Thoughts on Thursday: Just Keep Pedalling

This morning I walked with my daughter as she pedalled her bike through fresh snow, slush and ice on our way to school. She's still new to riding, training wheels on, just learning how this whole thing works. But man, the conditions sucked. Slush under her tires, ice patches everywhere, snow packed into the wheels. She'd pedal as hard as she could and sometimes barely move at all.

At some points, she wanted to quit.

I wanted to pick up the bike and carry it for her. But I knew better. This is the moment. This is where you either learn to push through or you learn to stop when it gets hard.

Three weeks into January and I bet a lot of you are here too. You started the year with big goals. New training plan. New commitments. Ready to chase something that mattered. But by now you've hit the part where it's not fun anymore. Where the work feels hard and the progress feels invisible and you're starting to wonder if any of this is worth it.

Yeah. The slush.

You're Not Going Nowhere

I told my daughter “I see you. I am with you. Just Keep Pedalling.” I tell my athletes the same thing.

Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it's not happening.

When you're in the strength phase running slower than you want to run. When you're doing technique work that feels awkward and wrong. When you're in the gym and everything feels heavy and slow. That's all slush. It doesn't feel like progress because the stopwatch or the scale or the score isn't rewarding you yet.

But your body is changing. Your aerobic system is building. Your nervous system is learning. Your muscles are adapting. All of it is happening under the surface where you can't see it.

The tires are spinning, sure. But you're not standing still. You're building the engine that's going to carry you when the road clears.

You just have to believe it's working before you can see proof that it's working.

Take Off the Training Wheels

Here's what hit me later. Those training wheels that are supposed to help my daughter? They're actually making it worse. They keep the bike elevated just enough that her tires can't get full traction on the ground. Take them off and the full weight drops down and she'd actually grip better.

The thing that's protecting her is the thing that's holding her back.

Made me think about athletes. About how often I see parents and coaches (myself included) keeping the training wheels on way too long. We cut workouts when they get uncomfortable. We make excuses for bad games before the athlete has time to figure out what went wrong. We do their recovery for them, plan their meals for them, manage their time for them.

And then we wonder why they can't handle pressure. Why they fall apart when we're not there. Why they never develop the toughness we keep saying we want them to have.

Sometimes the best support isn't protecting them from the hard stuff. It's letting them carry the weight. Letting them fail. Letting them figure it out. Not because we don't care, but because we do.

The training wheels feel like love. But sometimes love is taking them off.

Just Keep Going

Look, you're in it right now. The part where effort and results don't match up. Where you're working your ass off and it feels like nothing's happening.

You can back off. You can wait for it to get easier. Nobody would blame you.

Or you can keep pedalling.

Trust that this is temporary. Trust that the wheels will eventually grip and all this work you're doing in the slush is going to translate into something real.

And maybe ask yourself where you're still riding with training wheels on. What safety net are you keeping that's actually preventing you from getting the traction you need?

The road clears. It always does.

You just gotta keep pedalling until you get there.