I recently did some professional sales negotiation training, where they talked about moving difficult negotiations up from the micro to the macro level.
Tonight I was walking back from an evening meal and I started to think how this could be applied to the amateur/semi serious athlete, and the answer was surprisingly simple.
All too often we focus on our performance vs yesterday, last weekend or last month especially if we under perform. If we do this we are dragged down to the micro level and normally end up disappointed with our performances.
A perfect example of this is using the Etape Du Dales I rode on Sunday 15th May 2016. I had trained hard for the event but woke up on Friday 13th (unlucky for me!) with a sore throat and the onset of a cold. This obviously affected my performance on the day and initially I was disappointed with my overall ride time. However this was looking at the micro level.
Taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture (the macro level) then I had made great progress.
Some examples from Sunday 15th May when I was ill with a cold. The Fleet Moss climb I posted a time of 14:53, however in 2014 my time was 25:07. The Buttertubs climb from Hawes I posted a time of 24:26 compared to a PB of 34:02 last year
So my message is very clear, don’t worry or concentrate on the micro day to day improvements you make, more think long term and compare the macro improvements that you have made.
We all have bad days and good days, but look back over the longer term and I hope you’ll find you are improving, despite “micro” set backs.
