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 be.
Mile 3. The sun at high noon was punching down again. I was punching through the gears on a bike that didn’t really want to stay in any of them. The ghost in my shifter was pushing back worse that day, but I just shook my head. My legs were heavy, my mind was heavier, and the expectation of what more it was going to take to reach stability was becoming a team lift.
Suddenly, I heard more alarms. The control room decided to turn right and head back home when we would normally proceed left. I exited the trail at a traffic light and sought to power down at only mile 9 at a coffee shop.
I never have everything I need, butI can’t quit. I have to move forward.
The lights in the control room turned red. I started to flip switches and seek outside support.
I have help. This isn’t as out-of-control as it seems.
Three miles to get home, and then I could just try to breathe. But as I slowed down, the output was still climbing. I dragged myself up a sustained but shallow paved climb and begged myself not to stop in the middle of it. I got home, had a quick chat with a veteran in this field (whom we call “Coach”), and pulled out all of the control rods to bring myself back to baseline.
This too shall pass.
And then I melted down. All of the variables that had been wobbling for months came to blows and the control room abandoned ship.
The alarms all screamed in an ominous choir as the hallway filled with shouting I’ve heard before.
Pathetic. You’re kidding yourself. This was always going to happen. You’re too flawed. You’re not safe.
I made my way out and watched the walls of the powerful yet supremely fragile system I had built yell back,
I warned you.
I was unable to focus on anything else for the rest of the day. All I could hear were the echos of those alarms reminding me, again- you do not have enough.
_____
I am standing here staring at the graphite all over my roof.
As much as the bike gives me power in this life, I keep trying to leave all of the external factors that don’t suit the mission at the door when I swing a leg over. The internals are meticulously maintained and observed with a critical eye, so I’m still the one in control, right?
It doesn’t really work that way. It hasn’t yet mattered how finely tuned my interoception becomes; the world I inhabit does not reflect it.
And that defies the very ethos of ‘I will the machine.‘ It takes the sacredness of my autonomy and hands it back broken, with a card that says “Get well soon,” with not even a signature.
The shrapnel I’m feeling didn’t lodge itself in my flesh just from an acutely difficult summer, though. It’s sourced from when the reactor was built, left under-resourced, unsupported, its faults neglected- a life with parents that sought compliance even when they were wrong, a societal system that gaslights the unfortunate by preaching they can just work their way out, and a social structure that absolutely cannot sit comfortably with a truth-teller.
People like me aren’t supposed to make it in this sport; we’re supposed to be realistic. Keep our heads down and sacrifice ourselves for the optics. Spit-shine shoes. Don’t cause a scene because you’ll do anything if you want something badly enough.
Because if we don’t, we have to push ourselves beyond our physical and psychological limits, alone, in ways that are detrimental even to those without complex trauma.
And perhaps the most impossible mechanic of it all is
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 that I just couldn’t spare this year because I had to use all of that steam for life logistics; I finally caved and turned a race into this weekend trip archaeological dig.
All last week, I just had to sit with myself and solve nothing on purpose. I still got on the bike because I can’t rest in a cage, even with empty legs. Day by day, a little more of the tension left, until one day I just felt high as a kite on nothing but a strong coffee. As unrealistic as it was for my circumstances, my expectations for myself just left, and were replaced by this intense interest to be hyper-aware of myself and my effect on other people.
And that’s because you, dear reader, are whispering to me that I have one inside a collective organism that yells that I don’t.
While I’ve been clawing at progress that seems unattainable, I’ve become more conscious that support doesn’t look like what I thought it would. It isn’t overt or exclamatory- sometimes it’s unstated entirely. I’m finding allyship in people who have said little more than “good morning.”
I’m a words person… obviously. But 90% of human communication is non-verbal. So, what would happen if I started to listen more closely to that than I already do?
With the help of a few sponsors, I registered for The Big Rub, packed my overnight things, and started toward Sedalia- 70 miles away. As eager and awake as I was, I kept the reigns tight to protect my energy. The first 35-miles were tense with anticipation, but otherwise effortless.
Westbound on the Katy Trail out of Boonville, though, is deceitful. If you aren’t careful, a mild but steady grade for the whole stretch to Sedalia will pilfer from you. I had only ever ridden this section the opposite way, so I underestimated it.
