It’s been about a year since I decided to dedicate myself to becoming a professional cyclist and I wanted to write about my time with this endeavor.
Over the past year, I’ve matured and grown more than I ever have in such a short period of time. It’s hard to recognize myself from a year ago. Pursuing this dream has been my north star; in the pursuit, it feels like everything within me has fallen into place. Here’s the good, bad, and everything else I’ve experienced.
With this lifestyle, the majority of my training is spent in solitude. Riding and spending so much time with myself has served as a shovel to get to the core of my being. It led to a lot of confrontation with the good and bad within myself.
When the training or racing gets hard that’s when the dark thoughts of fears, anxieties, or doubt can show themselves. Through this happening I’ve learned how to create space between me and my thoughts. As these parts come up I’ve had to sort through them and become a better version of myself because of it.
This has tremendously strengthened my relationship with myself. Now I feel such a vivid sense of self. I’ve accumulated so much self-belief, self-confidence, knowing what I want, self-respect, the ability to truthfully appreciate the person I am becoming, and the list goes on.
In The Moment
If there’s one thing cycling has taught me it’s how to be in the moment. The bike is unforgiving if you aren’t in the moment. There isn’t any room for worrying during a ride, it makes it difficult to focus and can take away from the experience of the ride. Riding for me has expanded from simply improving my fitness. It’s also a means to bring myself into the present moment.
Now when I ride I try my best to focus on the simple sensations of my muscles firing, the wind on my body, and all of the details I can see in front of me. When I’m really pushing myself I’m able to get deeper into the moment. There’s something so freeing about pushing so hard. You hit a certain point where everything fades away and you feel a sense of stillness.
There are so many things to be anxious about in life. Being able to disconnect from everything else and solely connect with nature makes me feel the most grounded and at peace. Being able to find an activity that keeps me rooted in the present for so long has reduced my anxiety so much it’s incredible. This year I can say with confidence my anxiety is the lowest it’s ever been.
Perspective
I’ve adopted a much better perspective on life from this type of training. On the journey to extract every bit of potential out of myself it’s demanded everything in me. Training and racing like a professional is so difficult and you face so much adversity. These challenges scale back the difficulty of everyday life. I’ve developed so much patience and understanding with myself and others. It’s also brought me to appreciate the small things more.
In cycling, there are so many seemingly controllable variables. My anxiety seeks to try and keep everything in control. I would let ruminating over things that would happen out of my control or worrying about something that could happen to me consume me.
Riding has proven to be the antithesis of my anxiety. As my time has grown in this sport I’ve realized you can’t control the outcome, only your input. Those ideas evolved into radical acceptance in all areas of my life. Now I can face the world with the ideology that I can only control what I can do and I can accept everything for what it is.
Relationships
For the majority of this season and last season, I was getting too focused on maximizing my training. It’s too easy for me to get tunnel vision with my training and quickly lose sight of what really matters in this world, my relationships. Chasing such a big dream I can take myself way too seriously, leading to spending too much time to myself in attempts to maximize training.
As effective as it is to only focus on my training it makes me feel lonely and isolated. Since spring I’ve been making much more of an effort to see my friends and family. All of these changes have led to a lot more balance in my life.
I feel so much better when seeing my friends and family on a much more regular basis. Its helped me learn how to keep myself detached from my place on the result sheet; and how to keep my identity from being fixated on solely being a racer. I’m able to keep my identity spread across multiple aspects of my life as it should be.
Career Paths
Something I’ve struggled with is coming to terms with either temporarily or permanently switching career paths. Since high school, the culture has been to finish school and get to your final career as fast as possible (my parents have never pushed this for me which I am truly thankful for). I’ve had this underlying unease since I left school last year, feeling like I’m wasting time not being in school working towards a surefire career pathway.
Seeing my friends wrapping up their degrees and starting to move out adds to this feeling. Going against the “norm” makes me feel insecure and like I’m wasting time. Recently I’ve come to accept and be happy with my decision on this career path. Now I don’t feel as if I’m wasting time because I’ve never felt so fulfilled in my life and this feeling is everything to me.
I think about this path and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I feel at peace with either of the outcomes of these two years. If I become a professional I’ll be happy that I made it. If I don’t, I’ll have the satisfaction that I gave this dream everything I had, and that’s all I can ask for. I have trust in myself that I’ll figure out my career whether it’s racing bikes, being a nurse, or somewhere in between.
Expectations
I’ve had to learn how to be very patient with myself this year as I learned how to race my bike at the professional level. I’ve had to really adjust my expectations this year. Expecting myself to become a professional this year after only starting professional training and racing last year was too ambitious.
With less than 1 year of racing experience, trying to find my way into the professional field with pros that have been racing bikes for 5-10 years has been difficult. I’ve switched from being fixated on the results to simply asking to improve and learn every race. I can say with confidence I’ve done that this year. I’ve learned so much about every aspect of racing and training. I’ve accumulated so much fitness, race experience, and knowledge, I feel much more confident and prepared to race my bike next season.
I truly love every moment of the process. I’ve learned, experienced, and made so many memories I wouldn’t trade this for the world. I know the self-development I’ve accumulated during this time will transfer to any endeavor I pursue whether that continues to be cycling or not.
I’m so thankful for my parents, family, and friends for being so supportive of me. And for so many of my peers lending me their trust and support. Feeling like my community, family, and friends have my back gives me endless fuel to my fire to keep chasing this dream until I can’t anymore. I’m thankful to the people I look up to who motivated me to get stronger.
I’m even more thankful for my ability to motivate other people to get strong. Feeling like I’m motivating people and the next generation is so gratifying. Being able to motivate others is arguably the most important part of becoming a top athlete to me. Knowing that I’m motivating others gives me the reassurance that I’m succeeding regardless if I become a pro cyclist or not.