Impact of Visualization

This morning.....wow.....I had an awesome training session on the spin bike while having a rather vivid visualization of Riccardo Ricco's amazing climb up the last mountain stage in the tour yesterday. I am a big believer in visualization as I wrote about it on my blog a while back. In short it is my opinion that if you cannot see yourself achieving something you probably will not achieve it.

Climbing is no doubt my biggest weakness and something I try to work on. I don't have a PM to prove anything, but I know that I seem to have more power tucked in a TT position, then it is sitting up with the hands on the hoods and then lastly standing is my biggest weakness. Maybe I am geared more that direction with body type at 5'6" and a fairly lean 170 lbs and why I tend to suffer more while standing during a climb. On rolling terrain I can power up a small climb with my hands on the drops while others are standing within my group.

This morning while working on my weakness I was doing my normal standing / seated intervals and with the ear buds and a climbing cadence beat I could vividly see Ricco's standing climbing cadence in my mind. My effort seemed to flow just as I reflected on his, no concern of the discomfort, but just a desire to keep adding tension and keeping the same driving cadence.

Bad thing is when the seated/standing intervals were over the next intervals were back to a tightly tucked TT position and my legs were able to go a faster cadence and handling more pain threshold with the same amount of tension. Oh well it I suppose that it what training is about as some say, "train your weakness, race your strength."

I just hope I can keep that image of Ricco's climbing ability in my mind as I continue to work on my weakness. If I were to magnify my ability by 10 and apply it to the TDF stage yesterday I would have been on the back of the peloton with all the sprinters.