UPGRADE YOUR BRAIN. NOT YOUR BIKE.
MIND TRAINING FOR CYCLISTS
THE MENTAL CYCLIST
A powerful, accessible and practical mind training program for cyclists. Become an expert in yourself and blow up the psychological barriers that hold you back.
So you can do more on your bike.
CHANGE YOUR MIND. CHANGE YOUR RIDE.
Mental Cycling is way more than a marginal gain. It’s a different way of thinking about your cycling, and yourself.
SELF-BELIEF
Change what you believe you can and can’t do.
SELF-ESTEEM
Improve how you feel about yourself.
SELF-CRITICISM
Stop talking yourself down.
STRESS
Handle any stressful situation comfortably.
COMPARISONS
Stop comparing yourself to other people.
COMMITMENT
Find your ultimate cycling challenge.
“Fantastic read, very enjoyable and couldn’t put it down! Even as a fair weather cyclist it has changed my trail of thought on the bike and I would highly recommend.”
“Regardless of how many miles you ride, or how often you remind yourself of ‘rules’ #5 and #9, there’s always a huge a psychological element to cycling. This book really helps to identify and deal with those aspects of cycling that might be preventing you from achieving your goals.”
“This is the book you probably don’t know you need… full of useful questions and stories that encourage you to reflect on your own state of mind and motivations, and really unpick what fears or worries are stopping you from succeeding.”
ACCESSIBLE, PRACTICAL AND ENTERTAINING
THE MENTAL CYCLIST helps you develop deep self-expertise through a smart mix of learning, journaling and committing to your ultimate cycling challenge.
For recreational cyclists of every age, ability and ambition.
STRUCTURED
LEARNING
A 300-page exploration of what’s really going on in your head when you ride. Make your mind work for you, not against you.
GUIDED
JOURNALING
30+ journal exercises to help you become a more mindful cyclist. Leave the fear behind and ride free from doubt and anxiety.
PERSONAL
CHALLENGE
12-week challenge tracker helps you focus on what you love about cycling and find your most fulfilling challenge.
CHOOSE YOUR SPEC
Top of the range Carbon Edition for ultimate performance, practical paperback, or convenient ebook.
CARBON
£39 Only £29 with code CARBON25
The premium edition. Beautifully designed with lots of luxury touches, including faux leather cover, debossed logo, stay-closed elastic band, teal bookmark, premium 115gsm recycled paper and lay-flat binding for the perfect journaling experience.
CURRENTLY SHIPPING TO UK ONLY
PAPERBACK
$25 Only $19
This edition has the same learning and journaling as the Carbon, presented in paperback format with a lovely glossy cover.
KINDLE
$9.99
Exceptional value, the Kindle edition is the complete book and journal. Download and print the exercises to put pen to paper.
YOUR MIND IS SMART
It knows you inside out. But sometimes it tells you stories. Negative stories that shatter your self-confidence.
The stories aren’t real. But they feel real. So they hold you back. Limit your ambitions. Affect your performance. Spoil your fun.
THE MENTAL CYCLIST will help you see these stories for what they really are, and change them.
Rationally. Mindfully. Permanently.
THE MENTAL CYCLIST MANIFESTO
At the heart of THE MENTAL CYCLIST is a 12-stage self-development program for building expertise in yourself.
SUPERCHARGE YOUR SELF-ESTEEM
Unless you’re a world champion, you’ll always encounter people who are fitter, faster, slimmer, stronger, smarter or sexier than you. Which is why it’s time to stop comparing yourself to everybody else and work on your own self-esteem.
— Learn how to stop your critical mental voice obsessing over negative comparisons.
— Understand when your defence mechanisms are helpful, and when they’re really not.
— Enjoy the significant benefits of improved self-esteem.
SUSTAIN YOUR SUPERPOWER
Willpower is what you call upon to make yourself do something you don’t want to do. The more you don’t want to do it, the more willpower you need. Willpower can get you through just about anything… until, of course, it doesn’t. Here we find out why.
— We all have a persuasive inner voice that offers lovely alternatives to things we should be doing. Meet yours.
— Willpower is powerful, but it’s not ALL-powerful. It has an Achilles heel: doubt.
— Discover four essential weapons for bolstering your willpower.
MAXIMISE YOUR MOTIVATION
When you have to something tough to do, willpower sometimes wins. And sometimes it doesn’t. Is sometimes enough? We don’t think so. There’s a smarter way to get things done. Here’s where you discover what really motivates you… and what really doesn’t.
— Understand the difference between immediate gratification (Jam Today) and long-term rewards (Jam Tomorrow).
— Align your intrinsic and extrinsic motivators for maximum gains.
— Explore your physiological, psychological and experiential goals.
FEEL THE FUN
Discover which kind of cyclist you are under the Lycra, er, skin. Obviously you love riding your bike, but do you love it even more when you’re riding for a reason? If so, what motivates you more – a happy day in the saddle, or stunning stats?
