Achieving The Flow State

Dutch road cycling sensation Annemiek Van Vleuten demolished her competition in the women’s Olympic road cycling time trial in Tokyo a couple of days back. I love the headlines that followed in Cycling Weekly. It captures what I thought was basically, and ultimately, peak performance.

The “flow state” is an autotelic experience coined by Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (try pronouncing that) sometime in the 1970’s. In this state, one is “locked-in”, “in-the-zone”, as if on wings that nothing seems to want to impede the particular harmony of mind and body in doing the activity. This explains the apparent feeling of 22kms passing by like one second.

Her performance at the hilly 22.1km in 30:13 (~44kph) started in 2016 with 5 year preparation under coaches Pat Ryan (her “aero gains teacher”),later taken over by Edwin van Vught, and Loes Gunnewijk who is the Dutch national women’s cycling coach. Her position on the bike and the physical form was fantastic.

It is the ability to peak “on the day that counts” in the cauldron of competition that’s important. This is dependent on coordinating the various biological rhythms in training towards adaptation to a very high level.

It then appears that other good riders like Chloe Dygert of USA, with her spectacular crash at Imola in September 2020, could not have timed her fitness peak and also be at a high level as Vleuten. Disruptions to the physical level act as delays in timing.