Today is stage three of the Joe Martin Stage Race. I’ve written cue sheets, packed race snacks, laid out today’s kit, and pinned race numbers.
Also, I’m not racing.
At the end of yesterday’s stage, I jumped off the course onto the sidewalk 200 meters from the line, passed the finish area, and circled back to turn in my race number to the USA Cycling officials.
“I’d like to turn in my number and withdraw,” I said with conviction I didn’t entirely feel.
They looked surprised. “Are you sick?” one of them asked.
It was a reasonable question, one I’ve asked myself over and over lately. “Um, yes,” I replied, “in a manner of speaking.”
And that was it. Now I’m spending the next two days supporting my team from the sidelines before going home to regroup. Yesterday’s race was a good note on which to step out; it was a beautiful day on a good course and I was able to help a teammate and be needed and useful. After so many races where it felt like I was sliding backwards and growing increasingly disheartened and deflated, it was a positive step. I even thought about crossing the line to officially finish, but didn’t trust that I wouldn’t then be tempted to start again today. “Just one more race,” I’ve said repeatedly, while continually discovering that rock bottom can actually get deeper. By not finishing, I removed the option to start again.
So now I’m at this point where I have things to figure out. What’s wrong with me? Something is clearly not right. I’ve been fighting this feeling for weeks, even months, and it’s not getting better. The time has come to stop trying to push through and start trying to dig out.
How does this happen? I’m living the dream, right? Somebody pays me to race a bike all over the country. I have a great team, kind and wise mentors, and friends that make me laugh so hard I nearly pee in my chamois. By all accounts, I should be filled with enthusiasm and joy.
And yet.
Forty-five minutes before my start time at the Joe Martin time trial this past Thursday, I packed up my backpack and was about to ride 40 miles down the highway back to the team house where I planned to get a rental car and drive away. Our team mechanic wanted to take off my bottle cages and put on race wheels, and I was all, “NO! DON’T!” because I couldn’t ride all that way on race tubulars carrying no water. He was like, “What are you talking about? Don’t be ridiculous,” and then changed out the wheels and the next thing I knew, I was at the start line thinking WHY DID I NOT LEAVE.
There have been a lot of races like that lately. Warming up for the Sunny King crit weeks ago, I couldn’t figure out how to get excited about anything other than getting it done. Doing my openers on the morning of the Charlotte crit, I started crying and couldn’t stop. I also cried at the start and in the shower after the race. Cried before the start of Belmont the next day, too. That was especially awkward because I got a call-up to the line and was leaking tears from under my dark sunglasses. Often I can’t even figure out why I’m crying or why the idea of racing my bike makes me want to run away.
If somebody moved the finish lines to my house, I’d win everything.
This past winter was hard. I spent a lot of time tearing myself apart, pushing my body to do more because nothing ever felt good enough. Even after the worst symptoms of the eating disorder passed, I still spent every second preoccupied with food and anxiety. This has not changed, even months later. Getting sick multiple times only compounded matters. When the time came to leave for Tucson at the beginning of March to get the season started, I fell apart, sobbing at how badly the winter had gone and how much I had hurt the whole time. I wouldn’t be as mean to my worst enemy as I had been to myself for months.
I thought getting into the season would bring a welcome distraction from the internal battles and that I’d settle back into racing and remember how to be strong and healthy. But early season fitness is rarely confidence-inspiring; you go for it and expect to feel like the racer you were before and it’s hard to remember that it takes time to get back to that. When I struggled, the bad feelings were right there waiting. My confidence was in shreds. I doubted myself, my training, my diet, my choices, everything. I made changes, struggled more, doubted more, and now here we are.
Even now, it feels like I should be able to make things work. Now that I’m not about to start a race, it feels like, duh, just get fired up and go! How hard is that?! But when the race days come, it feels impossible. There is no confidence, no fire, no motivation, no excitement. Just feelings of dread and anxiety. It doesn’t feel like winning or even doing anything worthwhile are possible – my goal is just to finish and even that feels hard.
