More than two weeks have passed since the 2022 Marathon MTB (XCM) World Championships race in Denmark and I finally feel like I have a handle on the truth of my experience, its richness and texture familiar now, after turning it over endlessly in my mind like a polished rock.
It seems prudent to tell you the story of my experience twice. The first story is my initial perspective, a raw retelling of events as they happened. The second is the real truth about my world championship race week, a retelling shaped by reflection and time, filling in the glaring gaps that weren’t so obvious at the time.
Part 1: What happened at the XCM World Championships
On the morning of our flight to Denmark, I fell down the stairs at home. When it happened I was in an almost-finished-packing-for-the-biggest-race-of-the-season stupor, feeling relieved and unsuspecting, probably multitasking, likely looking down at my phone screen while thinking about all the things I forgot to throw into my suitcase. My foot slipped on the top stair and I bumped my way down half a flight of stairs with absolutely no grace or control. It wasn’t catastrophic, and if I’m embarrassingly honest, it was the second time this happened in the span of three weeks. Maybe my slippers have gotten a bit slick from shuffling around on my worn out carpets, or maybe my coordination has started to deteriorate at the ripe old age of 32. Either way, when I fell, I bruised my heel, tweaked my lower back, and gave myself a solid amount of whiplash. I was generally fine and I brushed it off with an admonishing chuckle, hoping this wasn’t an indicator for how the trip would unfold. You know what they say – there’s nothing like a good old stair tumble to kick off the biggest race week of the season.
The trip from Boston Airport international terminal, through TSA, and into the air was uneventful. I planned to sleep the entire flight and instead was met with shocking wakefulness for all 7 hours, so I traded precious sleep for reading an underwhelming book and watching a disappointingly strange movie. We connected through Munich airport and eventually landed in Hamburg, where a pleasant man at the Hertz Rental Car counter apologized for only having a manual transmission car in our reserved category. As someone who enjoys driving a manual, Joe was immensely pleased but I was disappointed because while I don’t particularly enjoy driving in general, I don’t actually know how to drive a manual. So, I could not share our international driving experience on this trip. Hertz Man graciously recommended I use the rental car to learn how to drive a manual on the quiet Danish roads. Clearly he didn’t sense (or didn’t care about) the ferocity with which I approach everything in my life, including my fierce ability to accelerate transmission death when learning to drive.
For those who are curious about Joe’s driving report: Joe found driving on the German Autobahn to be extremely manageable and almost pleasant. Unlike driving in the United States, slower traffic on the Autobahn always stays in the right lane, everyone uses the left lane for passing only, and the rules of the road are well respected. When we crossed into Denmark, the driving speed slowed, everyone was immensely patient and almost generous to a fault. As someone who I believe is a far too generous and patient driver, Joe felt right at home in the quiet Danish roads.
Our Airbnb was a small one-bedroom apartment on top of a red brick home typical of this region. On Monday afternoon, our fluent-in-English hosts were overwhelmingly excited to welcome us after a long day of travel. They encouraged us to eat the grapes and tomatoes in their greenhouse, enjoy the backyard with its various chairs and swings, and even use their basement for bike storage.
Not pictured: all the tomatoes consumed while reading in the cozy, warm greenhouse.
Grocery shopping is always our first stop after a big trip (Joe fears the wrath of hangry Kelly…), so we zombie walked our way through one of the best grocery stores we’ve experienced so far in Europe and then settled into our home away from home. After sitting on a plane and then in a car for multiple hours, I didn’t think much about the pain in my lower back as I foam rolled, stretched, and laid down for bed.
On Tuesday morning, I met with fellow Team USA member and Massachusetts resident, Chris Mehlman, for a longer endurance ride that included a lap of the race course and some local bike path exploring. In our matching Julbo sunglasses, we got a feel for the local terrain as well as the colder temperatures and brutal Danish wind.
Massachusetts reunion in Denmark!
