In March 2012 I had my first attempt at finishing the 800 km Cape Epic. It proved to be disastrous. This is the third part of my journey back to fitness and my return to Africa to finish some very unfinished business.

The Race

The Absa Cape Epic takes place every year around the last week of March. The race is held over 8 days and includes a time-trial prologue. The route changes every year, and leads aspiring amateur and professional mountain bikers from around the world through approximately 800 kilometres of the unspoilt nature of the Western Cape and up approximately 15 000m of climbing over some of the most magnificent passes in South Africa.

April 15 – April 30

The school cycling season is well underway and I thought this would be a good prompt to get me out on the bike a lot more. I assist with coaching at my daughter’s school and have fast realized that my 97+ kg is a barrier to riding up hills with them! It is amazing the speed and power-to-weight ratio that these 12-16 year old girls have.

I have finally started to make an impact on my weight and with a little bit more exercise and watching what I shove in my mouth I have reduced my weight down to 95 kg.

There is still a long way to go and although I am lifted my training to between 6-8 hours per week this is a country mile from where I need to get to.

May 2014

I had some good news with the Unitec Sports Department offering to support me in the lead up to the race. They have a comprehensive facility at their Mt Albert campus and will be guiding me with training plans, nutrition and even sports psychology (which I think is what is desperately needed).

Sports Psychology

I had my first meeting with Daniel Stamp who has a Masters in Sport Psychology from Manchester Metropolitan University. He is currently doing a Phd and has been a lecturer since 2007. The best part about his skillset is that he also runs his own company called Ultimate Performance. This has ensured that he is not only teaching but is also a practicing sports psychologist who is currently assisting a number of both professional and amateur sports people and teams.

The first meeting we had was meant to be an introduction and exploration of how we would work together and what I could expect. I quickly learnt what Dans approach was going to be and have to admit that exploring your own motivations etc can be a little more challenging than many realize.

One of the approaches that Dan takes to helping athletes achieve optimum performance is to take a values based approach. In order to achieve optimal performance the first area to explore is why do you want to do this, who are you doing it for and what do you hope to achieve from it. Once you are clear on this you have the foundation on which the other mental techniques can be employed most successfully.

Your beliefs become your thoughts. Your thoughts become your words. Your words become your actions. Your actions become your habits. Your habits become your values. Your values become your destiny.
Mahatma Ghandi

This sounded relatively easy however when you answer these questions honestly you may not always like the answers! One of the things Dan did was “peel the onion”. When I tried to answer the questions he continually dove deeper and deeper to help me understand some of the motivations. For example:

Why do I want to do this? I started with the fact that it is unfinished business. What does this mean? It means I feel like I have failed at something.
Why does this matter? I don’t like the feeling!

When I continued to look at motivations something else also emerged. Why do I need to do a race that is so extreme and so demanding. Why can’t I set out to do something like the K2. That is a race that is difficult but not extreme. The reason I like thse events is that I like to do things that most people haven’t done or can’t do. This is ultimately linked to my ego and the fact that I get enormous self confidence from doing these things. It is also linked to my fundamental personality type and is actually no different to how I approach my work – it is all or nothing. This is not necessarily good or bad but recognizing this is a good start.

The next few questions were even more interesting and challenging and were still exploring the idea of personal values and their link to sporting performance. Dan explains that one of the reasons he spends time on this with athletes is because he is interested in their overall health and long term success rather than just focusing on the short term goals. As we all know (and I can testify to personally) is that all too often there is a massive burn-out for amateur and professional athletes at the end of their particular event. This can result in minor depression/marriage break-ups through to suicide at the extreme end.

These are questions that many of us may have already asked ourselves (especially as we get older). The greatest question to explore his “who are you”.

Who are you across your life? Think about the things that are essential to you and make you up. Dan believes that this is important because you need to tap into your lifetime values and transfer them to your sporting endeavours.

Furthermore he believes that Values should be considered in a number of ways but in particular understood as being the feelings and the emotions that you attach to the things you do and say. They are the underpinning of how you think and how you feel and therefore how you act and behave. This is the reason that he believes you need to have this holistic approach.

One of my biggest conundrums has been how I can rationalise my core values whilst spending so much time on a pursuit that historically became an unhealthy obsession. He is a firm believer in following your passions but this has to be balanced with the other areas in your life. True success is about doing something like this without becoming a one-dimensional identity. You become so focused on one area of your life that it takes over.

After some exploration I identified 8 key values that I believe in and would like to hold myself to (not always successfully). I like to have independence but also like to be dependable and trustworthy for family and friends. I like personal achievement but also helping others. I like to be healthy, fit and active but I also like financial prosperity.

My question still revolves around the dichotomy of personal values and the contradiction with the Cape Epic. When I asked for some ways to help me decide whether I should even do the event he said it is actually quite simple. He recommends doing a simple decision balance method. Draw up a list of all the pros and all the cons of your event and then simply balance the ledger. You need to consider the effect/impact of your decisions:

Pros

Getting fit again and being healthy
Self Confidence
Being able to tick this off my list
Raising money for a charity

Cons

Cost
Time
Potential Impact on Family
Potential Impact on Work

It was at this stage that I realized that one of the reasons I have been struggling to get motivated and consistent with my training is that I hadn’t actually really thought about all the impacts of this race. I believe that I need to spend some more time thinking this through as the last thing I need is to try and do a race that will ultimately leave me unsatisfied whether I finish or not.

Something Dan and I both agreed on is that I need to set a couple of milestones along the way – rather than just putting all the effort into March next year. I have decided that I need to prove I can train and do a reasonably hard race in a healthy way and have targeted the K2 on November 1st to be the first milestone.

We only had 60 minutes together and Dan gave me a lot to think about. It was actually quite a challenging session in that I had to think a lot more deeply about this than I had realised. This might not be the case for everyone but for someone with my personality I need to try and do events with a different mindset. I have done Ironman, marathons etc but have finished most races unhappy with my performance. I believe that part of the reason for this is that I never really figured out what success looked like.

This is going to be an important part of trying to get to he start line.

Next Issue

Unitec Sports Lab do some fitness testing and I have a follow up with Dan Stamp.