Cyclophobia

Or, “everything I need to know I learned from mountain biking”

For those of you who don’t know me well, it may be news to you that I have a mild (to moderate) fear of bicycles.  When I was a kid, I had no issues whatsoever with riding a bike, despite a few bloody scrapes over the years.  It was how we got around before driving age, it was fun, and my friends and I would spend hours out and about, riding and exploring, without our parents having any idea where we were.  It meant freedom and adventure.

My freshman year of college, I followed my boyfriend into the much more serious world of road biking, thinking it would help him like me more.  I watched coverage of races like the Tour de France religiously and read Lance Armstrong’s autobiography;[1] I bought a very expensive Trek road bike and a lot of expensive equipment to go with it; I adopted a stereotypically snooty attitude that can be associated with some people involved in that particular segment of the sport; I tried desperately to be good to impress him, despite the fact that things weren’t working.  I also had a crash.

Bad Associations

It wasn’t a particularly bad crash.  I know plenty of people who have experienced far, far worse – including broken bones, concussions, and even a friend of my husband’s who died after being hit by a car.  All in all, my crash (a result of a new part not being tightened properly) wasn’t bad.  But between my sprained wrist and the condition of the bike, I couldn’t ride it home – and having grown up on horseback, I know you have to get right back on or you might never get up the nerve again, which is exactly what happened here.  After a recovery period (during which I couldn’t ride), I could not bring myself to get back on the bike without being terrified.  We also broke up around the same time I was trying to regain my confidence in his sport, so the pain of the breakup and the pain of my failure built upon each other and became hard to detangle.

I avoided my bike after that, and it collected dust at my parents’ house for years.  After college I moved to Japan, where biking is extremely common for commuters – children and adults, alike. I was given a bike by my workplace so I could get around town, but I didn’t use it once during the two years I lived there.  I did once rent a bike to ride around Kyoto when my mom and uncle came to visit, but it was not a pleasant experience for me.  (Fortunately, the rental was huge, made of steel, weighed about 40 pounds, and gave me a more upright position than my road bike had, so I felt much more physically and emotionally stable.)

Aside from that unique situation, I avoided bikes to the greatest extent possible for years after that… until I met my husband.  Christian owns six bicycles, all different types.  He rode 8,000 miles the year we met and regularly participated in multiple types of competitions.  While bikes were a beloved hobby for him, I was very clear from the start that they were not of interest to me, nor should he expect that to change.  I was very worried that a similar situation might arise in which I would try to get involved in his sport to impress him and, once again, have a bad experience.  He was completely supportive and told me it made no difference to him if I never got on a bike again.

Fresh Attempts

Over the seven years we’ve been together, I (and only I) have occasionally raised the subject of climbing back into the saddle.  Part of that draw, admittedly, is fueled by my desire for us to spend more time together, but most of it has been because I feel limited by this fear, and I don’t want to be.  I feel like I have remained tethered, through bad associations, to an unhealthy relationship from (now) 20 years ago.  Christian has – as with many aspects of our relationship – let me take this foray into discomfort at my own pace over the years.  We started very simply with rides along the beach or on flat, wide running trails, increasing difficulty only when I was ready.

We recently went on what was only my fourth mountain biking trip in three years.  It should not be surprising to note that getting on a bike once a year does not exactly lend itself to improvement.  In the best of circumstances, by the end of a trip I have regained the level of confidence I had at the end of the previous trip. Given that, I objectively recognize that I should be a little kinder to myself with respect to expectations around improvement. I am not kind; in fact, I am fairly brutal.

This recent trip was sorely needed from a mental health standpoint. We drove into the mountains of West Virginia, and I turned off my phone for three days. I wanted to be in nature, in the moment, and shut off from obligations and expectations of my daily life.  Even though I left my phone in the car, I clearly brought some other baggage with me.  I spend so much of my life focused on getting things right – whether it’s making the best decisions at work, or providing useful content on this blog, or properly caring for the animals I love – that it is hard to put everything aside and simply be gentle to myself.

Getting back on the bike this year, I felt incredibly jittery, as usual.  Unfortunately, nervous behavior, such as going slowly, looking straight down at what you’re currently riding over, and overcorrecting at every moment, will be more likely to wear you out and get you injured.  I know this concept intellectually, but it is counterintuitive, especially from a physical standpoint.  I cried multiple times on the first day back when I didn’t instantly regain the level of skill and confidence I had on the exact same trail last October. In case you were curious, this trail was marked with a green circle: beginner.

Christian was incredibly patient the entire time, providing a healthy blend of encouragement through tricky patches and reminders that we could turn around if I was uncomfortable. Without lecturing or talking down to me, he reminded me of certain tips that would help: riding a little faster, looking further ahead down the trail, and picking myself up out of the saddle to let the bike handle the bumps.  After I chided myself for walking down a steep, rocky section, he led me back so we could go up and down it together.  I came off the bike several times but ultimately made it through.

Growth Edge

They say you should do something every day that scares you, and after this trip, I once again know why that is valuable advice.  I certainly do stretch beyond my comfort zone every day at work, and I know I am growing because of that.  However, work stress and the sensation of physical danger are very different things.  Feeling like you’re going to slip off a narrow trail and plummet down the side of a mountain is terrifying, so making it safely back to the trail head is a blessed relief. And we know that there is a different physiological reaction in that situation than there is in responding to a stressful email – mostly because in a physical situation, your body moves through the entire stress cycle.[2],[3]

After making it past challenging obstacles with a little more confidence every time, I actually began to have fun – just a bit – and had a little more faith in my abilities. If I got rattled by a challenging section, I would get off the bike, feel my feet on the ground, count my breaths, and calm down to the point that I wasn’t creating a risk for myself by being too jumpy. Interestingly, I noticed that I took some of that perspective back home with me.  I felt like I had more self-confidence going back into my office, and that I was able to calm myself down more easily if a difficult situation arose.  

More than that, though, I noticed some of the same mountain biking tips come back to me this past week, echoing almost like platitudes for business: recognizing that there are bumps, but that you just have to keep pushing through and not lose your momentum on little things that feel big; recognizing that you have to keep focused on where you’re going, not just where you are, or else you’ll go down; recognizing that part of the deal is trusting your bike (or your team, or systems, or whatever) to do its job.

At the risk of sounding cheesy, I do greatly value the (very limited) time I’ve spent getting back on a bicycle, working to reclaim those experiences for myself and detach them from a long-past toxic relationship. I know I’m never going to be an experienced, skilled rider, but if I can get to the point where I’m just genuinely enjoying what I’m doing, that will be enough for me. My biggest learning curve may not be on the bike at all, but rather in accepting my own abilities as limited and imperfect… and doing it anyway – for myself.

I hope some of these thoughts were helpful or enjoyable for you to read.
Thanks for being here – I hope you’re remembering to be kind to yourself too!

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[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2265.It_s_Not_about_the_Bike

[2] https://radicalmoderate.online/dont-fear-the-reaper-processing-tragedy-through-art/

[3] https://radicalmoderate.online/this-is-fine/

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