On the back of Ben Rockett's amazing feat and a couple of comments and a thought that I have had.

What exactly are you training, your mind or your body?

There must be a point where the body will not develop in relation to the time spent training, therefore the mind is taking over and is now being trained.

Thoughts and opinions, please?

Hard to say. I'm "training" both, I suppose. If I'm out mountain biking I'm trying to look up more, go faster, ride more smoothly, get more "flow" and maybe a bit less jey – mostly skill, so mostly mind. If I'm on the road bike I'm usually thinking more about HR, cadence, gear choice, effort and making it up hills, so that's more body.

: P

I'm looking more at endurance racing where you can't replicate the distances, 12 or 24 hour solo, for example, and getting through the pain barrier.

When I go out running in a biblical storm in mid January that's purely for my mind. I know it's working when I start getting a perverse pleasure out of it (there's also part of me goes "well, no one ELSE will be training in THIS!" even though there clearly is, but that's a mental help).

For the 24 hour race pain barrier- dunno. Just ride my bike a lot.

Look at what Eddie Izzard did running all those marathons. I think he did them because he was mentally tough, not fit (But I'm sure he got fitter during the 7 weeks. My view is if you have a (fairly low) base fittness you can do just about anything if you have the right mental attitude. Clearly, the fitter you are the easier it will be but over a certain distance your mind pays an increasingly important role.

You train both. And the bit inbetween.

When I started doing sprint intervals, they hurt badly. I did them for a few weeks, and wondered what good it was going. Then through town one day I saw a green light that I knew was a long wait if it turned red. Without any fuss I went for it and my legs automatically put the hammers down and I shot forward like a spanked greyhound.

Muscle memory, innit.

For 24 hour solo riding, the mind is very important. You need to figure out how to get yourself to manage it. Likewise XC racing to be honest – you have to work out how to embrace the world of pain you're putting yourself into…

When I'm doing long stuff I know I'll have bad patches. If I hadn't trained hard, I'd assume my body was shutting down and give up, rather than having the mental strength to deal with it.

Both!

Same with Bob Graham round in fell running – nobody trains anything like the distance/ascent or time needed, but relies on the mental strength to get round. Granted, they're all crackers and bloody fit though.

All humans generally speaking are very simmilar, what seperates the world champions/national champions/extreme endurance nutters/entrepreneurs/ insert sucessful position here etc from the rest is all in the mind. One imagines you reach the limits of the mind well before muscle is torn from tendon forcing you to stop. Man didn't conquer the wild by trying to beat every lion to death when they came knocking, he thought a bit and got a fire going…

Iain

Definatly the mind! Prior to doing the Clic24 solo this year the furthest I'd ridden was 50miles then did the clic and rode 230miles more than 4x my training distance!

Things I did to help me mentally, training on a heavier bike with no energy drinks and racing on a plastic bike fuelled by jelly babies and energy drink! Plus loads of drum and bass!

Plus loads of drum and bass!

This is where I'm going wrong, no drum and bass.

That's actually quite interesting xc-steve, I've spoken to marathon runners who never train to full distance.

Just spotted this,

Ben did some serious training for both the physical and mental. For the 'mind' bit most of all I've never seen someone so seriously determined.

The 'mental' bit was not only about the 'pain' but exhaustion due to sleep depravation. They had a guy from the University at Bath advising them on sleep strategy, he had one 30-40 minute sleep per day from day two on and later two longer 90 minutes (which got called 'Big Sleeps'!)

Some great stories from the crew who were accompanying him about him 'sleeping' on the bike, micro sleeps of a few seconds. Mad!

They took a broadcast quality camera and did lots of filming. Possible plan to do something with it.

Ellen Mcarthur sailed around the world solo, slept for 20 mins naps all the time.
On Sleep – or lack thereof…
To help her manage her sleep efficiently, Ellen worked with a chronobiologist, Claudio Stampi who helped train her to sleep in short naps to avoid fatigue. Dr. Stampi is a world expert on sleep strategy for sailors. He's carefully studied Ellen's sleep patterns and worked with her on how to maximize her performance at sea. During one of her races she even wore a special sleep microcomputer worn on the wrist, enabling him to monitor Ellen's sleep data via satellite link.

When it comes ot endurance, you have to look at Lance Armstrong, look at his 7 tour wins. Mental attitude and lots of training.

Nick