In common with most riders who’ve ever trained with any purpose, I’ve always kept track of a couple of subjective scores along with the more objective training data. These have always been a simple “How did you feel?” and “How hard did the effort feel?” They are scored from 0-10, 10 being “best” or “hardest”.
As a coach, I’ve always set some store by these numbers. They’re a godsend if you want to spot overtraining early rather than just wait for the client to drop dead.
I have, however, a confession. Anyone who might have tried to use the numbers I’ve carefully recorded for well over 20 years as a coaching aid would have a problem. Under, “How did you feel?” I have never recorded a number other than seven. Sometimes I go for seven immediately. Sometimes I think about it. But it’s always seven in the end. An eight, if it ever happens, will be a wild rush that I’d like to experience. But I have the nagging feeling I’ll be writing down a six first.
When Mrs. Doc found out about this, she said that in her remarks at my funeral she would explain my personality by telling people about it, and they would buy her drinks for the rest of the day.
If anything, my approach to the second number is even more demented. It does actually span quite a range. The lowest is three and the highest is nine. But I’ve never yet, in two and a half decades, recorded a 10. My friend Bernard finds this hugely entertaining. Once, following a 12-hour race, I collapsed in a heap after the finish, drifting in and out of alignment with the world, drained of all energy and in many forms of agony. When Bernard finally came into focus, he was in black and white. “A nine and a half, maybe?” was the first thing he said.
It was an astute joke, but the race only ranked about an eight. Perhaps the most exhausting thing I’ve ever done was the National 24-hour two years ago. It got a nine. I did the same event last year and only gave it an eight, not because it wasn’t very hard indeed, but because it hadn’t been quite as apocalyptic as the previous one.
At the other end of the duration scale, but much more intense, 4,000 metre track pursuit races also don’t rank better than a nine.
There will never be a 10. Why? Because I’m never going to walk away from a race or a training effort and say, “That was it. That was everything. I can give no more than that.” It is very, very important to my delusions of greatness that I can always believe I could have tried harder, and that if I had, I’d have gone faster. I reckon I can beat anyone, anywhere, anytime, if I really want to. If you beat me, it’s because at some level I decided to let you. You hear that, Tadej? I could have you; I just choose not to.
My friend Bernard has many inadequacies, but he’s an expert psychologist, and he rightly points out that he has no failings of personality at quite the level of this one.
He once showed me his online training account – in many respects it is his first full-length work of fiction. But for “perception of effort”, he recorded almost nothing but 10s, and means it. “This shows I am better than you in all respects except speed,” he said. “I race properly, every time.”
I have the nagging feeling he might be right. I’d love to know how fast I could go if I really tried. But I’m going to have to settle for never really knowing.
I can always console myself with a visit to my trophy room. That always cheers me up. It makes me feel like a solid seven.