The bike infrastructure in this part of Denmark is unlike anything I have ever seen, or really anything I could have ever dreamed. First of all, automobiles respect cyclists in a way I’ve never experienced. There are bike-specific traffic lights that turn green a few seconds before the automobile traffic lights so the cyclists can get ahead of traffic. Cycling “on the road” is safe because nearly every road has at least a dedicated bike lane or a completely separate bike path. Of all the amazing bike accommodations in this area, the most amazing feature I discovered was a 5-way bike traffic circle (or “rotary” for us New Englanders), located inside and below an analogous automobile traffic circle.
An unremarkable photo of a remarkable discovery — a bike-only rotary!
All of the Team USA members were on a shared WhatsApp message thread, where we discussed travel logistics, ride plans, and travel stories. On Wednesday, a group of five Team USA members met to ride the full race course loop. This group included two-time Olympian and one of my long-time role models, Lea Davison. We set out to survey the terrain, inspect potential line options, and–most importantly–enjoy riding bikes together.
During this ride, I was supposed to add a few 5-minute intervals to the end of my ride and Lea also mentioned she also had some intervals. My coach wanted me to ride the intervals alone so I could stay focused on executing them as defined rather than doing someone else’s workout, and Joe said it might be better to do the intervals alone so I don’t get stuck in my head about how I feel (in case I ended up feeling terrible). For what it’s worth, I agreed with both of them in principle. Yet, when Lea turned to me mid-ride and said “alright Kelly, let’s start a 5-minute opener”, my fan-girl, how-could-I-say-no-to-doing-intervals-with-a-long-time-role-model heart skipped a beat and of course you know I said yes. I stuck on her wheel the entire time, even when we went longer than 5 minutes so we could see how it felt to crest an upcoming hill and recover on the back side. Naturally, I felt like I was on top of the world after sticking right with Lea and feeling pretty darn strong. Then, I joined her for another. And if you told me even last year that I would be doing intervals with Lea Davison at the World Championships, I would have laughed in your face. But here I was.
All it took was one ride for me to feel like I was part of the team. This was starkly different from last year’s World Championships, where I pre-rode everyday alone and had no contact with any of the Team USA guys (I was the only Team USA woman). Last year, I marinated in anxiety and loneliness on the bike. But this year, subsets of Team USA met everyday to ride, laugh, and build our confidence for race day. We also built camaraderie – something I haven’t had much of over the past 5 years of being a privateer pro. The week of riding with Team USA made me feel like I was part of something so much bigger than myself. Indeed, I was in Denmark to represent the USA, but I was not alone; I had teammates, which gave me a sense of purpose.
All smiles for Team USA (left to right): Danny Van Wagoner, Jules Goguely, Jake Sitler, Chris Mehlman, Lea Davison, me(!).
The race course was a 41 km (approximately 25.3 miles) loop that the Elite men completed 3 times and the Elite women completed 2 times with an extra-credit loop (approximately 5 miles) in the middle of Lap 1. It comprised several miles of fun, flowy singletrack, some forest roads, farm fields, park land, gravel paths, a couple urban features (e.g., stone staircase), downtown cobblestone streets, and very minimal paved roads (remarkable!). I was pleasantly surprised by how much singletrack the course contained, and was excited to see the terrain was similar, albeit a bit mellower, to New England singletrack. Unfortunately, unlike any other marathon race I had ever done, the course contained only very short climbs, with the longest being no more than 3-4 minutes. Without sustained climbing typical of my previous races, I knew this was going to be a very different style of racing – one that included short VO2 efforts (sprints) and minimal coasting.
2022 XCM World Championships race course loop (approximately 25.3mi).
It’s difficult to intuit on the map above, but the start of the course was similar to a cyclocross race. Actually, much of the race felt “cyclocrossy”, but most of all the beginning. The first kilometer wound through narrow cobblestone streets in downtown Haderslev before diving into a city park with narrow gravel walking paths that could fit only two racers side-by-side comfortably. The park had a flat hairpin turn on loose gravel, went under a small walking bridge before taking a sharp right turn, and ultimately dumped us into a gas station parking lot. Nothing about the start felt like a typical marathon MTB course. However, if I’ve learned anything over my years of racing, it’s that there really isn’t a “typical” XCM course. The treacherous part of this course is that the race start was NOT neutral, which meant everyone would be all-out sprinting to avoid the inevitable bottlenecks and backups from the mass start and potential carnage left its wake.
