If you want to improve as a triathlete, then there are times during your workouts, when you have to learn to suffer. During hard effort workouts, it is very important to work hard and working hard can be painful.

That ‘pain’ might be your fatigued muscles, burning under a high load.  It might be the feeling that your lungs are about to explode as you try to catch your breath.  It might be a combination of both.

In my effort to try and do my hard workouts harder than ever this year, I am encountering this ‘suffering’ more and more.  What I am finding however, is that the key to success is mental strength.  It is so easy for the feeling of ‘pain’ to convince your brain that you need to quit… that this is too much.   The opposite is also true however, in that you can use your brain to overcome the desire to quit.  It is not easy, and trust me I have failed many times, but it can be done.

Such was the case this evening.  My bike workout included four, high cadence intervals of four minutes each, where the goal was to achieve my best overall power, without dropping cadence.  It’s a tough workout, because the only upper limit to your effort, is what you can manage to do.

What I have learned from doing this workout several times recently, is that you can do more than you think you can.  The key, is to mentally tell yourself that “you can do anything for four minutes”. 

I also find it helps, if I break up the final two minutes of the interval into thirty second blocks.  By focusing on the thirty seconds I am in, it takes away that feeling that you are still a long way from finishing the interval.  At the end of thirty seconds, I just tell myself… “OK, let’s get through the next thirty seconds”.

Using this approach got me through the workout this evening and it also helped me push more power, compared to the same workout, just two weeks ago. 

Now, I just have to get myself mentally prepared to be able to do anything … for five minutes!