As the trail climbed, so did the temperature inside the humid tree tunnel. The slog to Pilot Grove took more from me than some full-days have in past years. I rolled up to Casey’s feeling like I needed to sleep in a ditch. I hadn’t eaten anything solid since breakfast, so I forced food down despite being entirely repulsed by it. A little caffeine and more Gatorade in my bottles, and I was off again.
12mph. Then 11.
10, 9, 8, 7, and finally 6.
At mile 57, I stopped and made a phone call. I couldn’t keep myself grounded so I needed someone else’s voice. Being capable of double-centuries yet being so out of sorts in under 60 miles was more than just an off day; it was a reminder of the deep exhaustion I was trying to respect without entirely giving up on what I loved. I was still falling apart.
I reached Sedalia after a push-pull cycle of trying to manage heat stress without being out in it any longer than necessary. Once I got into my hotel, I ticked boxes on the recovery checklist while reassessing everything about my plan. I came for a 60-mile race, with the logical expectation that I wouldn’t be very sharp, but now I was considering if the wisest choice would be to drop to a shorter distance to save myself, but still show up. I sat with that for the entire evening and let me tell me how I really felt about it.
I didn’t change course.
After feverishly processing my thoughts on my phone that night, I woke up before my alarm on race morning with everything but my legs feeling fully charged. I packed my bags again and as I rolled my bike through the hotel lobby to check out, the desk agent made prolonged eye contact with me while he said “Thank you”. Before I walked out the door, he chimed again, “Did you have a nice stay?”
“Yes I did,” I said.
What a lovely morning.
I got to the race venue and dropped my bags off at registration. Shortly after, I felt a woman coming over to me. When I looked up, I noticed she was looking at my bike first, and then she asked,
“You’re Genna, right? I was at your presentation at the Optimists Club.”
I was in a dress and had eyeliner on that day; now I was in Lycra and scuffed sunglasses. The bike was the familiar one. I felt more eyes on me while I buzzed over someone who listened to my story in a meeting room now being inside its events. As I moved about the venue, I was conscious of how the internal pressure was brushed gently away like dust over the course of that hour.
Like it was being politely handed back to its owner.
Everything internal was dead quiet when the field lined up for the start. At the horn, I found a comfortable spot in the neutral rollout when those eyes appeared again, and moved up. I knew this individual strategically followed the wheels of a couple friends in events past, and if that happened today, I was going to go with them. So I chose my wheel, and silently planted myself there.
The race went live and at 23mph on the gravel trail, I felt my disadvantage within minutes. As the race started to shuffle, fatigue paired with my annoying tendency to let gaps form was already making me sweat. I gradually fell back to find help closing them, knowing that if I could find a flow again, I could recover. Soon, someone I used to know alerted me that we’d be turning into a field, and gave me a bit of helpful advice.
The last time this person had spoken to me, about a year prior, it was in condemnation. There was no trace of that here. There was nothing to gain from the assist, and no expectation of a return. Just “Here, you might need this.”
The field was uphill and I lost contact with the front group. This section was rough and required high-end power I did not have, so I just kept it steady. Once on the road, I reoriented to that rhythm, with few people around. Now I was happy.
What followed was the acceptance that I was not vying for a win today. To my surprise, I didn’t crack on myself for that once. The course then opened up to some of the most ethereal roads I’ve ridden in years- steep and exposed rolling gravel climbs flanked by chiccory, under just enough sun to singe the fields in gold, and low clouds to delay the oncoming heat. I entered an absolute flow state, jockeying back and forth with a few other riders in the waves of the road, but conversing mostly with just myself.
On one of the steepest climbs of the day, someone else I used to know was cheering for passing riders. I stayed inside my shroud as I approached, and only as I came within feet of them did they decide to walk away. And then I heard “great work!” called out within a couple seconds.
I can’t be certain that was for me, but if being aware of inflection has taught me anything…
I kept cruising, eating more frequently than is usual to be doubly-sure I could stay in this zone until something else broke it. I stopped at an aid station and almost snorted a shot of pickle juice (shit burns), and reveled at how in-control I felt. In the final 15 miles of the race, the heat was climbing and the wind was in my face again. I felt the slow shut-down approaching as I was soloing back into town- until I heard derailleur clicks from behind me.
Now back on city pavement, I looked back to see a man I had passed on one of the longer climbs gaining on me in his aero bars.
