Catharine Pendrel

Disclaimer:  The guy was on an E bike, but yeah stoke level was not high at this point ;-) I think a lot of us feel like we’re supposed to feel super motivated all the time. Lack of motivation isn’t admirable or strong.  Feeling unmotivated makes you want to judge yourself (“I’m not committed enough, good enough … what’s wrong with me?” versus “ugh I just do not feel motivated right now”), but whether you are a paid professional athlete or someone that demands and expects a lot of themselves you are still human. Sometimes life fills you with stoke and everything feels easier and sometimes it’s just tough and uninspiring.  What matters for most of us and reaching our goals is how quickly we can get unstuck and back to that bring-it-on headspace. Lapses in motivation may last a workout, a couple days, weeks or come and go. It may be just around training or seep into your everyday.  You may feel fired up one day and the next be wondering what the heck happened and find yourse

  Israel is a country I think most of us come to with misconceptions of what it will be like. Without a bike race drawing me here, I doubt it would have made my list of places to explore, but I feel gratitude for the chance to have gone, lived with a lovely cycling family in a Kibbutz for several days and raced over 300km of roads and trails surrounding Acre (Akko) with a world class field of competitors. Above Haifa After seeing the dusty, exhausted faces in images from last year’s epic I was not sure it was one I wanted to tackle…. but the lure of a new country, an adventure, some UCI points and only 4 days of suffering was enough to prompt me to ask Haley Smith if she would like to partner up again.  I had just beaten her to the question by a couple hours.  We arrived several days early to acclimate and I actually participated in a C1 race on day 1.  I say participated, because after one lap at the front I blew in the heat and could no longer call it racing…just tryi

In the past two years I have had Einstein’s quote flowing through my mind as I have struggled more than usual to find the performance level I desired, that “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result”. It’s not that I was not varying my training, I was, but I was stuck on being 2011-2016 me when at some point that athlete me had changed.   Sport evolves at a rapid rate and we have to evolve with it. We can’t be the same athlete over and over again and expect the same performance level, equal internal fire or results in an evolving environment. There are many reasons we may not be as fast as we used to be; changes in our age, work, family life, body composition, health, happiness, motivation - they all impact our performance at one point or another. Sometimes they impact us all at the same time. That’s ok because we can roll with it if we acknowledge that "yeah things are different, but I can make the best of new a

With less light, cooler weather, variable conditions, soooo many layers of clothing, and multiple training sessions/day, winter training can be much more time consuming and energy draining than summer training. The challenge of winter training however builds resiliency and commitment and can make you a better athlete come summer.  I like to escape winter for 1-2 weeks a year, but most of my training is done at home be it -20 or +5.  Yes, you may be able to do bigger volume if you head south to ride, but the off season is also about finding life balance, recharging your mental batteries and the reality we can't all just fly away when conditions get tough.  Staying home in winter can enable you to do consistent high quality work and build a routine that will have you mentally tough, focused and physically just as ready for race season.  Ice in Our Veins Team Canada Moto going into the Rio Summer Olympics Below are some of the ways I maintain high volume and quality tra