A section toward the loop’s beginning traversed a park that contained rolling, grassy fields, with a gravel doubletrack path cutting through its center. During our first pre-rides, the course map appeared to follow the gravel path, and while the climbs in this park were short, they were steep and punchy. As the race got closer and the official course was marked with stakes, paint, and tape, we saw that the course followed immediately next to the gravel path, on a VERY slow, speed-sucking mowed field full of deer poop, sneaky potholes, and special soil that vacuumed tires to the earth (that last part was made up, but I would have believed it on race day).
Few things are crueler than racing through a freshly mowed field right next to a gravel road. Photo credit: René Deleuran / Haderslev Kommune
Each morning, Team USA members hopped on course to continue getting a feel for the terrain. We discussed bike racing and riding, and the beautiful Danish countryside. Our conversation skirted around race day topics, such as our concerns for the harrowing first few kilometers, the strange A-line features that really weren’t very technical, and who we expected would win the race.
Overall, I was having more fun than I could have hoped for during this trip. My goal going into this week was to make sure I enjoyed myself and you bet I was chasing this goal with the same ferocity as anything else I’ve ever aspired to do. In fact, my mission to have fun and enjoy being with my teammates seemed to keep me from thinking about all the race nerves that consume me in the days leading up to a race.
As race day approached, I prepared all of my gear, lining up my race shoes, race helmet, Julbo glasses, and tools in a neat pile on the floor. I struggled to decide what to wear because the forecast was showing rain, wind, and low 40’s (Fahrenheit). My Girl Scout tendencies had me setting aside three types of gloves, two jerseys, and multiple pairs of socks. Just in case, of course. I prepared my fueling plan with aid station handoffs by lining up and labeling all of my bottles. Every action felt mechanical and transactional, without any sort of excitement or emotion. At the time, I was proud of myself for not letting these race preparation activities melt me into a pile of anxiety like they usually do.
Finally, on the evening before the race, I foam rolled and stretched, did some glute activation exercises to help with the strange, lingering back soreness, and went to bed relatively early.
On race morning, I woke at 4:15am to pee (this is standard), well before my alarm, and when laying back down, instead of slipping back into my restless, dreamless pre-race slumber, my mind lit up with all the potential ways I might crash out of the race in the first 1.5 miles. I visualized all the places where my race could go wrong. I imagined all the ways I might be unable to finish the race. My mind seemed convinced that I traveled all the way to Denmark just to crash in the first 20 minutes. Thoughts wandered without purpose or structure and I was hopeless to control them. Ultimately, I decided to let them take over and hope that would get it out of my system. It did not. I didn’t sleep another minute by the time my alarm went off.
I went about my race morning routine as usual but didn’t feel the same spark of excitement or even anxiousness as my typical race morning. Strangely, I had no appetite for my race morning pancakes and banana. I forced myself to eat four bites, which was about half of one pancake, but was unable to consume any more. I simply wasn’t hungry. Even drinking my coffee was forced and without any sort of emotion (I usually love race morning coffee). In truth, I felt a bit like the actions were empty and lifeless, not at all like I was preparing for this season’s biggest race.
As forecasted, the morning was cold. For months I had been used to short sleeves and shorts weather, but Denmark was already experiencing Fall’s crispness, the cool morning mist and brisk winds. Naturally, I was prepared with every potential option for warmup and race clothing, so I left the house with a quick goodbye from Joe as he loaded the bottles, tools, and gear into the car and headed downtown.
On typical race mornings, my heart rate skyrockets during my warmups. The combination of adrenaline and caffeine make me a bit jittery (and if I’m honest, I love that feeling). I love the buzzing feeling in my entire body, like something big and remarkable is about to happen and it begins right with me, at the heart of it all. That said, I try not to look at my HR during my warm up because I don’t want it to freak me out. But today, my HR was almost completely normal. I put in some harder efforts as I rode around the local bike paths and my HR tracked exactly as I would expect it to on a normal training ride. By the numbers, this was just any other day on the bike. Rather than be concerned, I was proud of myself for continuing to avoid the crippling anxiety I tend to experience at big races.