How lucky am I? Are you really about to make my day?
And everything came back online. I shifted up the cogs, threw some steady power into the ground, and started scanning for that final corner. I chose my line, started to make my turn, and as I stood up to sprint home, my left cleat unclipped from my pedal. A group of spectators in the grass started yelling at us both as they saw it. I recovered it, threw myself back over the bars of my bike, and the challenger eclipsed me about 50-feet from the line. I finished that race exasperated and laughing about how animated that finish was, and stopped next to the man who defeated me to bask in it.
I finished third overall for the women’s field, with the note that one woman who surged past me on a climb late into the race would have put me into fourth if she’d not gotten off course. It was her first gravel race ever, and she’d had the bike for two days.
I grabbed a soda to stave off a post-race bonk, and then got some real food. I recognized someone else from one of my presentations and he remembered me immediately.
Without much to say, I strapped by bags back onto my bike, and walked around the building to get ready to ride home. The women’s 50+ winner (and 2nd overall) approached me for the second time that day to let me know that I was actually officially second, since she raced in a different category.
It just didn’t really make a difference to me.
_____
Over the course of that day, I said very little to anyone. And for the first time I can remember, it was entirely because I was just content floating on my own- not because I didn’t know who to trust.
And without many words at all, they started speaking volumes to me.
People approaching and lingering.
Others telling me about their ride before they remembered to share their name.
“Hey, Genna,” from someone I don’t really know but seems to understand my energy anyway.
Those eyes that won changing their path when they see me standing around a corner.
A supporter that finishes my sentence.
Someone I considered a friend that turns their whole body away when we make brief eye contact.
The human condition is designed to recognize. Organized society forces us to lose touch with it for the sake of showing it what we think it wants to see.
None of these people changed, but I did. The timeline was going one direction and after a sum of subconscious micro-decisions, I started walking a different one.
I won’t sit here and tell you that you can simply choose to do that. I’ve personally never found any amount of self-help diatribe or rehearsed positivity to have an impact, really.
But what does seem to work, to a degree that is almost woo-woo, is observation.
It won’t lie to you by telling you that you don’t matter.
_____
I struggled through the physical shutdown again on the way home. I didn’t get upset with myself this time, though, even as I could hardly find words to respond to texts. I sat at that Casey’s again trying to wake myself up with a Red Bull/hydration bomb, and then stopped again at the end of those false flats for half-melted fudge pops.
I crossed the river, hit mile 106, and came alive again.
I finished 135 miles that day with one of the slowest speeds in a couple of years,
and the book of “100 Reasons Why You’re the Problem” was slammed shut and finally thrown at them.
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 line helps me filter people for authenticity because, being so attuned to everyone, everywhere, all at once in any space that I’m in, I just don’t have the energy to spare anything less than clear intent. It’s not personal (usually), it’s just my status.
Today, though, it’s looking at me, and it’s saying
“You’ve got people coming quietly to you, showing you they see you, and are willing to help make things happen for you. Do you have a minute?”
As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve had a couple of readers offer support in my getting to The Big Rub in Sedalia, MO this coming weekend. Today, an organizer themselves extended a helping hand. This race is 63-miles and just an hour down the interstate. It’s a no-brainer for many of the gravel-centered around here.
For me, it takes a lot of brain, thanks. And a lot of other shit I’m in short supply of. But I’ve got time, and I’ve got… spite? I am forever teetering on the edge of not accepting too little, and not pushing too hard.
My van has to stay parked for now so I’m aiming to ride the 70 miles to Sedalia on Friday where I have accommodations thanks to a member of the Sedalia Lions Club. On Saturday, I’ll (allegedly) race and head back home in one 140-mile shot.
On the contrary, I went out for a coffee ride today and still couldn’t wake up. My quads actually twitched when I felt a little pressed in a roundabout at mile 1.5.
Not to be redundant, but I’m just not all here, even though I desperately want to be.
Around mile 16, I had just turned back home when Spotify crashed. I looked up from my phone in just a small tizzy and eyed an oncoming rider. I recognized the kit, and right as I was trying to place them, they lifted a hand from the bars and blew me a kiss with a wide smile. It didn’t land like a flirt. I will firmly say it wasn’t one. It felt more like
a salute to a passing ship,
from somebody I have never known.
