Finally catching up to this episode. At first glance I was most interested in the equipment part of the podcast but was really moved by the deep dive on choking. Just wanted to thank Amber, Chad, Jonathan, and Nate for your contributions on this topic. Y’all can’t imagine how much this helped me perosnally.
I wanted to share that this was useful for me not just in bike racing. I have been trying to find a job close to where both my family and my family lives and have been really struggling with maintaining a positive outlook recently. I really struggled with not making progress in networking or interviews and I was getting down on myself. I found myself letting an outcome of a prior interview define who I am as a person rather than turning it into a process for me to learn from. The more I got down on myself, the more I got anxious of that next interview and put it on that pedestal of “this is the only shot I got” rather than looking at it from a perspective of trying to grow more. I’ve got a couple of pages of notes now and I’m going back to look through my process and face the uncertainties that threw me off in the past to get me closer to the outcome I want to achieve.
I loved the triathlon swim part and that helped center me. I never realized that the swim is the part I least feared of the race not just because I used to swim competitively, but more because of when I played water polo. It’s just interesting that the “feeling” was more like water polo than swimming in the moment. It absolutely felt more fun than threatening, though I do suffer from an active imagination of a Loch Ness monster appearing from the depths to eat me. I’d playfully recommend those who are nervous about the swim to reach out to a tryout a local water polo rec league. Maybe just for one practice.