— Professional cyclists don’t ride for fun. You can, and you should.
— Understand the problem with performance goals, and why they can make your miserable.
— Focus on fun. It actually makes you faster.
SQUASH THE SELF-CRITICISM
In this stage, you come face to face with your Cruel Critic. We all have one. It’s the nagging voice inside your head that assures you, with unrelenting conviction, that you’re crap. Too slow, too weak, too fat, too unfit, too… whatever.
— Understand how, when and why your Cruel Critic tries to bring you down.
— Recognise your personal triggers for negative self-talk, and how it affects you.
— Overcome your Cruel Critic with affirmations, mantras and mindfulness.
BIN THOSE LIMITING BELIEFS
Some people believe they’re smarter, stronger, sexier, funnier or cooler than they actually are. You’re not one of them. Limiting beliefs are much more common. They hold you back – on your bike and in life. And your Cruel Critic just loves to reinforce them. It’s time to change that for good.
— Understand the difference between knowledge and belief, and why it’s so important.
— Identify and tackle your limiting beliefs head-on. Some are untrue. Others may be true but don’t matter.
— Flip your thinking and focus on can, not can’t.
SHAKE OFF STRESS
Stress in cycling sucks. It makes you tense and miserable, and sucks the joy out of everything. But here’s the secret. Cycling doesn’t need to be stressful. The trick is understanding why you suffer stress – and knowing what to do about it.
— Understand why ‘stress’ isn’t the problem. It’s your emotional reaction to a situation that cause problems.
— Retrain your brain to cope differently with potential stressors.
— Learn to avoid binary thinking: good vs bad, success vs failure, triumph vs disaster.
THWART THE THREATS
A challenge is something you can overcome, like training a wayward puppy not to pee on the floor. A threat is something you probably can’t, like persuading a hungry bear to relinquish your chicken supper. It’s really important not to confuse the two.
— Positive thinking is an ally that can push you forwards, so long as it’s not just wishful thinking.
— Learn why achievement goals are so much more motivating than avoidance goals.
— Pushing beyond your comfort zone improves mental and physical performance, but only if the challenge level is just right for you.
DESIGN YOUR DEFENCES
If you worry too much, you might never leave the house. Don’t do that. Almost anything that can go wrong on a ride can be predicted. If you can predict it, you can plan for it. Do that, and you’ll be a lot more confident in your ability to handle any crisis.
— Develop smart if/then plans for every eventuality.
— Swap anxiety for strategy and be happier in the saddle.
— Learn how to choose your effort and design your attitude.
FIND YOUR FLOW
If your mind is somewhere else when you ride – if it’s focused on the destination, or a time target, or anything else other than what’s happening right now – then you won’t have a meaningful and enjoyable experience. But when you ride mindfully, every ride can be amazing.
— Understand why arbitrary targets can be self-defeating and self-destructive.
— Lose your attachment to outcomes.
— Find the magical balance between the degree of a challenge and your ability to do it.
ESCALATE YOUR EXPERTISE
Mental Cycling is about getting to know yourself better. A really powerful way to do that is by analysing your rides – what happened, how did you feel, what did you learn, what can you change, and so on. You might be in for a few surprises.
— Learn how to write reflective ride reports.
— If you’re taking the digital course, swap reports with a buddy to share and analyse one another’s learnings.
COMMIT TO YOUR CHALLENGE
Take everything you’ve learned on your journey as a Mental Cyclist and use it to design and commit to the most amazing, life-changing challenge of your life! It might be might be nailing KOMs in the Pyrenees, riding 100 miles for the first time, commuting to work, or racing around the world. Whatever it turns out to be, it will be exactly the right challenge for you.
— Explore the difference between ‘do’ goals (what you want to do) and ‘be’ goals (how you want to feel).
— Lose yourself in a visualisation that helps free your imagination and lets you design the cyclist you really want to be.
— Find your Mental Cycling Challenge, and commit to it 100%.
Join our mailing list for news, including details of events and courses
Join our mailing list for news, including details of events and courses
Privacy Policy
INTRODUCTION
This privacy notice provides you with details of how we collect and process your personal data through your use on our site mentalcyclist.com, including any information you may provide through our site when you purchase a product or service, sign up to our newsletter or take part in a prize draw or competition.
By providing us with your data, you warrant to us that you are over 13 years of age.
Kyle MacRae is the data controller and we are responsible for your personal data (referred to as “we”, “us” or “our” in this privacy notice).
Contact Details
Our full details are:
This website (mentalcyclist.com) is owned and operated by Kyle MacRae
Postal address: 65 Hillend Road, Glasgow G76 7TH.
Owner contact email: kyle@mentalcyclist.com
If you are not happy with any aspect of how we collect and use your data, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We should be grateful if you would contact us first if you do have a complaint so that we can try to resolve it for you.