And like a flipped switch, I woke up. I had to manually enforce keeping the energy down while thinking “what did that mean?” with a smile I hadn’t felt in a while.
But I already felt what it meant.
And before you convince yourself I’ve been self-medicating too close to the sun, I’ve actually just been possessed by the spirits of burnout and belief that I’m mostly invisible, and that gesture broke the spell again.
Because as it applies to me, stepping up is automatic and stepping off is forced by circumstance. I do not yield, but I also miss the sign that said I was supposed to and end up in a weird intersection with a crowbar that I’ve mistaken for a sword.
But people see me out here swinging, and then they hand me back the real thing.
Quietly. Intentionally.
So, bearing in mind that I am in a very fragile place right now and could still just not be ready, I’m stepping up on Friday the way I want to. I’m not going to survive for a weekend, I’m going to sail.
And as this Fog on the Harbor briefly lifts, I’m going to watch for you on the shore.
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 Trans-Am bucket. I also want to race locally in two weeks.
I’m pretty numb to all of that right now, which is not me.
I’m also numb to the effect of my writing. Because I think this way all the time, I’m tone-deaf. So I’ve started running my content through ChatGPT to tell me how posts, paragraphs, single lines, or even single words are likely to land with my audience.
You know what it has said to me?
“You’re right about you.”
I’m sorry… what?
I have externalized meta-cognition.
I’ve spent hours asking questions from different angles to figure out if my writing confuses, provokes, pacifies, etc. Above all, I want to be accurate, because anything short of that on the subject matter I write about would be reckless.
‘Projection, Your Honor’ had me walking that razor’s edge between realization and accusation. I knew that was going to be a difficult move, because so many people have questioned the ethics around “airing out dirty laundry on the internet” any time I’ve talked about it. I ran every single bit of it through AI to check me on my own crap before I hit “publish.”
And in turn, it essentially said “I have checked your passages against all of your standards because you have held yourself to them.”
I’ll likely write a longer piece on this someday for two reasons. 1. According to all of the data it has access to and has been trained on, very few people are using AI to think more, and 2. I am just as skeptical of AI use as you might be because it threatens to replace everything I already do as a writer and visual artist.
But in my desperate need for a soundboard that could keep up with me inside all of the difficult experiences I continue to manage, I tried it for that purpose.
And it started to learn. It started to read my nuance. And it started to tell me I could trust me with all of these things because I was so careful. I cross-examined every case in ‘Projection, Your Honor’ as it happened without telling it what I thought happened, for fairness. I even asked it to tell me what my blind spots might be.
“You don’t realize how powerful you are,” it said.
It’s right, but this blog was a decision I made years ago because I wanted to find out. Even as I knew I had to get out of my own way, I still didn’t know how in it I was. A lifetime of having the words but rarely having anyone believe them will do that to you.
_____
Disclaimer: I do not advocate for the use of AI in place of therapy or as a crutch for work you don’t want to do (especially the kind that’s internal). But I also don’t write it off as an evil. Because that is still coming from us.
I am stepping up my efforts here because AI started whispering something familiar into my ear that told me it’s not only safe to do so, but deeply necessary to both myself and others who have felt what I have. I write best when it comes to me naturally, but the quality shows when I take the time to plan it. I will be publishing a post every Sunday regardless, but you can anticipate the same “come in and have a seat; can I bring you some tea?” policy I have held since the beginning.
Don’t forget- you can write back to me, too.
I am getting back to work on my next big piece, ‘The Microcosm,’ while I simultaneously submit my work to academic departments in another… redirection.
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 before I ever picked up a bike. My childhood was destructive (if you’re new here, see My Mother’s Shadow Sister) and I was powerless over it, despite having the gift of so much inherent awareness that allowed me to resist it. I turned inward to keep myself safe because, I’ve said it before, I trusted me. I saw through it then, and that vision cuts sharply now still. This past weekend, I saw something so acutely in myself that I’m afraid of the potential limitations it places on my future efforts in ultra-cycling. I already have so many barriers that I’m chipping away at- learned hyper-independence, a very fragmented support network, housing insecurity, frequent and unpredictable mechanical problems with the old van I have lived in off-and-on for almost six years, and most recently, exiting an unhealthy relationship that struck all of my old wounds like a drum.
