There is no dearth of digital devices, software, and services promising to streamline your training, analyze your data, make training more fun, and ultimately make you better and faster. From Peloton and Zwift, to Strava, Fit Bits, Apple Watches, Power Meters, Suunto’s, Garmin’s, and training apps that seamlessly integrate all your hardware and software the list goes on and on. If you truly thrive by geeking out on tech and playing with toys and the gamification of athletic performance motivates you to actually train better, by all means have at it. The reality is that mountain biking is less of a ‘numbers’ sport than road biking, running, or swimming. The data that the technology collects about you while mountain biking doesn’t correlate strongly with how fast or slow you ride your mountain bike. The athlete who pays attention to their mind and body does not need a device to tell them how well they slept or how much time they spent in zone 2 during their workout. Learning to listen to the feedback your body gives you is something you learn by experiencing it without distraction.
Not all data is background noise – distance, elevation gain, gradients, and ride times are useful metrics to plan and compare the difficulty of workouts. At the most elite levels of cross country mountain bike racing the analysis of more data points can help direct more specificity to training. The bulk of fitness technology out there is, however, a rabbit hole of wasted time and money, and a diversion that misplaces the athlete’s focus away from actual training time, developing and sharpening their mental game, making healthy lifestyle choices, and resting. Most of us have busy lives outside of mountain biking juggling careers, families, community obligations, and other hobbies. We already don’t have as much time to devote to the sport as we would like. The time you do have for mountain biking should be used as efficiently as possible. We already have too much digital clutter in our lives and readily admit we spend too much time looking at screens. Mountain bike training and racing shouldn’t add to that. As a dirt warrior your job is to filter out the distractions and only use what serves you. Instead of reaching for a technological crutch try keeping track of your training and racing in a journal. Don’t try to gamify your training thinking that it will somehow be more fun or effective. Embrace the struggle you have signed up for, if you want to ride mountain bikes at a high level sometimes it will be deeply uncomfortable and sometimes workouts will not be mentally stimulating. Sprint finishes, intervals, skills work on the same section of difficult trail over and over, box jumps, and dead lifts are what you signed up for – be present in the moment to take advantage of their benefits.
In tracking progress in both training and racing the only numbers that truly matter are the times you put up on the clock. If data analysis really does help you ride faster than a more luddite approach, use it judiciously, but chances are that focusing on better understanding your own perceived effort during a workout, learning to stay present during hard efforts, improving the quality of your recovery by eliminating stressors and mental clutter, and tuning into your mental and physical readiness to determine when to train hard and when to rest will be a more efficient use of time and a better indicator of response to training. It can be a dopamine rush after a training ride to immediately upload all our exercise data and look at it on fun graphs and compare it to our past workouts or our friends’ and rivals’ data, but try this routine instead – right after a hard workout focus first on rehydrating and replenishing your calorie deficit. Enjoy an invigorating soak in a cold river or a relaxing shower. Lie on your back on a firm surface in shavasana pose with your eyes closed and visualize the workout you just completed. What went well? What was a struggle? Let this be a time to integrate the effort you just expended with the recovery you now need. Spend some time on this, if your mind wanders focus on breathing deeply. Do some gentle stretching and use a foam roller on your legs and back. Once you have calmed your nervous system and visualized your training efforts you will probably feel less need to have a computer analyze the organic and spiritual substance of your being.
Equipment is a simpler and cheaper topic than many athletes make it. Many athletes obsess over the newest, latest, and greatest carbon fiber wheels, electronic shifters, light weight suspension, and so on and so forth. As athletes we are always looking for an edge. The good news for you and your wallet is that if you own a decent mid-level mountain bike less than 10 years old that is well maintained that is absolutely all you need for training and racing. Invest in yourself, not in equipment you don’t need. Higher quality groceries and a good coach will do far more for your performance than shaving ounces off your bike. Deep down you probably already know this, but our caveman brains are wired to look at shiny new things and want them. We are constantly seeking ways to minimize discomfort; we want fancy high tech toys because we hope they will make us faster without having to do any real work. Again, your task as a dirt warrior is to filter out the unnecessary and focus on what actually works.
As with most of modern life the promises of technology eventually run into a less glamorous reality. There are some technologies that really do make mountain biking more enjoyable but most of it is a marketing ploy for your hard earned money, an attempt to convince you that you need things you don’t, and a supposed easy solution when the real fix is hard work, discipline, and self examination. I am not advocating for you to live like the Amish. There are ways to use technology sparingly that will be of benefit to most riders during some of their training sessions. Use a stop watch for time trial workouts to gauge gains made in training. This really will be a reflexion of race readiness. Use an app like mtb project or trail forks to navigate and get a picture of expected difficulty through metrics like distance, elevation gain, gradients, and technical difficulty for new rides. Having a phone with you can be a life saver if you have an emergency.