It is very important that the information we hold about you is accurate and up to date. Please let us know if at any time your personal information changes by emailing us at kyle@mentalcyclist.com
WHAT DATA WE COLLECT ABOUT YOU, FOR WHAT PURPOSE AND ON WHAT GROUND WE PROCESS IT
Personal data means any information capable of identifying an individual. It does not include anonymised data.
We may process the following categories of personal data about you:
- Communication Data that includes any communication that you send to us whether that be through the contact form on our website, through email, text, social media messaging, social media posting or any other communication that you send us. We process this data for the purposes of communicating with you, for record keeping and for the establishment, pursuance or defence of legal claims. Our lawful ground for this processing is our legitimate interests which in this case are to reply to communications sent to us, to keep records and to establish, pursue or defend legal claims.
- Customer Data that includes data relating to any purchases of goods and/or services such as your name, title, billing address, delivery address email address, phone number, contact details, purchase details and your card details. We process this data to supply the goods and/or services you have purchased and to keep records of such transactions. Our lawful ground for this processing is the performance of a contract between you and us and/or taking steps at your request to enter into such a contract.
- User Data that includes data about how you use our website and any online services together with any data that you post for publication on our website or through other online services. We process this data to operate our website and ensure relevant content is provided to you, to ensure the security of our website, to maintain back-ups of our website and/or databases and to enable publication and administration of our website, other online services and business. Our lawful ground for this processing is our legitimate interests which in this case are to enable us to properly administer our website and our business.
- Technical Data that includes data about your use of our website and online services such as your IP address, your login data, details about your browser, length of visit to pages on our website, page views and navigation paths, details about the number of times you use our website, time zone settings and other technology on the devices you use to access our website. The source of this data is from our analytics tracking system. We process this data to analyse your use of our website and other online services, to administer and protect our business and website, to deliver relevant website content and advertisements to you and to understand the effectiveness of our advertising. Our lawful ground for this processing is our legitimate interests which in this case are to enable us to properly administer our website and our business and to grow our business and to decide our marketing strategy.
- Marketing Data that includes data about your preferences in receiving marketing from us and our third parties and your communication preferences. We process this data to enable you to partake in our promotions such as competitions, prize draws and free give-aways, to deliver relevant website content and advertisements to you and measure or understand the effectiveness of this advertising. Our lawful ground for this processing is our legitimate interests which in this case are to study how customers use our products/services, to develop them, to grow our business and to decide our marketing strategy.
- We may use Customer Data, User Data, Technical Data and Marketing Data to deliver relevant website content and advertisements to you (including Facebook adverts or other display advertisements) and to measure or understand the effectiveness of the advertising we serve you. Our lawful ground for this processing is legitimate interests which is to grow our business. We may also use such data to send other marketing communications to you. Our lawful ground for this processing is either consent or legitimate interests (namely to grow our business).
- User data that includes data about your name, address, the results of any tests or quiz on one of our websites and any details of any files that you downloaded or requested. We process this data to deliver relevant newsletters and other information about our business and services, as well as emails related to the downloaded or requested information. Our lawful ground of processing is consent.
Sensitive Data
We do not collect any Sensitive Data about you. Sensitive data refers to data that includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health and genetic and biometric data. We do not collect any information about criminal convictions and offences.
Where we are required to collect personal data by law, or under the terms of the contract between us and you do not provide us with that data when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract (for example, to deliver goods or services to you). If you don’t provide us with the requested data, we may have to cancel a product or service you have ordered but if we do, we will notify you at the time.
We will only use your personal data for a purpose it was collected for or a reasonably compatible purpose if necessary.
In case we need to use your details for an unrelated new purpose we will let you know and explain the legal grounds for processing.
We may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent where this is required or permitted by law.
We do not carry out automated decision making or any type of automated profiling.
HOW WE COLLECT YOUR PERSONAL DATA
We may collect data about you by you providing the data directly to us (for example by filling in forms on our site or by sending us emails). We may automatically collect certain data from you as you use our website by using cookies and similar technologies. Please see our cookie policy for more details about this (see below)
We may receive data from third parties such as analytics providers such as Google based outside the EU, advertising networks such as Facebook based outside the EU, such as search information providers such as Google based outside the EU, providers of technical, payment and delivery services, such as data brokers or aggregators.
We may also receive data from publicly availably sources such as Companies House and the Electoral Register based inside the EU.
MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS
Our lawful ground of processing your personal data to send you marketing communications is either your consent or our legitimate interests (namely to grow our business).
Under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations, we may send you marketing communications from us if (i) you made a purchase or asked for information from us about our goods or services or (ii) you agreed to receive marketing communications and in each case you have not opted out of receiving such communications since. Under these regulations, if you are a limited company, we may send you marketing emails without your consent. However you can still opt out of receiving marketing emails from us at any time.
