Wasn’t that kind of op’s argument? You can focus on beating yourself all you want, if yourself isn’t the best, then you will never win the Tour de France.

If you don’t have the potential to win The Tour, then should you even be trying to? Sounds like a lot of effort, might wanna invest it somewhere else or redefine your cycling goals.

I run marathons and I don’t beat myself up about winning because I don’t have the potential to be a world class marathoner. Even if I trained twice as hard as Kipchoge. I just don’t have it.

Same with boxing. I train 4x/week because I enjoy the exercise and mental relaxation. Punching people in the face is fun. But I don’t compete because I don’t have the talent to make the pain of competing worth it.

But when it comes to writing software and running a business, you bet your ass I’m giving it all I got and want to “beat” (hard to define) everyone else. Because there I do have the potential.

What kind of bike racing was that? Because road racing is quite the opposite, the other competitors are everything while the properties of the course are just a minor influence on the all-defining question of which wheel to suck when. But those coach words are still wise and apply even there, if your goal is not to maximise winning but to maximise motivation and happiness (which would actually help winning long term, but the ratio between winners and losers is so bad in that game that you should focus on happiness nonetheless)

I agree but it’s also worth noting that you should also be able to step back and consider how much of your self worth you want to define by how fast you ride a bike. There’s good reasons to set goals and “beat yourself” but also good reasons to not worry about it too much and “accept yourself“.