Play On by Jeff Bercovici

Author:Jeff Bercovici
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

7

Consistency Is a Talent

The Psychology of Athletes Who Get Better with Age

When cyclist Catharine Pendrel had visualized the ride that would win her an Olympic medal in Rio, she gamed out every single scenario in her head. A muddy track, a delayed start, a leg cramp, a dropped chain—she had rehearsed her response to any contingency. At least, she thought she had. Then, mere seconds after the starting gun fired, she crashed. Then her gear shifters stopped working. Then she crashed again. Only a masochist could visualize a sequence of events so unlucky. But then, it takes more than a little masochism to win cross-country mountain bike races.

Ranked number 14 in the world at age 35, Pendrel had flown from her home in Kamloops, British Columbia, down to Brazil with realistic hopes of medaling and perhaps even winning gold for Team Canada. But she was determined not to let those hopes harden into expectations. She had learned better four years earlier, in London.

Pendrel had entered the 2012 Summer Games, her second Olympiad, as the clear favorite in her event, simultaneously holding the titles of world champion and World Cup leader. That plus the experience of her Olympic debut in Beijing, where as a relative unknown she had surprised the field with a fourth-place finish, suggested that anything other than a podium appearance would be a disappointment.

Disappointment turned out to be an understatement. Pendrel went into the race feeling dogged by a low-level lethargy that had afflicted her for several weeks, but figured she would perk up once the adrenaline started flowing. That seemed to be the case as she shot out to an early lead. But midway through the 90-minute race, her stamina failed her. “My body just shut down on me,” she told me. “It was just like, ‘Whoa, power’s gone. I can’t make my legs go faster.’” She ended up placing ninth.

Analyzing what had gone wrong in the difficult days that followed, Pendrel came to understand she had let the pressure get to her. All those expectations had left her in a mental space where the fear of failure loomed larger than the opportunity for glory. The constant background hum of anxiety, she believed, had flooded her body with stress hormones that sapped her energy and undermined her recovery. “It’s the challenge of going into the Olympics as a medal favorite—it just fatigues you in ways that you’re not aware of,” she says. “I let the seriousness of trying to win a medal steal the joy away from what I was doing.”

When I meet Pendrel, five months before her shot at redemption in Rio, it’s obvious she doesn’t plan to let a lack of joy stand in the way this time. We rendezvous at a coffee shop on Bear Mountain, on Vancouver Island outside Victoria, where she is slated to ride in the inaugural event of the Canada Cup series the following morning. For Pendrel, who has already qualified for the Olympics with a top-five finish at the

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