I will the machine.

Photo © Tristan Sheldon

“… a researcher’s precision, and a poet’s restraint.”

_____

My name is Genna. I’m a 30-year-old trauma-informed writer, creative, and ultra-endurance cyclist. In 2013, before graduating high school, I was kicked out of my family home by my parents after an adolescence squandered by domestic violence, hoarding, and narcissistic abuse. Fearful, consistently displaced, but convicted to remain the authority of my future, I picked up bike racing, using the deconstruction of generational and cognitive patterns to use meaning as a road map forward.

For five years, I lived in a classic van to self-support my ambitions, and have since broken the 240-mile women’s Katy Trail record twice, planned and completed multiple solo bikepacking routes, and am currently on a winding but firm collision course with an exponentially greater challenge- the Trans-Am Nonstop.

This is an ongoing collection of essays documenting my progress, exploring thought itself, and parallel stories of human endurance where I invite you, dear reader, into the pulse.

Latest Posts

…

  • GB & the Diesel Mechanics

    Live tracking for my 320-mile time-trial can be found here. There’s not much of my route on Saturday that I haven’t seen. This is about internal exploration, so I’m alright with that. I’ll be starting from Mission Hills, Kansas between 4:00 and 6:00 p.m. on Saturday to find my rhythm and get the night riding…

  • Letters to Thanatos: A 300 Prelude

    Daemon of nonviolent death, We’ll speak in person soon, in a quiet place. Just when I started feeling steady, I up and upped the stakes on myself again. I’ve had some ask what the impetus is to keep coming back to the rail trail for big distances when I could just as soon start them…

  • We’re All Dirt: Trans-Missouri 300 Update

    This is a follow-up post to The Closing Argument: Trans-Missouri 300. “We’re all dirt,” Aaro said during our 62-mile ride yesterday, where I was still fussing with comfort issues on a new (sponsored) bike I’ve had for a week. It was the humble version of “We’re all made of star stuff,” which was part of the…

  • The Closing Argument: Trans-Missouri 300

    Three years ago, I asked another ultra-minded friend of mine if they’d be up for riding border to border of the state, from Kansas City, MO to Alton, IL. We then spent the summer putting miles in on the Marthasville corridor of the Katy Trail and its adjacent roads, but had to bump the date…

  • We’ll Build That Bridge When We Get To It

    It’s not over, but it’s close. I’ve lost most of my season to a density of failures that’s thicker than years prior. Van mechanicals (typical), bike mechanicals (less common), and my personal diesel engine almost not firing at all (unheard of). Endogenous Rex might just be as far as I can reach this summer, and…

  • The Harbinger of Endings- A Letter to My Parents

    Trigger warning: Everyone knows unaccountable and destructive people are everywhere, but far fewer want to believe those people are parents. This post is intended to drive that point home. I am not here to dredge up the past- I am here to seal it. In February of 2023, I started writing ‘My Mother’s Shadow Sister‘. My…

  • Staring Down the Neutron Star

    I don’t want to speak too soon. The resolution of ‘The Microcosm’ might be in process at this very moment. I want to give you the entire story, if the heavens will allow it, and so I’ll be delaying its release for a bit longer. I need to watch what takes shape from here; I…

  • Reactor No. 4

    People like me aren’t supposed to make it in this sport. A single alarm rang out in that hallway as I put my kit on. It had been sounding for over a month, but I had to keep moving. This is what I do. This is who I am. This is where I want to…

  • Endogenous Rex

    Inquiry of a Soloist at The Big Rub Gravel Race First of all, you should know I accomplished the mission. My life force was just starting to recover from the burglary that is burnout, and I just went and dumped my savings on the trail, again. I have so been missing the 100+ mile days…

  • Step Up, or Step Off

    It’s a rather pointed mantra of mine. On its head, it means that if you’re going to engage me, you need to do it completely. It means state your business. It means I’ll wait, but not forever. It’s one part invitation, one part warning, and wholly a wild and redneck carpe diem. Usually, this little…

  • I Bought Myself Flowers

    And then, I let them wilt. I walked into the house one day, having forgotten to top the vase off with water, and saw them drooped on my desk. That was enough for me to come apart again. I filled up the vase, and half of them came back by the next morning. I’ve been…

  • Spellbreaker

    It’s Sunday. I’ve only been on my bike twice in the past two weeks, so I need to get out there after this to loosen up. Tomorrow, I have to start getting up at 4:00 a.m. to ride to work again. I’m telling myself it’ll get the engine going and put loose change into that…

  • Projection, Your Honor (Pt. II)

    If you don’t like the image of yourself in the mirror, then you aren’t going to like me going to like you. The court will recall that this trial is ongoing. _____ Statement of Record– Disrepair Service I was racing with an organized amateur cycling team in Kentucky when the head mechanic of our shop…

  • A Letter to My Readers

    I don’t know who you are, and yet I do. I leave the door to this house unlocked. I swore to myself in January that I would curate heirlooms here even if I was unsure I could afford the time. I come in and out, and you follow me. Sometimes you’ll send me direct messages,…

  • Projection, Your Honor

    Learning to Trust the Part of You that Knows This passage is dedicated to those who have experienced relational dynamics where you felt lost. While you read, I hope you will listen first to that feeling in your core, and then watch for the moment where reason overlaps. Or doesn’t. And then let that have…

  • My Power Grows

    I can’t keep up. I am presently living rent-free in a house that I will have to leave next month. I am waiting for new wheels for my van that are on backorder, and currently have to air up a brand-new tire with my bike pump every morning if I want to drive. I did…

  • If You Can’t Say Something Honest

    I will know. I will cut off the elephant’s head and mount it to my wall there is no tension, or unspoken truth left standing in this hall The greatest devastation in my life actually isn’t not having parents. It isn’t that I’m rootless and uncertain of my immediate future, consistently. It’s not the constant…

  • The Edge

    This is a follow-up post to A Foundation of Sand from May 24th. “I haven’t made a plan. I don’t know how I’m even getting to work, 40-minutes away, on Tuesday, let alone the days after that.” In the hours after I was crumbling on the patio of the coffee shop I wrote that from, remembering…

  • A Foundation of Sand

    This post is edited for errors, but not for anything else. I’m writing straight through this night, no stops. This past Wednesday I gave a condensed version of everything I post here to a room of about 30 people to promote a small tour I am doing at summer’s end. I’m garnering looks with the…

  • Depths Too Dark

    One of the universal languages in endurance sports is that of “the dark place.” It’s where the human mind goes when you’ve experienced so much depletion that the governors of pretense retire, and you’re left with just the raw material of the self again. You meet you. I feel like I lived in that space…