I grew up as a soccer fanatic, watching FIFA Women’s World Cup soccer with a reverence one reserves for heroes and legends. World Cup soccer matches were the highlight of my summer, and I can still recall vividly, at 9 years old, watching Team USA take the win against China in the 1999 Women’s World Cup final match in a penalty shootout. My adoration for those women transcended everything else in my life; they were the embodiment of everything I wanted to be when I grew up.
As a result, if you told 9-year-old Kelly that she would be competing in a World Cup event against the best of the world in her sport, she would have been amazed. Perhaps even a bit disbelieving. This young girl would have associated herself with the highest level of sport, and indeed, she would be inspired, energized, and proud.
But now at a distinguished 33 years old, an age when most would consider me at least marginally “grown up”, my perspective seems a bit marred. Someone recently asked me “are you excited to race at your first World Cup race in Nové Mesto?” and my response was “actually no, not really.” It’s not that I’m anti-excited; I’m more agnostic to it all. Lately I’ve been feeling unmotivated and a bit like a shell of myself moving through the world using momentum instead of intention. Along my journey since I was a 9-year-old dreamer, I lost the sense of awe I once had for World Cup level competition. Something is deeply distorted in my mind lately, and as much as I know this to be true, I also don’t yet know how to fix it. Indeed, no matter how much therapy I throw at it right now (a lot), and how many mental tricks I try (many), the solution is going to take time. More time than I can spare before my first ever World Cup Marathon Mountain Bike Race on May 13th, 2023.
How can I get to race day and feel like a happy and productive version of my athlete self?
Answer: I’m going back to basics and finding a mantra. Ever since I used a mantra during the 2021 XCM World Championships, this mental trick has always served me well.
Recently while laying in bed and attempting to fall sleep, I decided to roll through all the mantras I could think of, some well-worn classics and some creative new ones, trying them on like outfits in a dressing room. Which one feels most like me right now? Which one fits the sharp edges and dull corners I seem to have developed over the past couple months? Ultimately, I ended my search with an unlikely mantra that seems to do the trick. But first: some background.
In the nearly ten years since we first met, Joe and I have created a game that we didn’t realize we were creating. I’m not sure if it really qualifies as a game because you can only win when you play, but since I prescribe strictly to the win/lose paradigm in life (don’t worry, I’m working on this in therapy too), I’m calling it a game.
Here’s how we play: anytime we are in a situation that makes us tense, uncomfortable, angry, stuck, lost, or any number of negative emotions and one of us detects it, we have to yell “ADVENTURE!”. Whether we are feeling tense at each other or we are sharing the same negative emotion toward something/someone else, this exclamation is a quick and easy way to snap us out of the current situation and gain perspective. It’s a silly reminder to not take anything too seriously and to believe that, in the end, we’re going to be okay.
We’ve never formally discussed the rules, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. It is a game, after all.
The rules: you must say the word with drawn out excitement, almost as if you’re singing it to those around you. You can’t just say the word “adventure” with typical inflection and expect to win the game. Imagine the way a European football announcer yells “GOOOOALLL” after their home team scores. Or the way Julia Childs proclaims “Cocoaaa Coooookieeeesss” when she opens the warm oven. You must draw out the “-URE!” as if the syllable is hanging on for dear life and you are its only hope. You cannot say the word in the grunting way Henry Cavill’s Geralt of Rivia might, and certainly not with the despondent disposition of Ebeneezer Scrooge. The word must be exclaimed in your voice, not an imitation of someone else’s, and it must hold the reverence we reserve for heroes and the excitement of a young child. Our game, our rules.
Only a few people close to us know we play this game, but most do not, so anytime one of us proclaims “ADVENTURE!” we’re usually met with surprise, confusion, bewilderment, and a sense of unexpected joy. To that I think to myself exactly. Sometimes we get a newbie to yell it in response, which really is the winningest outcome of all.
Joe and I find ourselves playing this game when we’re lost driving, lost riding our bikes, or just lost trying to follow IKEA furniture directions. We’ve used it while out biking and climbing a slog of a hill and both of us are hungry and tired. I’m pretty sure we even used it when, during the Covid pandemic, we decided to participate in a virtual cooking class to learn how to make homemade gnocchi and all that resulted was a pile of dirty dishes and an absurd amount of extremely salty potato objects that much more closely resembled turds than pasta.
Okay, back to the point.
The whole idea of racing at a World Cup next weekend has been giving me a lot of big emotions, and most of them are not good ones. I don’t think the World Cup race on its own is giving me these feelings, but rather a combination of many things converging in my life simultaneously. Right now, I have more questions than answers, which is unfortunate given my nature as an engineer to want to solve everything. So I’ve decided to make the mantra of my Nové Mesto World Cup race experience “ADVENTURE!”
Interestingly, when I mentioned this mantra to my therapist, I immediately felt ashamed at how silly the idea sounded once it left my mouth. But she surprised me by saying the idea was fantastic. In the way a therapist does when they help you peel back layers, she said the phrase was not only a helpful reminder to be present and gain perspective, but also an exclamation of trust. “ADVENTURE!” is a statement of trust that although I am facing a challenge, I have done the things I need to do to get through it. Similar to how I carry a multi-tool in my jersey pocket on race day, I will carry this mantra as the reminder that I have 33 years of experience navigating life’s challenges and have survived all of them. It’s a reminder that while I might not know everything, I know enough to be okay. I will be okay.
Here’s what I know to be true about the upcoming Marathon Mountain Bike World Cup Race experience in Nové Mesto, Czech Republic:
The race course is 120km long (two 60km laps) but I don’t know the actual route yet
The weather forecast is gloomy, with relatively cool temperatures and lots of rain, which is oddly familiar to the past several weeks of weather in Massachusetts
We are staying in an old farmhouse Airbnb that might or might not have all the essentials for daily living
We overpacked to the extreme—as usual—with items befitting a high maintenance person such as myself, including “essentials” like a pancake pan, an extra roll of toilet paper, and a sharp kitchen knife
I know a grand total of zero Czech words, either written or spoken
I am travelling with my best friend and adventure partner, Joe, with whom I have successfully navigated many scary and uncertain travel experiences
The “ADVENTURE!” mantra gives me hope that I’ll approach the full trip — including the race experiences and post-race Prague exploration — with openness. A willingness to take everything as it comes, rather than trying to force a transactional experience. A mindfulness that enables me to feel like myself without getting lost in my thoughts.
With nearly a week yet before my first ever World Cup race, it feels pretty good to have this plan, to write it out, to breathe life into it through my writing. Maybe I will, in fact, be okay.
That’s right, 9-year-old Kelly. We’re going on an adventure.