The Inner Edge

Chris Blevins is one of the best mountain bike racers in the world, with an impressive palmarès:  2x Olympian, a World Championship medal, six World Cup podiums. The guy knows how to perform on the bike.

His pre-race ritual? Pancakes, coffee, and meditation.

That last one isn't an afterthought.  Blevins says he's put mindfulness "at the center” of his approach to being an athlete, and his life. He travels with a meditation cushion packed in his bike case. He lives in his own meditation center. He's building a space to host training camps there, specifically to share these tools with other athletes.

This is a guy who makes split-second decisions at race pace, on technical terrain, under pressure— clearly his training, recovery and bikes are dialed-in!  But, Blevins’s edge ins’t just in his legs.

I think about this often with the athletes I coach.  It’s easy to focus on what we can see and measure — executing an interval workout, monitoring training load and resting heart rate, agonizing over tire selection…  

It’s the rider who can quiet the noise before a race start, who can remain grounded when a mechanical scuttles their day, who can acknowledge and ignore the pain — that rider has something that numbers don’t capture.

Meditation is one path to developing your inner athlete. There are others out there, but it's worth noting that one of the fastest guys on dirt takes it seriously enough to pack a cushion alongside his bike.

More about Chris:

Read: an article about Olympian Chris Blevins

Watch: The Specialized Podcast: Christopher Blevins - On Meditation and Domination

Listen:  Blevins on the Choose the Hard Way podcast

Something to sit with this week.

Yours in speed, 

Steve