Fun is a competitive advantage.

The art of doing hard things the easy way.

Mantra: Fun is a competitive advantage.

This weekend, after a very tough interval day, my coach put a five-hour ride on the schedule. It was going to be a long day of work, I thought, pedaling home on tired legs.

But luckily, I had a better idea.

I dreamed up an inspiring route with a bakery stop, gathered a group of friends and asked if actually instead of riding 5 hours for work, I could ride 6 hours for fun?

The answer was an emphatic yes.

And the ride did not disappoint. We strung together some of my favorite roads in the Santa Cruz mountains, fueled as much by deep conversations as by carbs and coffee. It was the kind of adventure that had made me fall in love with the sport in the first place - and even after we hit the six hour mark, I didn’t want it to end.

Skinny skyline - one of my favorite stretches of road in the Bay Area!

Jamie Chapman wishing this was more “toast forward” than “salad forward”

It was a beautiful reminder of something I have always known to be true, but often need to remind myself of as an elite athlete pushing my edge:

Fun is a competitive advantage.

When we think about elite performance, we tend to focus on discipline, doubling down and a willingness to suffer. And there is certainly a time and place for those characteristics in a sport that rewards consistently pushing through hard moments. But there is a key factor missing from that list:

The ability to find enjoyment in a process that you must sustain over a long period of time.

When I was beginning to get more serious about my cycling career, I remember worrying a bit about the perception that I wasn’t taking things seriously enough. So many of the rides I posted about looked like pure Type I fun. Cookies and coffee shops. Scenic California roads and trails. Adventures with friends.

I don’t remember any specific comments, or if it was simply my own insecurity. But I had a distorted view of what it needed to look like to be a professional athlete and anticipated judgement:

Could she really be training that hard if it looked that fun?

But when I started working with a sports psychologist, I was surprised that her first advice was not to “get more serious” but to ensure that I kept that fun alive.

“Motivation works like an emotion,” she said, “not like a muscle.”

Motivation doesn't multiply the more we push through and use it. Instead, we create the conditions for it to emerge through often under emphasized and less quantifiable factors like rest, joy and intuition.

That idea changed the way I thought about training.

Using willpower every day wouldn’t necessarily mean I’d have more of it tomorrow. In fact, relying on willpower alone might be one of the fastest ways to burn out before I found out what I was capable of.

Instead, I focused on creating the conditions for the emotions I would need to reach my full potential: curiosity, motivation, excitement, and joy.

Fun, in all its various forms, became a deep source of motivation. Sometimes it was the satisfaction of nailing a difficult interval and eating the hand full of gummy bears in my pocket to celebrate. Sometimes it was the excitement of exploring a new route with friends. Sometimes it was the simple joy of riding my bike a little longer than planned on a sunny day.

The more I enjoyed the process, the more I wanted to deeply engage with it. And that enjoyment and engagement became a necessary component of training, not a distraction from it.

And while many things in my training and racing have evolved over the years, the magic of spending all day on my bike with friends is still near the top of the list when it comes to fueling that fire.

By the end of my ride on Sunday, I had spent more time on the bike than prescribed and somehow felt more energized than when I started.

So this week, do the hard thing. Stay consistent. Push the edge. But find the easiest, most enjoyable way to do so.

Maybe it’s inviting a friend along or coming up with a fun way to reward yourself at the end. Maybe it’s breaking out of your routine and bringing a bit of novelty into the mix. When you find even a tiny way to make the hard thing more enjoyable, you make it easier to keep doing it.

There is no special prize for being the one who suffered the most in pursuit of a goal. So if you really want a competitive advantage…

Make it fun.

If my competitors are reading this - DON’T HAVE FUN! TRAIN HARDER! ZERO SMILING!

Message: reward yourself…

P.s. I highly recommend reading this book on the science flow state! Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi backs me up on this one.

Musing: but was it fun?

What would it look like to do the hard thing you want to do in a way that maximizes enjoyment?

Rivian loaded up for big fun on clean bikes (thank you Ryan!)