Coping with stress – virtues of a good bike ride

The last couple of months have been stressful at work!  Fortunately, most of this stress has been the good kind of stress in that has resulted from me receiving more recognition, but it has also meant more responsibility and wanting to live up to my own expectations. Without this sort of stress I find that I easily become bored and feel unchallenged and my level of motivation drops.  However, during the first three days of last week I experienced the kind of stress that is 100% unproductive, the sort where you are all wound up about something that you have very little, if any control over.

While riding my bike home from work on Wednesday, I realised that one source of stress was simply arising from communication difficulties with a colleague and Thursday morning’s bike ride was filled with planning on how to at least change this one thing that I had some control over.  Interestingly, in the midst of resolving this stress we ended up having a bit of a conversation regarding our views on life, the universe, and everything, and while the book “hitchhikers guide to the galaxy” states the answer to this is 42, our answer was not so simple.

During our conversation I was asked “how do you deal with stress? How do you deal with big problems? How do you deal with catastrophes? How do you deal with the thought of death?” Without thinking or hesitation, I replied to each of these in turn – I ride my bike. At first, my colleague found this difficult to comprehend, and I’m not sure if I had him convinced by the end, that for me, being out on the bike, or really just being outside exercising is an incredibly effective reliever of stress.  After the conversation was over, I reflected a little on how easily those answers had come to me, and I decided that, having resolved the one bad stressor that I had some control over, the weather forecast for Friday was looking great, I would take the day off and ride my bike all day.  And that is exactly what I did!  For good measure, and because I have a bike race of 1280km coming up, I followed that up with a long run on Saturday and a bike ride of almost 9 hours on Sunday.  By Sunday evening I was very sleepy, but happy that my body felt great and more importantly I had refound my inner peace - the world looked a better place again. After a goodnights sleep, Monday morning came about and I had let go of all those unproductive stresses and was raring to tackle the things that I had control over.  AHHHHH.

Week tally of exercise:

Bike ~580km

Run ~5 hours

Feeling strong, not crazy fast, but my body handled the 3 bigger days of training well, I didn’t feel tired at the start of the days, I didn’t get progressively more tired, no major pains on Sunday while riding, felt solid all day.  8 laps of Taupo makes me scared, but I’m pleased with my current fitness level.

Planning Planning Planning

While out on a hilly road training run yesterday we met Perry Newburn out running around New Zealand (5000km over 71 days). What an inspiration chatting to Perry who is out there running to raise awareness and fund for the mental health foundation.  Details and a map can be found  here (Mental Health - Perry) and you can follow daily progress on facebook  Enzed Total Hose and Fitting Service Great New Zealand Run with Perry.  Perry was cranking it out, one km at a time – the mark of an ultra distance running, his brain breaking down the job to small manageable pieces.  The thought of riding around lake Taupo eight times (1280 km) has been weighing heavily on my mind over the last few weeks, so it was good for me to be reminded that it just needs to be broken down into manageable pieces.

Breaking it down into pieces not only applies to doing the actual riding itself, with any great adventure planning the logistics is an epic job in itself (Perry was commenting on this himself)!  Logistics for Taupo is something that has started to consume much of time while I am on my bike, sometimes it seems overwhelming, I need to remember, one step at a time.

 

1)    Who will be my support crew, it’s a long way, I’ll need quite a number of people, and it really takes a special sort of person to be support crew, it’s no easy job! 

2)    Accommodation, where to stay, it needs to be big enough to hold maybe 6 support people, be right on the route, it needs to have cell phone coverage (many areas around lake Taupo don’t), needs to not have steps as I won’t be able to get up them after a few laps have been ridden. And it needs to not break the bank….which pretty much rules out any accommodation in Taupo.  I also need to think where it would be most optimal to have support crew swap over, and a bed to have a little sleep in on occasions.  A rest stop just before a hard part of the course might make it harder to get back on the bike…….somewhere easier where I can ease myself back into riding might be more optimal.  So many things to think about

3)    Sleeping strategy – I have thought a lot about this, I think I need to come up with multiple plans for sleeping.  A plan is needed because it’s best to maximise sleep for the wee hours of the morning when I feel the lowest, but it’s hard to work out how to plan begin back at headquarters at that time of the day.  Plans for mobile sleeping are also needed, there are a few places around the loop where sleep can be had outside but undercover in case of rain.

4)    Writing a plan for support crew, clothes, food, hydration, what I need for all circumstances, I fear this is going to be a long document.  I also think there will be a need for some laminated check lists for support crews getting ready to head out for headquarters, when they get into the support car, and once they have finished their lap supporting. 

5)    Equipment – which bike, which wheels, which cycle shorts, what happens if the support car breaks down? What happens if my bikes break down, will the support crew be able to fix it – I guess I need a plan for that too!

 

The thoughts go on….so many things to work out, so many questions to be answered.

 

I need to remember to break it down into small manageable bits.