The hum of the fridge and a ticking clock distracted me from sleep, along with a banging head, more intense than ever after yesterday’s race. Was it the pressure of a big race, selection for the Tokyo Paralympic hanging entirely on this one weekend? Or a cocktail or hormones, neurochemicals, the change in climate… I considered the scenario ahead: alarm at the crack of dawn, getting to the start line of the road race in the lashing rain, finishing in a puddle of piss due to ongoing bladder dramas, no shower, packing the bike up, rushing to the airport. Then I mused the other path, the path of least resistance.
“But this is what you do” an inner voice told me, “You always show up. You always do what you say you are going to. You can’t back out now.”
A few friends messaged, encouraging me on. “You can do it. Go race, show them what you’re made of.” They meant well.
I am headstrong. I wouldn’t have become paralysed if it weren’t for that; I would have listened to the screams from my gut and come back down from the cliff face. My pattern for years was to ramp up, then crash and burn, recover, course correct, then repeat. It is a pattern I’ve been working hard to release. My driving curiosity for a third Olympic cycle was experimenting with being gut-strong: if I listened deeply to my truth and honoured what my body was needing, could performance be better than ever rather than being driven to the point of collapse?
It was getting late, and I got wrapped up in the drama of the decision I was facing. I felt the current of racing struggle through my body; resistance. I talked to a compassionate friend. I cried. Then I climbed into bed and stopped. In the darkness of the Air BnB, I listened. Not to the fridge or the clock, but to myself. When I thought of racing my head got heavier, a feeling of struggle and pain, almost dread.
“What if you just say no? Enough is enough,” another voice reasoned. It was an unfamiliar voice.
I listened.
I heard my breathing.
I listened some more.
I allowed the question to sink in.
“Enough is enough” reverberated. I heard the Chumbawamba song playing, chanting the words, “Open your eyes. Time to give up. Enough is enough is enough is enough!” I thought of my friend Will, a big fan of the Chumbas, and wondered if he was speaking to me. His climbing accident, three months after my own all those years before, had taken him to the other side. I felt often though that he wasn’t far.
“Is it time?”
Some peace arrived, and I sank into sleep.
Endings often take us by surprise. The unexpected is uninvited, a shocking guest gate-crashing our party. We imagine it turning out a certain way, but things go wild. The medal I was striving for in Tokyo 2020 was a goal that had limped through Covid into 2021, and then dissolved in that weekend, washed away in the rain of a dreary Belgium spring.
Soon after, there were some long days in accident and emergency, a trail to urology and a solution to the puddles that were pouring. I’m a great believer that we embody our deep emotions, and I started to connect deeper. “How long have I been pissing myself off?”
I realised I had not enjoyed the last few years of racing at all. Without noticing, I had been afraid of change. I love to ride my bike, and was scared to stop the big goals that gave me so much meaning and reason. What if letting go meant losing my most faithful partner….?! Deeper than that though, I was bored of the same routine, of 13 years non-stop on the hamster wheel, of such a driven, solitary life. I needed more connection; love; expansion.
It seems ironic that as a doctor of gold geology that I managed to metamorphose a 6 cm infected rock in my own bladder. It’s been removed now, and flow of the golden stuff has returned in so many ways. I realise that my most faithful partner is not really my bike (though I still love it dearly!). It is the ability to listen, not to words and voices, but to what lies beneath, to the barometer within. Perhaps this is our Inner Gold. A better medal than any.
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