Come on baby, light my fire!
I am coming off of a fairly decent 2010 season. I successfully completed the American Zofingen Long Course in May, a 3-day stage race in the Tour of the Catskills (almost) and then completed my first marathon at Niagara Falls in late October. I then took some down time with plans to spin back up as part of the Nov OS. A killer project at work had me working 80+ hour weeks during the month of Oct/Nov/Dec which made it near impossible to perform an solid level of training.
I now find myself part of the JOS Haus 
, but am lacking some serious motivation. I need to find it quickly with Batenkill in April, ToC in May and IM CDA in June, and finally a repeat of the Tour of the Catskills on July. I know there is some serious mojo in the Haus and will be drawing from that everyday. In addition to this I am in search of some carrots/sticks that will help light my fire. I have the following ideas, but need some help from the Team:
- DVDs of past cycling and/or triathlons. I currently on use music during my indoor sessions and these aren't enough anymore.
- Posters/maps of upcoming events. I would love to have the profile maps for ToC hanging around the Pain Cave. Does anyone know where I can find them?
- I plan on purchasing the Race Execution Talk for CDA from RnP. Hoping this will be instructive as well as motivational. Does anyone know if team members receive a discount?
- Join in the forum banter and team challenges as much as possible.
Any other ideas?
Thanks for the support,
Pete
Comments
Pete,
Motivation is surely individual, so I'll share what works for me. Having a macro goal is great, but I also need a micro focus. The individual workout approach is very manageable to motivate for. Look at what you have to do today and give it your best. If you can do that for the majority of your workouts, you macro goals will quickly come to fruition. Don't forget the surrounding parts of your workouts too, i.e. stretch, roll, ice, eat well, and get enough sleep. For me, these are tied into successful workouts.
I had two motivators to get me through the OS bikes last year, ToC, and a 1hr TT in April. I just had those written on my board along with other quotes I've picked up around here like 'suffer to succeed', 'squeeze the lemon', 'make it hurt more to hurt less', stuff like that.
The biggest motivator is progress. Once I start seeing progress, I get more motivated to do each work out.
Good luck,
Dave
The Halligan is so right; my observation is also that success breeds confidence, in both training and racing. The EN OS strategy is almost guaranteed to produce training success - if you do the work (and the recovery!), you will improve. The trick is to have the patience (weeks are required, not days) to get to the results. But once you see that hard work produces results, it makes you want to work all the harder with your new higher FTP or faster VDOT.
And, season/mid-term goals (I want to finish IM CDA in six months) and long term dreams (I want to get back to Kona) are mandatory for me to start the whole process to begin with. But once I'm in it, each day that I successfully complete a workout at the prescribed effort level is one more proof to me that success is here, and I am confident I have the right goals.
Pete - Stuff below is good stuff.
Do you have friends you can train with? Real live people to be accountable to aside from EN virtual forums and Twitter? I find that helps me A LOT! Locally I have Tom Glynn to train with. And though he isn't local, Dave Ambrose and I are banging each other pretty hard to keep motivated. I know his goal for IMAZ and he knows mine so we rib each other. And it motivates me to get going cuz the closer i get to his numbers the more he will want to pull away.
I also find little rewards help. For me it is tech. If I get to a goal I buy myself something cool. Doesn't have to be big, but a nice carrot of some sort helps as well. I like tangible vs. my wife who likes simple satisfaction of accomplishment. To each his/her own.
With that said, turn off the damn PC and get busy!
John
That's funny, because that's Rich's poster on his wall too! He's got a man crush on Jens!
@John: Yeah, I need to start hooking up with other NJ fellas. Like you said I am sure that will help keep the motivation high.