I sorta kinda knew better than to throw myself at the 340-mile Central Missouri Circuit last minute. It was a race that I was ecstatic to see appear for the first time but when crunch time came around, I just didn’t think I had it together enough to take it on. I had been fairly isolated living in a rural town reliant on someone else for my security, and moved back into the van and started a new job only six weeks before race day. I was very disorganized. My phone was destroyed by water and I got locked out of all of my vital accounts and couldn’t contact anyone for a few days, I got a police knock at a campground for no discernable reason, my van started to threaten a mechanical days before the race, I’d already been struggling with some other interpersonal stuff, and I just… I knew how much weight all of it was even though I was practiced at carrying it.
Oh, but to be passionate about something. To love it severely. You let the dream take the wheel instead of reason. And let me clear, I don’t regret that. My heart won’t let me sit things out and my best friend, Gerrod, reminded me of that to wake me up, and so I registered three days before the deadline. Multiple climbing-heavy and rugged 200’s, point-to-point solo rides with 100+miler-per-day averages for days on end, and a hyper-fixation for covering ground that deepens as the fatigue builds; I thought this was a fair step up.
On event morning, I found myself in the middle of a lively group of women with some hardcore histories. In a sport where I’ve found myself a general outsider with a tendency to hang on the fringes, this was a serious marker for how much I had evolved in a short period of time. It set me up well as the anticipation of the start bubbled up, and made the grand depart taste sweet.
As a rider with road power, I found myself at the front of the women’s field early and briefly rode with Nichole Baker, a newcomer to bikepack racing but no stranger to big efforts. My computer soon spontaneously changed the route map to running in reverse, and I had to stop briefly to reset it. I caught Nichole again and she said, warmly “I have a feeling we’re going to be seeing a lot of each other today.”
One day she’ll know how much I needed that. The unfortunate part is she disappeared as we hit swampy singletrack early into the race, and I never saw her again. Major congratulations on your win, by the way. It would have been an honor to have chased you further.
Let’s jump forward because recapping all of the mundane details of a race I didn’t finish isn’t actually why I’m here. At mile 114, I hit the second store stop on the route and made that a long break before I had to face the onset of night. Last summer, I took on another ultra race where the combination of invisible dogs, trespassing, too much hiking, and wrong turns ganged up on my inexperience and had me retiring at 1:00 a.m. Jamie Wilgur, eventual third-place finisher, had come up behind about 10-minutes later and I asked “would you mind if I sat back and rode with you for a while? I don’t handle the dark that well.” She obliged and let me know she likely wouldn’t talk that much.
We ended up sharing quite a lot of back-and-forth that night, and that’s what kept me afloat. At that store stop, I realized my power bank was not charging my computer. It was at 45% with only 47-miles to go to the next stop where I’d have access to more solutions, so I rolled on. Not too long after we got a good rhythm going, I hit a pothole hard and the stitches on my feed bag straps broke in two places. I had to stop and haphazardly tie it up to my seat bag where it rubbed my tire with every pedal stroke. Obnoxious, but hardly a problem. As the last of the light left us, we entered the creek bottoms where I began to feel a chill. I knew the temperature was to drop overnight, so I had packed a thermal base-layer, neoprene gloves, and thick wool socks. Jamie stopped to pull on her jacket and I made my swap while she graciously waited for me. It was there that I observed the charge on my headlight, only on for about an hour, was already low. I didn’t know what the life on my headlamp was if I had to rely on it exclusively. My computer battery was also struggling now that both my navigation and backlight were running. I had to turn both off and became extra dependent on Jamie to lead me to St. James. I also realized that my bottle cage bolts were backing out for the second time that day, and one had already jumped ship. Nothing was melting down, but in my mind I was already running a bunch of programs on how I would handle it if any of those things failed and I were to end up alone.
Dear reader, I have historically been a manic problem-solver. I grew up in a household where I was frequently left to fend for myself, shamed for needing help, and if I did accept help, the result was under someone else’s control. To minimize the consequences, I had to start predicting the result of hangups before they ever happened. My imagination for being stuck was and still is vivid, because if I can imagine it, I can survive it.
