Confidence
Confidence
In a time trial there’s no getting around the fact it’s not going to be pleasant and there’s no way it’s going to be an easy day.
But remember, you’re just there to see what you can do. No-one is going to live or die or go to prison by what happens. Put your first mark in the sand – it’s not about the result, it’s about what you can learn from it. If you totally cock-up your first time trial then you’ve got a lot of great stuff to learn and improve upon next time.
As much of a cliche it is, you can only be as good as you can be, and the beauty of a time trial is that once you’ve crossed the line you can see what that got you. But until you’ve crossed the line there’s no point thinking about the result – it’s nothing to do with you. You do your bit and that’s something that happens afterwards. Knowing that is quite comforting sometimes.
I used to enjoy the fact that I could do the work in training and invest a lot of time, understand the aerodynamics and all of that, and then it was just down to me. I enjoyed the simplicity and the purity of it. I knew that whatever I invested, I’d get back.