BONUS: Ego, Stubbornness and the Competitive Mindset | LITP: Chronicles

This is a cheeky bonus excerpt from the full episode. To listen to the whole thing — and get access to future Chronicles — become a PODIUM Member (our foundling tier) via our Substack.

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Guys welcome back to the Life In The Peloton Chronicles - exclusively for you Pelo members who go that extra mile supporting me.

I love getting the chance to sit down and have a yarn with old Sveino, and this month’s episode is a real banger. It’s a long one, but well worth it.

Svein and I were both professional athletes for a bloody long time - about 30 combined years experience between us. One thing you really need to be in control of when you’re an athlete is your ego, and when you retire, it’s something you need to learn all over again; keeping the old ego in check and not getting too big for your boots.

Ego is one thing, stubbornness is another - and the two are different sides of the same coin. If you’ve read Sveino’s book ‘We Will Never Be Here Again’, you’ll know about his absolutely epic, totally crazy trips up into the Alaskan wilderness when he was a younger man before his career as a bike rider. Living in cabins, having run ins with grizzly bears, really pushing his limits because it was what he wanted to do. That’s stubbornness in a nutshell.

Take that mentality on to racing, combine it with natural talent - which Sveino had in bucket loads - and you’ve got a dangerous combo; the stubborn headed work ethic applied to training and mixed with physical ability is a recipe for success.

We’ve got some great guests on this ep. High level sportsmen from different sports to get their take on what’s required to be an athlete at the highest level, and how you can learn from that in your everyday life. Chris Collins - a local AFL legend - Alec Janssens, former elite speed skater.

But before we get to them, Sveino and I kick things off with a good old catch up. As always when we sit down together, it quickly turns into a pretty wide ranging yarn. From skunks causing chaos at Sveino’s place over in Canada, to both of us realising that even though the racing days are behind us, that competitive instinct never really disappears.

We start digging into that mindset and where it actually comes from. Is it something you’re born with? Is it something that gets built into you over years of sport? Or is it just stubbornness that gets reinforced over time?

Even now we both catch ourselves slipping straight back into that mentality. Whether it’s a ride with mates, a parkrun on a Saturday morning, or a climb that suddenly turns into a bit of a test. You tell yourself you’re just going to roll around and take it easy, but the moment someone pushes the pace that little switch flicks and you’re racing again before you even realise it.

That’s really what this episode is all about. Trying to understand that competitive mindset a bit better, and hearing how athletes from other sports have experienced it as well. What drives people to keep pushing themselves, where that stubborn edge comes from, and how that mentality carries through long after the professional career is finished.

Like always with these Chronicles episodes it’s just a relaxed yarn between mates, digging a little deeper into the mindset behind sport and the experiences that shaped our time in the peloton.

Thanks heaps for supporting the Pelo and getting behind me and the team here at Life In The Peloton. You guys are the real super domestiques, putting Nils Politt, Victor Campanaerts, and Carlos Verona to shame. The real MVPs.

Cheers,

Mitch