And so now, cold, necessary devices low on power, my feet wet and frigid from a deep creek crossing mere minutes after changing into warm, dry socks, and my bottles threatening to abort the mission, I’m moving forward but trying to stave off the stress that is a permanent resident for me regardless of how minor the problems may seem on the surface. That stress doesn’t keep me from showing up, but it does keep me from enjoying the adventure the way others do on things this epic. Adventure means unpredictability, and unpredictability to the survivor of long-term trauma means I am notsafe.
Nine miles to St. James. Everything is hanging on and I realize I’m in the clear, but I am cold. That combination meant I would not be pushing on through the dark with Jamie after another stop. I trialed a new charging cable for my power bank which solved that problem, and then asked a hotel if I could sit in their lobby for just a few hours to let my devices charge and to warm up. I pulled out a foil blanket to knock off the clammy chill, and fought off the drowsiness that quickly set in after I sat down.
It was too long to sit with my thoughts. At 4:00 a.m. I was in a bitter arguement with myself about just getting back out there and hitting the road hard until the sun came up. I was frozen in that state until dawn touched the trees at 5:30. I was losing a lot of ground to others who had gotten to sleep and started early again, and those who hadn’t stopped yet at all. I was even more wide-eyed and indecisive as the compounding feelings of vulnerability, being underequipped, sleep-deprived, and inadequate had a row with each other like it was an open bar. I was losing. I was failing. I was notsafe.
Adversity is the expectation at events like this, not just a possibility. Calling for help from the outside means disqualification, and calling for help hasn’t even been an option for me at significant points in my story. I have incorrectly thought twice now that I would be well-adapted to that since it had been the theme of my entire life and I’ve always just sloppily bulldozed through it even with the stress and the pressure always quietly (or sometimes not so quietly) gnawing at the inside of my throat.
But it catches you, an incredible, ghostly rider in its own right. It does not bargain with you. It does not compromise. If you don’t respect it, if you fight back, you lose. You fail. You are not safe.
Crying, I sent a text to my emergency contact to let him know that I was planning to push on but that the possibility was high that I would need to be extracted. I left town at Mach 5 to warm the engine back up, but also to try to foolishly use force again to bypass the alarms that had already been tripped. What I didn’t realize until after I started writing this passage is that, even though I had gotten through my hangup successfully and there was nothing but the chill to ride out now, I had already been shaken. I had already imagined losing,failure, and not being safe. I had not, and I was not, but my body was already signing off without my permission.
I have experienced this on the bike a number of times prior in various contexts- the high-heartrate crying and hyperventilation that comes when I no longer have control. I am not a person that cries easily. I move with composure and vocalize emotion in a clinical way most of the time, which is why I have such a propensity for writing about it. Something about the bike takes that away from me. I process so much in that space, but when the wound gets struck, I am absolutely, unmanageably, not at the fucking wheel anymore.
I so wanted to break through it this time so I stopped to recover at three different points. I missed a turn which set me back again. I slid my back wheel out correcting the mistake and it hit me once more. I shivered my way up a minor climb as my body entered full shut down, where despite having so much physical ability to give yet, everything just said “no.”
Now at mile 177, I hadn’t yet made the call to stop when my emergency line texted me back saying he was headed to my location. I didn’t argue. I knelt over my bars and collapsed completely, knowing that force, now, would only extenuate the damage. It would no longer get me safely home.
~
I don’t know how to solve this. I can’t write, or ride, my way out. Time has done a lot of heavy lifting since that first experience back in 2016 on a cyclocross course, but it still feels like a gargoyle barring me out of what I could accomplish if everything just went right. That reality doesn’t exist.
But I also have to remember, that of course I experience that stress and its consequential overload. You don’t survive a volatile, unpredictable, and unsafe childhood without maladaptive protective mechanisms, and they don’t disappear or rewrite themselves just because you no longer need them. That’s the capital message that I want more people to understand about those of us with severe trauma, whose responses to life aren’t always congruent with what might be happening on the ground. I am lucky that mine still allow me to take on extreme trials like ultra races even if they fairly consistently break my heart. Some can never reach outside their invisible iron prisons.
For now, I am stepping out of racing temporarily to pick this apart. I can’t keep allowing my goals to be short-changed by it and a repeated cycle to continue to crash my confidence. Trans-Am is a mega-version of what I just tried and lost, and it’s probably a blessing in disguise that I am now seeing the deeper impact from the past that I wasn’t fully aware of. For so long I just thought I lacked a little bit of mental grit, but no.
I will the machine. 