I go mountain biking to break the training monotony. Good thing with mountain biking is that it occupies the brain so much that throughout the whole session there is mentally no chance to think of anything else other than where wheels are going or enjoying being away from everything. It frees up mind this way, from daily life and burden, numbers, training and all that stuff… Coffee tastes better after MTB, and everything else is too.
I’m very competitive and results driven. I focus on the times I had good results in the past year and how I can improve them. This varies from trying to figure out how to win a P12 road race and then focusing on the thrill of past wins to things like making the winning break in a race in 2018 and just not having enough energy to contest the sprint and finishing DFL of the people in the break.
Your results with this methodology will vary - particularly if you aren’t racing mass start events - but it works well for me
For me, it varies so much, but I’m always searching for motivation to get through the current workout and looking not only ahead but maybe even more importantly looking back at the work I’ve already done.
Sometimes the motivation is just visualizing the yellow line hitting all the marks at the end of a tough workout. Other times it’s thinking back on a race I did really well, or a race next season that i WANT to do really well at.
I watch MTB/CX races, I see how much elite athletes are willing to suffer.
When it gets really hard is when as @firemunki said, the ‘poor mental health’ moments. I go through this, sometimes pretty bad, sometimes it hard, but it’s harder getting back into it after taking too much time off and it’s sometimes TOO easy to just not train…so even in the really bad moments I try to do at least something. Or - I just follow similar thought process as steve’s great advice in the 2nd post.
Heck, sometimes I approach the day in general with that same mindset.