The women’s Elite call-ups were at 8:35am, 15 minutes before our scheduled start time. They separated groups of women into different boxes, based on their call-up number. As the 25th call-up, I was supposed to be in the first box, which meant I would be sharing a box with Pauline Ferrand-Prevot, Jolanda Neff, Mona Mittenwaller (the defending XCM World Champ), and several other notable female Pro’s. What a feeling, to be grouped among the best in the world.
Before entering the box, I kissed Joe and stepped away, forcing a smile on my face. Somehow it all felt a bit fake, like I was going through the motions in a rehearsal kind of way, as if I might get to share a fancy rehearsal dinner with all these women shortly after this moment and the Big Day was still at least a day away. But of course, today was the Big Day and I was called up to the start line among the world’s best female pro’s.
The start of the race was exactly the treacherous sprint I expected. Cornering at speed on cobblestones was as terrifying as it sounds, and squeezing a massive group of racers eager to connect with the leaders through tiny paths and gates was the stuff of nightmares. But, somehow, I stayed upright and was sitting around 20th place by the time we entered the first true trail. It’s no surprise that the women around me were aggressive, given what I had seen in previous international races, but it was disorienting to be sprinting so much at the start of a 55 mile race. I was prepared for this to be a fast start, but I couldn’t fathom sustaining this kind of effort for hours.
After the first 15 minutes of sprint-coast-sprint efforts, I started to wheeze and I truly can’t recall the last time I wheezed on the bike. My breathing had been reduced to the point where it felt like my lips were glued around a tiny straw at high altitude. The wheezing was obvious, too, the kind that someone could certainly hear from the sidelines or while passing me. With every painful, labored breath, I felt my composure deteriorating and my body slowing.
Then, the pain in my back began. Ah, my old friend, low back pain. Usually, I get low back pain because my QL is tight and I’ve gone too long between massage appointments. Sometimes, it happens at the end of really hard, short sprint workouts. Despite following my nightly foam rolling and stretching routine leading up to the race, the pain began only 30 minutes into the race. It started as only a slight tightness, a mild burning, but for some reason I knew this was going to be different.
Upon approaching the first mowed path hill in the park, Lea caught me and she said something encouraging like “c’mon!” but I had no energy to reply. I might have forced a smile/grimace but of course she wouldn’t have noticed. I imagined my potential responses like “I swear I’m stronger than this, please don’t be disappointed in me!” or “Hey did you see an adult female sized airway back there somewhere? Can’t you see I’m breathing through a tiny straw?” Of course, by the time I finished any of these thoughts, she was well on her way to connecting with the leaders.
For a while I was able to hang onto the back of the large chasing group, which included fellow Team USA member Lauren. Interestingly, while I struggled to keep up in the sprinting sections, I was faster than nearly all of the girls in my group on the singletrack. With some coasting relief, my wheezing stopped for a short while and I had a glimpse of enjoyment on the rooted paths, winding through Danish forests. This feeling. The flying-between-trees, floating-over-roots feeling was what brought me back to racing every time. I could suffer immensely in every race and still be drawn back for this exact feeling.
Flying through Danish singletrack. Photo credit: René Deleuran / Haderslev Kommune
When we turned onto the “biggest” climb (a whopping ~4 minutes), I started to separate from the chase group. It was muddy and slow, and the wheezing returned as soon as I started to dig deep. For the next few miles, I was riding with a group of about four women, working together to keep connected to the larger chase group ahead. On this climb, I was out of the saddle sprinting when my lower back pain intensified. I could feel it worsening, like a knot pulling tighter, making comfort in the saddle impossible. I alternated between sitting and standing frequently, to help prevent it from going into full spasms. Naturally, just as most of the women were settling into their groups, I was watching mine pedal away, along with the positivity I usually have when racing.
