We all can handle an hour of cycling, just as much as we can handle a busy week at work. But what if the challenge becomes 615 kilometers in 3 days or a lifetime career of 45 years?
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From my experience,
I believe that resilience is key.
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Resilience is the capacity to recover quickly from an effort or difficulties.
Here are some personal insights that apply both to endurance sport as to our career at EY.
Keep a healthy work-life and train-rest balance.
This sounds obvious and is often repeated, but is not always that easy in practice. We easily get swallowed up by work and are too tired by the time we are closing down the lid of our laptop to do anything else that day. What I’ve been doing now for the last couple of months is taking regular lunch-sport breaks. This not only breaks the day in two but also gives me energy for the afternoon and puts my mind at ease as I already had my hour of sports. Also, our coaches for the cycling event have stressed the importance of sufficient rest. We need to schedule at least one day off per week, and one easy training week after three intense weeks.
Be socially connected.
Resilience means building strong and positive relationships with people and not being afraid to ask for help, even when under pressure. In our cycling mission, we are encouraged to train with others as well. This helps to stay motivated and to wrestle through those 5-hour training on the weekend.
Develop a growth mindset.
Without being ambitious and being open to new experiences, opportunities, and training, you won’t get far both in your career and in your ultimate sports challenge. Know that you will have setbacks and spend some time anticipating what could go wrong and how you will cope. I love going faster and further and was already able to increase my VO2 max (maximum amount of oxygen your body can use) from 54 to 58 mL/kg/min. After the EY Cycling challenge, I want to go even further and complete August the full ironman of Vichy!