Before an epic Italian Gran Fondo, Oliver Duggan gets a bout of that ‘can’t do it’ feeling – but there are tricks on and off the bike that help build confidence

From the start line, it is a bike race like no other. Conceived 30 years ago by a small group of fiercely dedicated Italian cyclists, the Maratona dles Dolomites has grown to become one of the most sought-after cycling experiences in the world; a one-day sportive set deep in the Italian Dolomites, starting and finishing in the ski resort of Alta Badia. It now attracts 30,000 applicants for its 9,800 places every year and before 6am one Sunday morning last month, the participants gathered beneath low-hanging cloud ahead of the 2016 starting gun.

It begins amid near-constant noise. A Ladin (the local name for Alta Badians) octet of local musicians play, a helicopter streaming six hours of live coverage to Italian national television whirrs overhead and a series of hot air balloons take off just feet from the starting enclosure. Over the following five to nine hours, (depending on each rider’s speed and fitness), this long, stretched-out peloton of amateur cyclists faces an uninterrupted assault on the senses.

If it is not the hundreds of supporters intermittently cracking mountain whips and ringing cattle bells, then it is the brutally beautiful landscape and its sheer drops or the oppressive cloud cover severely reducing visibility. It is enough to distract the most worried of participants from the daunting parcours laid out before them.



And thank heavens for that, because the Maratona is a truly fearful challenge. The full route covers fewer than 150km (less than most serious riders might do on a weekend spin in the Surrey lanes) but packs in more than 4,000 metres of climbing, taking riders over seven mountain passes, including the infamous Passo Giau – a climb of nearly 10km that averages 10% from start to finish. To celebrate the event’s 30-year anniversary, and in recognition of its difficulty, the route was used as the Queen stage in the year’s Giro d’Italia.

I arrived in the Italian mountains intending to use the race as a training spin. In less than two months, when riding in Rapha’s Cent Cols Challenge through the Pyrenees, I will be one of 30 riders attempting to complete the equivalent of the Maratona every day for 10 days, covering 2,000km and climbing more than 50,000 metres. And yet, on the start line, surrounded by 9,799 other nervous riders and the noise of Italy’s assembled cycling media, I came down with an unmistakable bout of “the fear”.

Any cyclist, indeed any endurance athlete of any stripe, will be familiar with it. It is more professionally described as mental or psychological weakness in the face of unseen challenges; the sense of nervousness that leads to sleepless nights, an elevated heart rate and – worst of all – a reduced ability to perform. The fear can seriously damage performance.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Cyclists on the Passo Gardena during the 2016 Maratona dles Dolomites. Photograph: Alex Moling/MaratonaDlesDolomites

Eddie Fletcher – a sports performance scientist and leading coach at Wattbike, the company behind the indoor trainers used by a host of cyclists in the pro-peloton – says we need more research to reveal exactly how much a panicked mind can damage physical performance. But, he says, plenty of anecdotal evidence exists to warrant giving mental training some serious consideration in any plans to improve.

Fletcher says: “In recent years, we have seen a real growth in athletes’ use of sports psychologists, with very positive influences on performance. We’ve seen that the effect of a bad mood on a cyclists’ powers can be huge, from a reduction in wattage, stemming from a belief that ‘I cannot do this’, to completely stopping before a session is completed. Managing these ups and downs is a key role for me.”

Fletcher explains that there are techniques that can build confidence before any big challenge. Contrary to most training guidelines, he suggests going above and beyond the demands of the event for particularly worry-prone riders.

“The feeling that one ‘can’t do it’ is common,” he says. “I therefore tend to have progressive sessions in the training plan that match and exceed race performance expectations – and, crucially, I let the athlete know this. Doing these sessions in training, and giving the positive feedback, gives confidence that expected race performance can be achieved.”

He also says negative or depressive periods are common in prolonged training plans (five months into my Cent Cols training I can confirm this), and advises not to push through them blindly. “Reducing the expectations from the session and adjusting the training stimulus at these times is important,” he says. “This could be managing the workout by heart rate as opposed to power, or reducing the power using a combination of reduced gearing and resistance to get the right effect.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Riders tackling the Passo Pordoi under cloud cover during the 2016 Maratona dles Dolomites. Photograph: Alex Moling/MaratonaDlesDolomites

There are just as many tricks to boost confidence off the bike, with more riders copying the professionals in adopting specific mind management programmes. The Chimp Paradox, developed by Dr Steve Peters, is a favourite.

Dave Brailsford, the author of Team Sky’s four Tour de France victories in five years and mastermind of Britain’s continued dominance of Olympic cycling, has described Peters as a genius.

“He uses this simple psychological model and talks about ‘taming the chimp’,” he said. “Everybody has a chimp that is trying to hijack our reason and logic. Here’s me, working quite happily, and over there is my chimp. Who’s in charge? I’ve learnt from Steve that when I slip into ‘chimp mode’, it’s very important I use the right techniques to win the battle – so that the rational and calm person keeps out the emotionally driven chimp.”

That is not all about mindfulness and meditation or attempting to totally silence the emotional reaction to training. Instead, athletes are encouraged to analyse their panic, separate themselves from it and shine a light on its irrationality. Therein lies relaxation, or so the theory goes.

“When we look at the impact of emotion on performance everybody is unique,” Peters told British Cycling. “My approach is always to ask the person, ‘How much do you think your emotions impact on your performance and do you want to do anything about this?’ My experience across various sports is that possibly as many as 90% of elite sportspeople will say that mental attitude and ability to deal with emotions and thoughts are critical to a successful performance.”

Chris Froome, who last week became the first Briton to win the Tour de France three times, says learning to love the pain of training and competing is as important as the muscles in his legs. “I’ve learnt what I have to do to push myself further,” he said in a recent Red Bull interview. “And I’ve had to embrace the struggle. I’ve had to learn to love suffering.”

During the tour, he added: “Its about the body only up to a certain point. There comes a point when you’re both so far into the red and so far over your limit that it turns mental. It’s a mental game.”

In the Maratona, that point came about halfway up the last climb, the Passo Falzarego. It’s a fairly innocuous 5.8% drag that lasts for a little over 11km – the kind of climb I will be rolling over dozens of times in the Pyrenees. It was also the setting for a glorious gift in the strife for mental fortitude: reaching, matching and ultimately dropping the cycling legend Miguel Indurain. At 52, he may be retired, but as an antidote to “the fear” that two-minute surge away from a five-time Tour de France winner did much to tame the chimp.