To Create Motivation, Fall in Love With ‘The Questions’

By Kevin Kolodziejski 

It doesn’t seem like so long ago when I would race on the roads more than 30 times in a season, and being called to the podium after races was extremely important to me. So important that I led a life that more than a few of my cycling buddies saw as too extreme. Some of those extremes I now see as unhealthy.

But that’s not the story today.

Motivation is.

What Could Get You Up Before 4 A.M.?

I had an absolute excess of it back then, which is why I often woke up before 4 a.m., adhered to an 8 p.m. weeknight bedtime, took my own food to get-togethers, and shunned restaurant food altogether. I once did the final half of a hill-interval workout in a late-spring hailstorm that caused millions of dollars’ worth of damage.

I didn’t think twice about any of this, but when a fractured elbow forced me to ride solely on a wind trainer for eight weeks straight, I did think to do the following more than twice, six times in fact. A three-and-a-half-hour ride that included 10, five-minute intervals (with equal recoveries), a dozen sprints (inside 60 minutes of sweet spot riding), and an extended “cooldown” (mostly done between 110 and 120 RPM).

But none of those details or even the fact that I couldn’t stand on the pedals to give my butt and back a break lead me to cite that workout as an excess-of-motivation example.  It’s that it was performed on back-to-back days over back-to-back-to-back weekends before I was allowed to ride outside.

What Caused the Trip Down Memory Lane?

All of which I recalled after reading about Mike D’s lack of motivation on solo rides in the “Ask the Coach” column here at RBR two weeks ago. Stan Purdum addressed the topic so well that his article caused me not only to take a trip down memory lane but also — and far more importantly — do what good writing so often does. Expand my mind, allow me to see links between things I couldn’t see before.

Like how, when it comes to the matter of motivation, knowledge can be a double-edged sword.

Too Much Information, Too Little Motivation?

For what would’ve kept me from adhering to those early bedtimes, inside during hailstorms, and maybe even loosened up my diet a bit was what I’d type — if I ever start sending text messages — as TMI. The too much information in this case would be foreknowledge, the knowing ahead of time how it was all going to turn out. The diligent dieting. The rigorous training. And especially the outcomes of races.

I know if it all would have not been a big mystery, an unsure experiment — if there would’ve been a specific way to eat, a certain way to train, or even a certain pill to take that would’ve insured I’d stand on the podium after every single race — my desire to do so would’ve evaporated instantly. Moreover, I would’ve done far less riding, none at maximum intensity, and maybe, just maybe, started going to McDonald’s for a Big Mac® and fries and the Outback Steakhouse for Bloomin’ Onions®, and the 22-ounce Melbourne Porterhouse steak.

Knowing the outcome: It’s why so many of my former cycling companions are hardly cycling and certainly not cycling hard. They know they’re at an age where the point to riding hard or long is not to get better, but delay getting worse. Mike D never mentions his age, though, so I don’t know if age plays a role in his lack of motivation.

What I do know is that, regardless of age, it can be a bit of a struggle, sometimes a supreme one, to get yourself out on the roads. But I also know on most rides I feel the same joy and contentment that Purdum does and writes about. And that the previously mentioned expansion of my mind from reading his article (thank you, Stan) has caused me to remember what the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke once wrote about the “unresolved in your heart” and apply it to the lack-of-motivation problem.

To “love the questions themselves.”

Curiosity: What Kills the Cat Saves the Cyclist

Now you don’t have to be a bard or from Bonn to do this, just a curious cyclist. One who’s willing to see both life and cycling as a big mystery, an unsure experiment, yet is willing to conduct all sorts of personal research. With full knowledge that there are no guarantees how these private investigations will turn out.

Just a love of the questions that cause you to conduct them.

Time for Full Disclosure, Albeit Belated

During the aforementioned historic hailstorm, the area in which I was riding didn’t get hit with the baseball-sized stuff that actually damaged cars and homes. I did, however, get hit with a few the size of golf balls and yelped “Ouch” more than once.

I still shun restaurant food and intend, as a way to optimize my health, to continue to do so. Therefore, the “just maybe” about ever consuming a Big Mac or a porterhouse steak was a mix of hyperbole and dramatic license. I’ve been a lacto-ovo vegetarian since 1979, and though I have considered eating meat from time to time, if I ever do so, I would only consume wild game.

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Kevin Kolodziejski began his writing career in earnest in 1989. Since then he’s written a weekly health and fitness column and his articles have appeared in magazines such as “MuscleMag,” “Ironman,” “Vegetarian Times,” and “Bicycle Guide.” He has Bachelor and Masters degrees in English from DeSales and Kutztown Universities.

A competitive cyclist for more than 30 years, Kevin won two Pennsylvania State Time Trial championships in his 30’s, the aptly named Pain Mountain Time Trial 4 out of 5 times in his 40s, two more state TT’s in his 50’s, and the season-long Pennsylvania 40+ BAR championship at 43.