We will not share your personal data with any third party for their own marketing purposes.
If you opt out of receiving marketing communications this opt-out does not apply to personal data provided as a result of other transactions, such as purchases, warranty registrations etc.
DISCLOSURES OF YOUR PERSONAL DATA
We may have to share your personal data with the parties set out below:
- Service providers who provide IT and system administration services.
- Professional advisers including lawyers, bankers, auditors and insurers
- Government bodies that require us to report processing activities.
- Third parties to whom we sell, transfer, or merge parts of our business or our assets.
We require all third parties to whom we transfer your data to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We only allow such third parties to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.
INTERNATIONAL TRANSFERS
Countries outside of the European Economic Area (EEA) do not always offer the same levels of protection to your personal data, so European law has prohibited transfers of personal data outside of the EEA unless the transfer meets certain criteria.
Many of our third parties service providers are based outside the European Economic Area (EEA) so their processing of your personal data will involve a transfer of data outside the EEA.
Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the EEA, we do our best to ensure a similar degree of security of data by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is in place:
- We will only transfer your personal data to countries that the European Commission have approved as providing an adequate level of protection for personal data by; or
- Where we use certain service providers, we may use specific contracts or codes of conduct or certification mechanisms approved by the European Commission which give personal data the same protection it has in Europe; or
- If we use US-based providers that are part of EU-US Privacy Shield, we may transfer data to them, as they have equivalent safeguards in place.
If none of the above safeguards is available, we may request your explicit consent to the specific transfer. You will have the right to withdraw this consent at any time.
DATA SECURITY
We have put in place security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used, altered, disclosed, or accessed without authorisation. We also allow access to your personal data only to those employees and partners who have a business need to know such data. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they must keep it confidential.
We have procedures in place to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach if we are legally required to.
DATA RETENTION
We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.
When deciding what the correct time is to keep the data for we look at its amount, nature and sensitivity, potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure, the processing purposes, if these can be achieved by other means and legal requirements.
For tax purposes the law requires us to keep basic information about our customers (including Contact, Identity, Financial and Transaction Data) for six years after they stop being customers.
In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal data for research or statistical purposes in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.
9. YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS
Under data protection laws you have rights in relation to your personal data that include the right to request access, correction, erasure, restriction, transfer, to object to processing, to portability of data and (where the lawful ground of processing is consent) to withdraw consent.
You can see more about these rights at:
If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please email us at kyle@mentalcyclist.com
You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive or refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.
We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.
We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you.
If you are not happy with any aspect of how we collect and use your data, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We should be grateful if you would contact us first if you do have a complaint so that we can try to resolve it for you.
THIRD-PARTY LINKS
This website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy notice of every website you visit.
COOKIES
You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when websites set or access cookies. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of this website may become inaccessible or not function properly.
OUR COOKIE POLICY
What’s a cookie?
A “cookie” is a piece of information that is stored on your computer’s hard drive and which records how you move your way around a website so that, when you revisit that website, it can present tailored options based on the information stored about your last visit. Cookies can also be used to analyse traffic and for advertising and marketing purposes.
Cookies are used by nearly all websites and do not harm your system.
If you want to check or change what types of cookies you accept, this can usually be altered within your browser settings. You can block cookies at any time by activating the setting on your browser that allows you to refuse the setting of all or some cookies. However, if you use your browser settings to block all cookies (including essential cookies) you may not be able to access all or parts of our site.
How do we use cookies?
We use cookies to track your use of our website. This enables us to understand how you use the site and track any patterns with regards how you are using our website. This helps us to develop and improve our website as well as products and / or services in response to what you might need or want.
Cookies are either:
- Session cookies: these are only stored on your computer during your web session and are automatically deleted when you close your browser – they usually store an anonymous session ID allowing you to browse a website without having to log in to each page but they do not collect any personal data from your computer; or
- Persistent cookies: a persistent cookie is stored as a file on your computer and it remains there when you close your web browser. The cookie can be read by the website that created it when you visit that website again. We use persistent cookies for Google Analytics.
Cookies can also be categorised as follows:
- Strictly necessary cookies: These cookies are essential to enable you to use the website effectively, such as when buying a product and / or service, and therefore cannot be turned off. Without these cookies, the services available to you on our website cannot be provided. These cookies do not gather information about you that could be used for marketing or remembering where you have been on the internet.
- Performance cookies: These cookies enable us to monitor and improve the performance of our website. For example, they allow us to count visits, identify traffic sources and see which parts of the site are most popular.
- Functionality cookies: These cookies allow our website to remember choices you make and provide enhanced features. For instance, we may be able to provide you with news or updates relevant to the services you use. They may also be used to provide services you have requested such as viewing a video or commenting on a blog. The information these cookies collect is usually anonymised.
