Lonely road

I had a number of appointments with athletes today and in those appointments there was a common theme. Solo training.

This is always a hard time of year to be doing exercise in Perth. The winter solstice is about a week away so the days are about as short as they are going to be. We are at the point of winter where there is always the chance of a bit of rain and on top of that it is cold. Unless they have a compelling reason to do otherwise, a lot of people do the sensible thing and stay in bed. Bed is fine of course unless you are one of those people who do have a compelling reason to be up, such as going to the World Championships in 12 weeks time as is the case with the athletes I saw today.

For those that need to train, or just decide that it seems like a good idea, the inevitable solo slog at this time of year can be a motivational challenge. Training with others can be great for a number of reasons, but one reason is that the accountability is often a good driver to get people out of bed. Without that accountability sometimes people find the temptation of bed just a little too strong when it is cold and wet outside. 

However, the lack of accountability and other external motivation factors can actually be a great thing about training this time of year. In order for training to be sustainable it must eventually be driven from within. You see it time and time again, those who source their motivation from external sources inevitably struggle. You can only draw energy from others for so long, eventually you have to find your own reasons for getting out the door in the morning. 

Training at this time of year often forces some people to ask some fairly tough questions of themselves. Such as "why am I doing this?", "what is my end goal?" and "how much do I want it?". Sometimes people come up short on these questions and often when that happens the training begins to stutter and falter (and occasionally stop) until the weather improves and more people come out to lend a bit of extra motivation. However, those people who ask themselves those questions and find sufficient answers to keep on going through Winter often find themselves that much stronger (both mentally and physically) by the time they hit the racing season.