The dark corners of a cyclist’s soul

Arrivée regular columnist Eleanor Jaskowska continues her frank exploration of the darker side of cycling… and how she learned to find a way to deal with the agonising mental effects of failure

The dark corners of a

IT CAN BE a delicate balance, being a long-distance cyclist. It’s all too easy to allow yourself to become defined by your sport. When this happens it can be difficult to hold the inevitable failures lightly.

Sometimes an unfortunate turn of events might even force us to stop riding – injury, bereavement, a change in priorities or even a global pandemic. What does our love of long days in the saddle, night riding, sheltering in bus stops, tell us about our underlying values?

I remember my first big failure: scratching from The Transcontinental Race in 2016. As a relative newbie to longdistance cycling, I’d fallen head over heels in love with this obscure community of like-minded folk.

I enjoyed being known by my friends and colleagues as that person who cycles crazy long distances, and it helped me define myself in a way that was independent of my career – a sore topic at the time. When my race went pear-shaped and I started to fall apart from grief, anxiety and heat stroke, it wasn’t just my ride across Europe that had failed – I’d failed. I was a failure.

I’d put an incredible amount of pressure on myself to ride across Europe, despite not having very much experience. I’d pushed myself hard in the run-up, but it had also given me a purpose. Having completed my first Super Randonneur series with relative ease I’d allowed myself to think that completing the 4,000km Transcon might just be within my capability.

But, it turned out it wasn’t and now I was back to the 9 to 5 and feeling like a zombie hamster on a wheel. I’d heard about the post-adventure blues before, but never expected them to be this bad.

Even though moments of the race had been incredibly uncomfortable, I could remember vividly that feeling of forcing every fibre in my body to reach the top of a climb, and the sense of achievement upon seeing the summit sign. Returning to the office, where I was just pushing documents around a server and updating spreadsheets, I had to update everyone who asked why the TCR hadn’t gone to plan. Re-telling the story of my failure was agony.

At each re-telling I would relive those days in Austria where I’d cried five times before lunch. My GP prescribed increasing doses of antidepressants and I was eventually signed off work.

My life felt like it lacked direction and it took me about seven months to enjoy sitting on a bicycle again; the resulting lack of winter miles making for a very uncomfortable Bryan Chapman the following year.

It has taken me a while to develop a sense of self which is independent of my hobbies, career and other external factors. I thought about what kind of person I was. How far I can ride on a bacon sandwich doesn’t tell you anything about the kind of person I am. Am I kind? Fair? Optimistic? Well, generally yes, but my optimism has been known to falter at 4am rolling into the final control of the Mille Cymru on the verge of hypothermia.

I was back at work and my mental health was being managed by HR like a performance issue. I was surprised that the public sector was unable to come up with a better way to help me return to being mentally well. I decided to change jobs, anything would be better than this. I managed to find something much closer to home and cutting out the 45 minute each way train commute helped me reclaim some valuable time for myself.

Being in a new workplace helped me see things from an outsider’s perspective. If things didn’t go well on a project I was involved with, I could identify a bunch of things which were outside my control that led to this outcome. I could see that I wasn’t the cause of these failures and slowly learned to hold things much more lightly.

I saw a therapist for a couple of years who encouraged me to think about the values which were important to me, and to pursue activities which helped to move me towards these values. I felt like this was much more effective for me than a goalorientated form of talking therapy.

Setting goals wasn’t something I struggled with, but framing everything with values encouraged me to question why I would pursue certain activities. And were these helpful in building the life I needed to

get well again?

This got me thinking, if I hadn’t become interested in long-distance cycling would something else have serendipitously crossed my path? Not many of us seek out randonneuring as a way to satiate some deep hunger within our souls. Might my attention have been captured by a different exploit, one which also allowed me to travel through beautiful landscapes under my own steam?

Often, it’s just a chance encounter that gets us into long distance cycling. If it had been a different chance meeting with a different stranger, “it” would be something else. Surely something predisposes us to falling for long days in the saddle?

I think exploring my values in this way also helped me navigate the Covid-19 restrictions and the immediate pause on AUK events earlier this year. Yes, riding to the other side of Wales and back again in a weekend is nice, but we were still permitted to explore locally. This felt like such a privilege given the state in many other countries.

I also felt incredibly grateful not to have any children to home-school, or worry about how the situation would impact their future education and work prospects. I still miss the physical community. The first evening we were able to meet up in the park as a small group of friends was as restorative as a bowl of rice pudding at 2am. I’m not sure how much I miss the 2am rice pudding though. ❝ I was back at work and my mental health was being managed by HR like a performance issue. I was surprised that the public sector was unable to come up with a better way to help me return to being mentally well ❞

Eleanor climbs the hills of Hirnant in Snowdonia with friends Rose and Sam in December 2019