The Mental Trap That Makes You Slower | Ask a Cycling Coach Podcast 594
Ask a Cycling Coach Podcast - Presented by TrainerRoad
TrainerRoad
4.9 • 4.6K Ratings
🗓️ 23 July 2026
⏱️ 79 minutes
🔗️ Recording | Apple Podcasts | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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// TOPICS COVERED
(00:00:00) Welcome!
(00:00:19) Hannah Otto on Missing the Win and Finding Gratitude
(00:10:10) Listener Question: Why Do Cyclists Race Single-Speed?
(00:14:49) Self-Handicapping and the Fear of Failure
(00:20:41) Big Goals, Expectations, and Athletic Self-Worth
(00:38:07) Growth Mindset: Turning Feedback Into Improvement
(00:43:45) The Psychology of Defending a Win
(00:55:48) Jonathan’s High Cascades 100 Race Debrief
(00:58:42) Power, Pacing, Nutrition, and Bike Setup Lessons
(01:05:51) Two Major Crashes and a Mid-Race Reset
(01:13:45) How to Adapt if the Leadville Course Changes
Coach Jonathan Lee and professional cyclist Hannah Otto explore the psychology of performance, including self-handicapping, athletic self-worth, fear of failure, and the pressure of defending a win. Jonathan also breaks down the equipment mistakes, crashes, nutrition lessons, and race-day takeaways from the High Cascades 100, plus how riders should adapt if the Leadville Trail 100 course changes.
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- Donate to Jonathan’s Leadville Foundation Fundraiser: https://give.ltfoundation.org/leejonathan
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Ask a Cycling Coach podcast, presented by Trainer Road. Today we're going to dig into |
| 0:03.9 | performance, kind of the psychological side of performance for endurance athletes with our guest, Hannah Otto. |
| 0:09.5 | Hannah races for Scott, competitive cyclists, lots of other brands. Hannah, stoked to have you on again. |
| 0:13.6 | How you doing? I'm good. Yeah, it's been such a busy start to the season, excited to be back. |
| 0:19.6 | I know, it's been a while. I want to talk about |
| 0:22.3 | your races recently. I also just had High Cascades 100 over the weekend. I want to go into that |
| 0:27.4 | a little bit and some learnings and some misadventures and big mistakes on my ends and all that |
| 0:34.1 | stuff. And then we're going to get into some questions that people have submitted. |
| 0:38.3 | Just two of them today. |
| 0:41.8 | Really not that many, but I think one of them is going to be meet for a long conversation. |
| 0:43.6 | I really want to spend more time, Hannah. |
| 0:44.8 | You had this post. |
| 0:51.0 | I'll put it up on screen now that you made after, so you finished third at cross-country marathon national championships. |
| 0:52.2 | You've been on the podcast recently. |
| 0:54.0 | And you've really looked like cross-country marathon national championships. You've been on the podcast recently, and you've really, um, look like cross-country marathon doesn't have the coverage of cross-country |
| 1:00.7 | Olympic. Um, it doesn't have that appeal to the masses through this media coverage. |
| 1:07.3 | And I really admire your stance on this because you've been like, look, those races are the ones |
| 1:12.8 | that give me joy. It's like going out and doing cross-country marathon racing is what satisfies me. |
| 1:19.1 | I love doing it. You also race gravel. You also race cross-country. You race everything. |
| 1:24.1 | You've raced. You started in triathlon. So like you've done everything, but that's what |
| 1:28.4 | really makes you tick. So that's what you're pursuing. And I really find that admirable because frankly, |
| 1:33.1 | also, if you were to say, nope, I'm not doing that. And you said that your narrative was, I'm just full |
... |
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