I can’t understand why. There has been a lot of stress in the past seven months: personal defeats and struggles, outside noise and changes, lots of time on the road. I guess it has all added up to this now: I need a break and to figure out how to believe in myself enough to go out and race hard. The deafening noise has to stop for a moment so I can reset and begin again.
My team has been so supportive over the past few weeks. My director has let me take the time and space I need and the other riders have dealt gracefully with all sorts of emotions. When it got to the point where I was crying over everything and having laughably bad luck – as in, smashed my head on the team car roof rack, crashed before the start of the Winston-Salem UCI road race, had a panic attack on a group ride and sprinted away from everybody while shedding layers of clothing – people gave me the space I needed to lose my shit and then get it back together again. My husband even came down to North Carolina for two consecutive weekends to be there with me. I couldn’t ask for a better support system.
But unfortunately, nobody can fix this for me. I don’t actually know how to sort this out, but I know it’s going to be something I have to figure out myself. The surface question is how can I love racing again, but the real question is how can I love myself again? It sounds so stupid and trite, but I think that’s the real underlying problem. After months of self-doubt and self-flagellation, of worrying about food and poking at my stomach and punishing myself with workouts, how can I find confidence?
I wish more athletes would talk about their experiences with this kind of struggle, but all I see are occasional mentions of somebody “taking time off to address a health issue” or something else vague and politically correct. Few seem to be interested in showing doubt or looking weak, which is understandable. But honestly, I don’t care how I look. I care how I feel and how I race, and neither are going particularly well at the moment. So I share these problems with everybody because what have I got to lose? Maybe you’ll have a suggestion. Maybe you feel the same way and are happy to know you’re not alone. Maybe you’ve been through this before and figured it out and want to share your story. Or maybe I just helped you pass five minutes of your workday, in which case you’re welcome. Thanks for reading.
I read this 3 days ago and keep wanting to write something, but don’t know what to say. I can say, you are not alone.
I have gone through days like this, but I always end up finding something to bring me out of it. I enjoy just the act of riding, so that helps. I have accepted that I have missed my prime competition days, so I just now look to push myself and see what I can do. When I come close to something like winning a race now, but fall short, I get very down. I get that taste of what it is like to be a competitor, to achieve things that you go after. Coming up short sucks. But then I eventually remember the work to get there is something to be proud of as well.
But that is probably not the same as the pressure of being a professional. No longer is it just silly bike racing, it matters way more. I am sure that makes every act of throwing the leg over the top tube different.
I don’t know what to say, other than maybe you need to reboot your goals. Maybe set some new short-term process goals that avoid big achievements and outcomes. Maybe build out a goal plan to get you back to having fun, enjoying riding and training, and being ready to continue your success.
I hope that since this was a month ago you wrote this things are better now. Good luck.
Things are better now. Thanks for reading and for commenting; it means a lot to have somebody offer kind, supportive words. I also refuse to believe there is a such thing as “prime competition days” – do you love riding and can you get fired up on race day to throw down as hard as you can? Then that, my friend, sounds like a prime competition day. I’ve had both great and terrible results and can say without a doubt that the result itself is fleeting. What I remember most is how the race felt; did I push my limits and have fun and enjoy the sound of the entire peloton shifting gears simultaneously? If the answer is yes, then it was a great day even if I crossed the line last. In theory, 99% of every race field comes up short, but with the right attitude (something I often forget to employ), even 55th place can feel like winning.
I’m going to echo the post above me and hope that since this was written a month ago, things are better. On the positive side, like you said, your support system is amazing.