If you have been using technology to track your training it can be disconcerting and disorienting to start training without it. As you sever your dependence on technology for training expect to feel a little lost and uncertain in your workouts. There are several techniques to begin tuning into your mind/body connection in meaningful ways while training that will help you to feel and understand what your body is going through while training. Here is one of my favorites and one of the easiest to integrate into your own training: On relatively steady efforts such as a constant gradient climb develop a rhythm of matching your breath cycle to your pedal cadence. Experiment with gearing and rate of cadence (spinning quickly, ie: 80-95 rpm, grinding or standing, ie: 55-70 rpm) on a given section of climb. Focus on exhaling all of the air out of your lungs and inhaling a little slower than you exhale. Focus on the smooth transition between exhale and inhale and vice versa. As the effort and discomfort increases and the rate of respiration becomes faster and more labored your mind will likely start projecting into the future wishing the pain to end. Millions of years of evolution have programmed our minds to seek comfort no matter what. Probing deeper into discomfort is anathema to our genetic predisposition. To stay present during the moment return to the breath/cadence count. For instance inhale three revolutions, exhale 2 revolutions, in for 3, out for 2, 3/2, 3/2, 3/2… We can learn to very accurately gauge our RPE and our workout zones with this method. For me I know that 6/5 spinning at ~80 rpm on flat ground is easy zone 2/RPE 2 or 3 – At this effort I can carry on a conversation with ease. 1.5/1 spinning at ~70 rpm up a steep hill is around my lactate threshold and depending on how long I maintain that effort could be RPE 8 or higher. A few minutes at this pace is strenuous but not fatiguing. Spending extended amounts of time at this pace during a workout is exhausting. As you practice this technique and become more adept at understanding it you can integrate it into sections of trail that are less constant. The biggest benefit of this technique is that by focusing on the count cycle, especially when the effort level is high, our minds are forced to stay very much in the present moment, and this particular count cycle is objective yet free from the importance we attach to numbers like watts or heart rate. There is no judgment aimed at the perceived performance. When the effort is high and our mental bandwidth decreases there is no room in our minds to judge the effort, and no room in our minds to project into the future how much better we will feel when the effort ends.
Here is one of the many traps of technology based training. Let’s say we are doing a constant gradient climb that is a staple of our workouts. You start out feeling great on that climb and are excited about really pushing yourself. You decide to check your power meter and your smart watch to confirm what you think, that you are riding really well. Your power meter indicates that you are producing slightly fewer watts than the last time you did the same climb and your heart rate is higher than where you think it should be for how hard you are trying. Now you are not present in the effort, you are thinking about the past and how you might have been stronger on a previous effort. You are fretting that something is wrong with you now and wondering where the problem is coming from. You are worried that you might be riding a little slower. You are questioning yourself, could I be over training? Was my resting heart rate a little high this morning when I woke up? Should I back off and call it a day? Your mind wanders and begins looking for reasons to justify what it has judged as a sub-optimal performance. Your ego begins to sabotage you, it is not interested in growth or effort or learning, it only wants to protect itself and feel comfortable. Your effort in that moment becomes less focused and your performance really does begin to drop. In your ego’s constant desire to affirm itself it directs what could have been focused effort and action into a list of external problems and excuses, a constant comparison of better than or worse than. The learning that could have occurred by staying present in the challenge and digging deep evaporates. You have tied the value of your effort to numbers that either reward you or punish you if you achieve them or not.
Can you see how this trap is avoided with techniques like the breath/cadence count cycle method? There is no subjective value to this approach. There is nothing to compare it to. It is only feedback to help you gauge your effort and your pacing, and a mantra to keep your mind from drifting out of the present when things become uncomfortable. This is one of many reasons I am very wary of any training program that uses data targets as goals for training. Succeeding or failing at reaching arbitrary number targets is an absurd and shallow way to find pleasure in the process of difficult training, and a poor means of developing curiosity and stimulating the learning process that is necessary for long term progression. If you do choose to use a data collection device during your workouts be vigilant about their inherent mental energy drains. ‘Tending to your numbers’ subtracts from your bandwidth. You may find number targets motivating and in the short term they may be, and you may find ways to positively integrate data collection into a long term program. At the same time ditching technology ALWAYS frees up mental energy to invest in your specific workouts and plan and adjust the bigger picture of your training program and long term goals. Most importantly, releasing ourselves from the grip of technology based training forces us to think harder and learn our body/mind connection better.