Please help me welcome to the blog for the first time, Mr. Jacob Velasco!
Throughout the past few years, I worked towards my Associate’s degree at Sierra College. As I got closer to finishing my degree, I started to see a lot of growth and success in cycling. I knew this time was the best opportunity to give “ going pro “ my best shot.
I decided to take a few years off from school once I got my degree before I started my nursing journey. Once I finished school, I was so excited to have the opportunity to devote all of my time to training and racing full-time. However, as I began to dedicate myself more and more to training, I felt ambivalent about my life.
I couldn’t understand my feelings for quite a while. I was chasing and working towards my dream, so I couldn’t understand why I didn’t feel content. I didn’t start to feel better until I began living a more balanced lifestyle, which meant getting back in touch with relationships, interests, and other aspects of my life that I had put on the back burner in pursuing this dream.
Training like a professional cyclist almost demands an unbalanced lifestyle. This training is unique because it is seemingly a 24-hour job. Training doesn’t end when you roll into the garage and finish your ride. Your training continues throughout the day as you try to recover to nail the workout the next day.
This means eating in a way that adheres to the endurance diet and getting as much sleep as possible, along with all the other aspects of recovery. With that, it becomes too easy to isolate yourself to get the absolute most out of your training.
I tried this isolated maximal approach to training, and it was no way to live. I started to feel waves of loneliness and isolation. Eventually, I realized that maximizing training wasn’t worth it if it meant sacrificing other important parts of my life. Minimizing the number of sacrifices I have to make and maintaining balance in my life is the most effective way to live as an athlete.
I can guarantee you that you won’t find losing a few hours of sleep to hang out with friends here and there, getting In-N-Out every once in a while, or starting your ride late because you were having fun looking at new music on Spotify as a part of any training plan.
However, it’s a big part of mine. Sure, these don’t exactly add to performance directly, but they do indirectly. Maintaining these other aspects of my life adds to my performance in the long term due to my overall well-being being much better.
Balance.