate with that, just that type A sort of personality, the all in or all out sort of mindset. I have a lot of athletes like that and in a way it's special because when you're all in, you're all in and all the energy, all the focus goes into that one thing. And whether you're a CEO or an emergency room doc or some high powered lawyer or a professional bike racer, whatever the case is, is like great, that's a strength of yours. I'm not really like that. Like I, I'm very okay. Like drinking coffee, staring at a wall and slowing down, that's pretty attractive to me personally. But in a in a way it's like whatever you're not good at, you need to get better at it in order to kind of have some balance and then kind of crescendo and build better for the next season. Okay, like Heather you heard her talk about climbing Hills right or being slow, like slowing down and resting, like we work on those things now so that they're less of a limiter later. And I think in this space and time for people who have, you know, race seasons and they're always out there and they're pursuing all the next races and stuff and when you don't have something on your calendar, that's really uncomfortable. I just need to get something on my calendar in order to like get my brain aligned. It's like challenge yourself with that. Go several months without putting something on the calendar, Be okay with it. That's my, that's my message for for that type of personality type, and I think it's okay to let some of this go.
Speaker 1:You don't have to be motivated all year round. You don't have to be fast all year round. You don't have to be super fit all year round. You don't have. But consistency prevails. Consistency is really good.
Speaker 1:So when Heather's talking about some of these habits, right, we're like I, we're keeping her going with all these different things. It's just not riding her bike 15 hours a week right, change it up. Go jogging, more strength training, go for hikes, don't die in the chlorinated pool, that kind of stuff. So in a way, there's tools and strategies that you can use where you don't have to just sit on the couch or, like me, stare at a wall and drink coffee. But you need to kind of tune into yourself. And all this should kind of dovetail into going back and finding how you can improve yourself going into next year, because letting some of the fitness go, letting the motivation wane a little bit right now in recalibrating for the next season, we're all going to do that and I really encourage people to do that, especially as we head into the holiday season. So get comfortable with doing a little less. That's going to be probably my final message. So anything else you want to add to that, heather?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think this time of year, just enjoy the variety that the season gives, explore new things that you want to try to do and then, once you do get back on the bike, know that you don't have to be 100%, you don't have to be crazy focused, and that's kind of a nice thing. Just go enjoy being outside, listen to something, hang out with friends, but keep pedaling your bike being outside listen to something, hang out with friends, but keep pedaling your bike.
Speaker 1:Couldn't agree more. Couldn't agree more. So in clothing in. In closing, heather, I really want to thank you for taking time out of your coaching, out of your training, out of your off season, uh, to come spend time with us on the time crunch cyclist podcast. And if people, if our audience, liked what they heard from you, they want to connect with you or maybe explore some coaching parameters?
Speaker 2:how do they get in touch with you? Yeah, so I work for Boundless Endurance Coaching. We're based in Boulder, colorado, so you can just check us out at our website. It's Boundless and I think it's like boundlesscom, something like that. You'll find it. Just do a Google search with my name and boundless, and then I'm on Instagram. My nickname is Heather smash, so just look for that, and I don't really do Facebook. You can always swing by my house If you. In North Boulder I live by 34th.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I think if Some people might take you up on that. I mean, just go pick up a training partner and go hit the hills, I don't know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm looking for friends to ride with, so come hang out.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Well, we will link to everything except Heather's personal address on the landing page here. But for real, heather, I think too this was super fruitful because at some point you figured out this was also a learning process for yourself, to gather your thoughts about off-season and how you manage yourself. So in that way I want to really thank you for going through the process with me and also sharing kind of what you learned about yourself with the rest of our audience. Really appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks for having me on. It's a lot of fun.
Speaker 1:Thanks for joining us on the Time Crunch Cyclist Podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. If you want even more actionable training advice, head over to trainrightcom backslash newsletter and subscribe to our free weekly publication. Each week you'll get in-depth training content that goes beyond what we cover here on the podcast. That'll help you take your training to the next level. That's all for now. Until next time, train hard, train smart, train right.
