The Long Way Forward

Saying I was always an athlete wouldn’t be entirely accurate. I’ve always been involved, sure, but usually somewhere in the middle of the pack, slightly confused, and mostly there for the snacks. Sport was something I did, not something I was particularly good at.

Then I found rowing.
And something shifted.

Rowing rewarded the exact thing I’d always had but never quite known what to do with: the ability to put my head down and keep going. Not the fastest, but the one who could just keep going. Endurance made sense to me in a way nothing else ever had. The suffering was oddly reassuring. The rhythm, the repetition, and the simple instruction of just keep pushing felt like home.

There was a workout we used to do that’s burned into my memory. We’d run five miles, then climb every stair in the football stadium, up and down, section by section. One hundred and one thousand, nine hundred and fifteen seats. Empty, echoing, endless. Your legs would shake before you even reached the stairs, and somewhere halfway through, your brain would start negotiating with you. Slow down. Back off. Just survive.

That was the workout where I learned how to push. I remember fixating on the runner ahead of me, close enough to catch. I’d overthink it. What if I pass them, and they pass me back? Who do I think I am? Eventually, I tried anyway. And sometimes they’d pass me back. And sometimes… we’d both end up going faster. Turns out, trying wasn’t something to be embarrassed about. It was the point.

From there, things escalated quickly. As they do.

I set my sights on the Olympics. I fell in love with training like that; it feels logical to want to make it your whole life. I chased that dream overseas, convinced that if I just worked harder, it would all click. Instead, I spent years forcing a square peg into a circular hole, managing injuries, and compensating for my height or lack of it.

Eventually, I retired. Not in a dramatic, movie-montage way, but in the quiet, painful realization that wanting something badly doesn’t always make it yours.

I thought I’d move on. I didn’t.

The hole was massive. So when bikes entered my life, I didn’t just dabble. I went all in. New sport, new dream, same familiar hunger. I slid right back into the athlete pipeline like muscle memory.

Then, almost a year ago, everything shifted again. My visa expired. I had to leave my job. My home. The life I’d built. 

So while I was trying to figure out what came next, I started sharing my cycling journey online. I had so many questions that I wasn’t really seeing answered anywhere. When I struck out on my own, I figured… why not start answering them myself, and share what I was learning as I went?

I didn’t have a plan. I still kind of don’t. But along the way, I’ve learned a lot: about racing, yes, but also about storytelling, community, and the power of letting people see you right in the middle of figuring it out.

This blog is me taking that one step further.

I want to go beyond the nitty-gritty of training plans and race results. I’m building a small corner of the internet, one that, ideally, spills out into real life, rooted in community, joy, curiosity, and big, slightly unhinged dreams.

Because for me, it’s never just been about racing.

It’s about the journey: the places bikes take us, the people we meet along the way, and the deep, beautiful things we learn about ourselves when we choose to keep going.