Crushed Dreams

Cycling is my favourite past time activity; it has shaped my lifestyle into what it is today. For a large chunk of my teenage years I aspired to make a career out of my beloved hobby. My life in grade 10 and 11 consisted of training and racing. On weekends when my friends went out to see movies and party I would be in bed early or out of town preparing for competitions. I had a coach who I consulted frequently and I was required to write down every food that I ate.

I worked hard and as a result I achieved some good results. As a cadet I came in 2nd at the Ontario Provincial TT championships. I won an expert level O’Cup X-C MTB race and I stepped onto the podium at a variety of road races. In 2006 I raced at road Nationals and earned myself a spot to race for Team Ontario at Tour de l’Abitibi Junior World cup race in Val’dor Quebec.

Like any competitive athlete I experienced many ups and downs in competition. I had some hard crashes and experienced many technicals (flat tires, broken parts, etc). The year 2006 was especially hard on me. I broke a very expensive wheel and had some untimely technical incidents. As these incidents added up one after the next the pressures that I placed on myself to succeed grew significantly. I would become sick at the beginning of races from nerves. I wanted to do well, and I trained very hard. But every race it was the same thing over and over again. I would get caught up in the thought of how much better every one else was doing and would mentally defeat myself.

Now that I have taken some time away from racing I can see that this was completely ridiculous. Riding is the most fun thing I have ever done and I was turning it into a completely miserable experience. The worst part about it was it was completely self inflicted and avoidable.

Professional athletes are very admirable people and at some point in life I am sure every person has wanted to be one. Unfortunately this is something not every one can be, hard work really only goes so far in the competitive world. Professional athletes are freakishly gifted individuals. They are people who simply enjoyed doing something so much that they did it as much as possible and their god given talents put them into a position that made an athletic career possible.

I can speak about this from experience. I was extremely competitive at the provincial level. In Ontario I worked hard and did well. My results took me to Nationals where there was a much larger pool of talent. My standings in Ontario on average were in the top 5 but at Nationals I placed much lower (27th out of 200 starters). The top riders at nationals went on to compete for Team Canada at Road Worlds in Europe. At worlds every member of the Canadian team was dropped and lapped. The level of competition and talent pool in Europe is much deeper then it is in Canada. The guys who seemed fast to me were in the scheme of things quite slow.

This experience has allowed me to grow significantly as a person. I may not be cut out to be a professional athlete, but that certainly doesn’t mean that I have no place in the cycling world. Riding a bike is fun and it is a great way to stay healthy. This is an outlook that should have stuck with me throughout my racing ambitions. If I had of been riding for sheer pleasure and not for success then I wouldn’t have gotten so down on myself and in the long run I would have been more successful. I would have had more fun racing and would not have burnt myself out the way I did.

This is an important point because I feel that many people are forgetting why they compete in their respective activities. Competition is a great thing when those involved are entering it with the right mentalities. But for those who are taking it too seriously it could prove to be very detrimental. It is to easy to become obsessed with winning, but really the best way to win is enjoying what you do so much that you just do it better then everyone else. This is a lesson that I learned the hard way.

Many other great things can come from racing other then competition. Racing taught me many great habits that well stick with me for life. These are things that should be emphasized over results. Activity is something cycling promoted for me and is something that I will always do. Racing also taught me the importance of proper nutrition. I know a lot about nutrition and balancing meals that many of my peers do not. I have also gained great insight as to what things are important to me in life and what sort of career I would like. Through my ambitions I have found that a professional career is not in the cards, however, I have recognized that I want a career that is active and that allows me to enjoy the hobbies that I love.