The Hardest Part of Endurance Training Isn’t the Ride
People assume the hardest part of riding fifty, sixty, or one hundred miles is the physical effort. They ask if my legs hurt, if my back hurts, or if I get bored. The truth is, the hardest part happened long before I could ride those distances. It happened between my ears.
While I’m pretty proud of the physical changes that have taken place over the last year and a half, the biggest change has been in my mindset.
Choosing Growth Instead of Decline
By the time I reached my sixties, I was dealing with several health issues, all of them stemming from morbid obesity. I had pretty much accepted three things:
I had always been an overweight person and I would always be so;
My health issues were an inevitable part of getting older.
At sixty, my best physical years were behind me.
The change came when I decided to retire, in part to work on my health and a good friend who is about 10 years older than me gave me the best piece of advice, “Roberto, now that you’re retired, your health is your job.”
He suggested a few things to read and my doctor convinced me that all of my health issues were either revirsible or very manageable but it would take work. I spent the first year of my retirement making changes around the edges, but I wasn’t all in on making the necessary changes.
I know that one of my major values is self-sufficiency and independence. A year into retirement I knew that I was on the road to a life of decline and dependency. I decided in that moment that I needed to turn it around. And the biggest realization of all:
There is a big difference between accepting aging and surrendering to it.
Aging is a reality. Decline is inevitable, but the rate of decline is very much something we can influence.
Showing Up When Progress Comes Slowly
There have been a lot of lessons I’ve learned trying to get myself into shape in my sixties. Improvement takes longer than it did decades ago. When I first started working out on the bike it became clear to me that I was in the worst shape of my life, that doing random workouts on the bike wouldn’t be enough and that I didn’t have the wherewithal to develop and follow a training plan for this stage of life. That’s when I sought out the help of a coach.
Working with Coach Chi wasn’t always smooth. I kept trying to train the way that I used to decades ago and she kept trying to do more systematic training. But she insisted on slowing things down and building a cardio base. She had me doing Zone 2 workouts, which are basically an endurance “all-day” pace, and for someone as out of shape as I was, it felt embarrassingly slow. I resisted, I skipped workouts, I was frustrated, I second-guessed the plan because it didn’t feel hard enough.
Coach Chi taught me something that completely changed the way I think about endurance training:
You have to go slow before you can go fast.
It was a lesson that changed more than my cycling.
After riding ninety-eight miles in the November Tour de Tucson I was ultimately convinced of the wisdom of sticking to her plan.
Redefining Success
Another part of the mental gymnastics you have to do when you get to your 60s is the realization that there are definitely fewer days ahead than there are behind you.
Coming to terms with how much I had neglected my health and body was a challenge. That realization made me impatient. I wanted years of neglect reversed in months. But health doesn’t work that way. The habits that create lasting health are the same habits that require patience.
Sure, I care about FTP, average speed and riding farther. But those are just measurements. The goal is consistency. That’s what changes your life.
It’s less about working out at the whim of motivation, but about having the discipline to work out when you just don’t want to. It’s about having a holistic approach that includes working on the bike, strength training, mobility work, stretching, recovery and rest.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s important to listen to the body in order to stay injury-free and maintain consistency. As of this writing I’ve built the longest streak of consistent training I’ve had in years.
Consistency builds on itself by increasing confidence, stamina, strength.
Learning to Ignore the Voice That Says “You’re Too Old”
However, I don’t want to paint a rosy picture here. There are plenty of days where I don’t want to work out. When I don’t want to do the strength workouts, and yes, I’ve probably skipped more of those than I care to admit, however, I keep coming back to it.
There is always self-doubt. And on a long ride the voice in my head inevitably starts bargaining:
“Hey, at your age this is good enough.”
“Do you really have to ride fifty miles today? Thirty five is good enough”
“If you make a right turn at the light you can go straight home.”
“Doesn’t getting older mean slowing down?”
The amount of self-negotiation I do on a long bike ride is incredible.
Mental strength isn’t pretending those thoughts don’t exist. It’s choosing not to let them make your decisions.
Training for the Next 30 Years
One of the reasons I continue to write this blog is because it’s a way of reminding myself that I’m not training for the next ride or the next event or even to just increase my FTP numbers. I’m training for the life I want at ninety.
And yes, I do all those things, but I do them so I can travel with confidence; get my luggage into the overhead compartment, stay independent and self-sufficient well into my 80s and 90s.
The workouts are my “time investment” in that future.
Every ride builds endurance. Every strength workout builds resilience. Every healthy meal is an investment. But every day I choose to show up, even when it’s easier not to, I’m building something even more important: a mindset that believes that my best years are not behind me.
That’s why Tour de Bike has never been just about the bike. It’s about building the mindset to keep living fully. It’s about building the kind of life that lets me stay active, independent, and curious for as long as I can.
Until next time,
Enjoy the ride. 🚴🏽♀️