I don’t think I’ve ever commented on a blog or anything else written online before, but I’m reading this two days after pretending I was excited to race back-to-back days out in West Virginia over Memorial Day weekend and then dropping out after twenty minutes on the first day. It’s just cat 2 racing, so it’s not on the professional level, but I’ve just lost any and all sense of happiness from my bike. Most days in the past, riding was what I looked forward to the most every single day. It had gotten to the point at the end of last summer and over the winter where I was starting to dread getting on my bike. I also started losing power, and when I felt like I was continuously at 90%, I thought I had to push harder, eat better, punish myself…whatever would get me excited and fast again. Instead, I ended up hating the bike. I tried to pretend I didn’t for the first month and a half of the season, told myself it would be better when the weather warmed up. I crashed twice in the first three races. I was just constantly tired. So, I took a week off. I thought I would be excited to get back on the bike after a week off, and I wasn’t. But I was convinced that I was going to get fat and out of shape if I stayed off, so I got back on. Pretended that I was fine for a few weeks. Had some blood work done just to see if I had mono or something. And then I went out to West Virginia and found myself sobbing when I didn’t even feel like completing one lap and came back to my car alone.
I guess what I’m saying is that (and I’m not even sure if this helps) you’re not alone, and reading this helped me realize, in a strange way, that I’m not alone in feeling like crap and being frustrated and not excited about riding. My guess is that I over trained, and I just kept pushing through obvious signs. That’s what my coach and (awesome) teammates say. It just feels like I’m really weak for quitting a race weekend and driving home alone.
I haven’t touched my bike since I got home and took it off the car on Saturday night. I’m not going to until I’m excited about it again. I need to recapture the joy of riding a bike, because that high is damn euphoric and I’m too young to lose riding forever. I know I love it, and I know that feeling is still in me…I just need to rediscover it. I’m already going stir-crazy sitting here not riding, and I’m stressed about losing fitness and gaining weight and trying to get back to the right fitness levels when I do get back on the bike. But I think this is better than trying to push through an obvious problem, no matter how much both suck.
So yeah…not alone. And it blows, but at the same time, the happiness and high from cycling are going to come back at some point. It has to, because I don’t think I know life any other way and I can’t imagine not riding forever. And I sure as hell am not going to quit something that I’ve worked my butt off for (and spent way too much money on).
I’m so glad you commented and shared your experience. Sometimes I feel like the things I say here are an overshare that people will judge me for, but my hope is that by being open, other people will not feel as alone if they’re experiencing the same things.
You’re not weak. I don’t know you, but I know that much just from what you’ve said. You’re a cat 2, which tells me that you’ve done a good bit of racing and earned some great results, enough to move you into a very competitive group of riders. Don’t say it’s “just cat 2 racing” because you’re selling yourself short. Your fellow racers put the hurt on me all the time. If your head isn’t into what you’re trying to do, it’s just not going to happen. That doesn’t make you weak. That was so hard for me to realize – I assumed that since my fitness was good, my results should reflect that even when I was miserable and desperate to not be racing. It took a lot to finally accept that it was going to be impossible to succeed if my head wasn’t in the game. Your mind controls your entire body, including your legs and lungs. You might own a Ferrari, but if nobody is driving it, it’s not going anywhere.
A break will do you good. It sounds like you’ve pushed through the unhappiness for long enough; it’s time to try a different approach. The bike will be there when you’re ready and eager to come back to it. Your racing fitness might take a small dive, but that will be easy to recover. Ruining your love of riding for good would be a lot harder to fix. I have also realized that racing miserable at 100% fitness leads to results that suck in comparison to racing excited at 75% fitness. Wanting to be in the game makes a huge difference.
Since I’d be equally freaked out about sitting still, you might consider trying some non-cycling activities in the interim. I dabbled in hot, torturous yoga and liked the change of pace. Or take up drinking tequila – I did that a lot for a while and it was a fun way to clear my head and take a break from the pressure. This will pass. It’s a normal part of being an athlete. I’m feeling better now and have also learned to appreciate this season’s slump as part of the experience. What goes up must come down…and then go back up. You’ll be back.