Distraction Can Make You a Faster Cyclist

In the slightly surreal yet decidedly wonderful 2003 animated film The Triplets of Belleville, three drugged cyclists pedal stationary bikes on-stage in a theatre while French mafia types bet on which of them will win their “race”—as they pedal, they gaze at film of a road course projected onto a screen in front of them, shot from a cyclist’s perspective.

Aside from the being-drugged published last month in . The team of researchers, from the University of Münster, in Germany, found that when they told endurance cyclists to focus their attention on ensuring a smooth, circular motion to their pedaling, they performed at a lower level than those who were told to focus instead on a video of a cycling course playing in front of them, -style.