We’ve all been there. You have a rough day on the bike, you go to sleep, and you tell yourself exactly what you need to hear to do a mental reset.
Going into Day 2 of the Maverick City Crits, that’s exactly where my head was. I reminded myself of the fundamentals: Trust your skills. Be better in the corners. Race more efficiently. I wanted to put Day 1 behind me and give myself a fair shot.
But Criterium racing doesn’t always care about your mental resets.
To say it was hot is an understatement; the heat index was hovering around 103°F. I did everything "right"—I stayed on top of hydration, nailed my warm-up, and felt physically ready to give it a proper shake. Yet, I only made it about halfway through the race.
From a physiological standpoint, there was an interesting silver lining: I saw some of my highest heart rate peaks of the entire year, meaning my body was actually recovered enough to fire. But the engine's willingness didn't net a result I could be proud of.
And that is where the real race began—the one that happens entirely between your ears.
Inside the Windshield Warrior: The Prison of Your Own Thoughts
The toughest part of a brutal race weekend isn't the physical burning in your lungs or the 103-degree heat melting your tires to the asphalt. It’s the drive home.
When you pack up the gear, get behind the wheel, and start the long highway stretch back to Wichita Falls, the silence in the cab becomes deafening. Suddenly, that windshield transforms into a movie screen, replaying your failures on a loop.
[The Mental Loop of a Tough Race]
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|Replay the Mistake ──► Question the Fitness ──► Project the Judgment
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You get trapped in a prison of your own thoughts. You don't just replay the race once; you replay it over and over. Why did I brake there? Why did I let that wheel go? Why couldn't I handle the pace today? It is an exhausting, circular interrogation that does absolutely no good, yet your brain refuses to switch it off.
In that space, you aren't just an athlete analyzing data; you are a prisoner of your own high expectations.
The "Audience" Trap and the Weight of Projection
What made the mental prison even heavier for me this weekend was the presence of an audience.
When things go wrong, you look around and notice everyone holding a ticket to your performance. My son was there, watching his dad struggle and fall short. Members of the University team I work with were watching. My teammates from Elevate were right there on the barriers.
As athletes, we carry this implicit belief that our performance dictates our value to the people looking at us. You feel this immense, suffocating weight that you are letting them down. You convince yourself that they expected a masterclass, and instead, you handed them a DNF.
But as I sat in the car, watching the white lines click past on the highway, I had to stop the tape and ask a hard question:
Are they actually expecting perfection from me, or am I just projecting my own harsh self-judgment onto them?
The truth—the one that's hard to admit when your ego is bruised—is that they probably weren't judging me at all. My teammates understand the brutal nature of crits. The University riders see a human being, not a machine. And my son? He just sees his dad.
There was no external expectation. I was taking my own internal pressure, magnifying it, and pushing it onto the people around me. This is exactly why I talk about mindset so much in training. The physical sport is demanding, but the mental sport of managing your own perceived narrative is where the real exhaustion lies.
When the Coach Has to Listen to the Athlete
It’s easy when things go right. When you win or hit your goals, you coast on an emotional high. The world is as it should be, and the next day of training happens seamlessly because your motivation is fueled by success.
But what do you do when a whole weekend goes sideways? What do you do when the gap between how you thought it would go and how it actually went is a mile wide?
This is where the rubber meets the road.
I have all the right answers when someone is sitting across the desk from me asking for advice. As a coach, I can dissect a bad power file or a tactical error with clinical, cold objectivity. But on Monday morning, it was time for me to sit across the desk from myself.
I had to strip away the emotion. Emotion tells you that you've lost your edge, that you aren't cut out for this, or that you embarrassed yourself. Objectivity asks better questions:
- Physiology: Did I come up short on top-end fitness?
- Technical: Was my cornering efficiency wasting too much energy?
- Environment: Did the 103-degree heat index cause an acute drop in performance?
It’s likely a combination of all three. And those are things I can fix.
The Ultimate Rule: Don't Waste the Humbling
Maverick City Crits was a weekend of taking it on the chin. It was a weekend of being deeply, thoroughly humbled by the sport.
But a humbling is only a waste if you leave it on the road. We don't get better by pretending the bad days didn't happen, nor do we get better by letting them trap us in a cycle of self-doubt. We get better by identifying exactly what is within our control, recognizing that the "audience" is a ghost of our own creation, and channeling that frustration back into the pedals.
The mental hangover is over. Today is a training day. Time to get back to work.