At the aid station half-way through the first lap (Tech & Feed Zone 2), Joe and I had a seamless hand-off but I’m sure he saw the desperation in my eyes as we both watched girls I had beaten in Poland, girls I had beaten at last year’s World Championships, pedal away from me with ease. In the way one does with a best friend, I felt the need to explain everything to him in that moment, to share my suffering with the only person who would truly understand, the uncontrollable wheezing, the burn in my lower back, the emptiness in my legs, the way nothing felt right in the biggest race of my season.
On my way back toward town, a Swedish woman came up next to me and I looked over, gauging her speed and whether I could surge to get ahead of her before the upcoming singletrack. Just before she passed me, I was startled by–I kid you not–a huge trail of spit that bridged the gap between her mouth and her handlebars. Never in my life had I seen such physical evidence of grit. Never in my life had I felt more understanding for a fellow racer than I did in that moment. I realized then that I was not at the front of the race, but rather somewhere mid-pack where we wheezed and spit on ourselves. That felt about right.
In the last miles before the lap ended, I found myself racing alone, facing the headwind and trying to set a pace that was sustainable while managing back pain and breathing through a straw. None of this felt real to me; this was not the race I imagined having every time I set out for a training ride for the past several months. Yet, I continued to sprint every chance I could and was out of the saddle more than any other XCM race.
Something clicked as I was pedaling through a tiny trail that paralleled farmland. Last year, my mantra for the world championships was to “make myself proud.” I asked myself what it would look like to make myself proud today. How could I face my current conditions and still finish feeling proud? The answer: gratitude.
I found myself thinking about this amazing experience, my second time racing at the WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS. I reflected on how I was one of only three women in the ENTIRE United States racing today. I heard my friend Danielle’s voice in my head saying “You made it” while she reminded me that I had a dream, I chased the dream, and I’m living the dream. I scanned through my racing career, starting as a completely new road racer in college, finding mountain biking years later, and only starting my pro racing career five years ago. Now here I was at the World Championships for the second time in my life and it filled me with gratitude.
Ultimately, I was able to lift myself out of the darkness, despite the pain, despite the heartache.
Tech & Feed Zone 1 was just after the beginning of the lap, where I saw Joe as I began lap 2. At this point, my back was spasming. I had to keep standing out of the saddle, arching and curving my back to find relief from the pain. Each pedal stroke felt like I was digging deeper into an empty well and tightening the tension in my hips.
Every once in a while, I caught a glimpse of a German girl in front of me. When we entered the singletrack, I would always pop out several seconds closer to her, and then she would pull away when we got to pedaling sections. I imagined myself catching her, and that hope was my currency for many miles.
As I neared the finish, I found new motivation and strength from my desire to not be passed by the Elite men leaders. I pushed harder than I thought was possible given my physical state and in the end, I crossed the finish line less than two minutes before the first man.
The impending men’s race finish meant the finish straightaway was roaring with fans. I gave my biggest smile and dug one final time to crush the last few moments, despite being alone. As I neared the line, strangers extended their arms out for high-fives. I’ve always seen racers on TV high-fiving fans’ outstretched hands at the end of their races, but this was the first time I ever experienced this for myself. Naturally, my inexperience and severe fatigue led me to misjudge the distance between my outstretched arm and all the strangers’ hands. I ended up missing practically everyone except for approximately five “lucky” people at the end. I use the word “lucky” lightly here, because I question how lucky anyone would be to touch my gloves at the end of a 55 mile race. The jury’s still out on that.
Evidence of the brave souls who dared touch my gloves after a pretty gruesome race. Photo credit: Ard Jonhsma / Trekantomradet
After crossing the finish line in 36th place, Joe greeted me with a smile. I knew he could read it all on my face. Neither of us knew what really happened, but he knows what heartbreak looks like on me and I know that’s what he saw.
Lea greeted me with a smile and a hug. We exchanged brief race recaps before I headed back toward the start line to cheer on the Team USA men. Joe and I hung around the finish line to cheer every single guy and we stayed to chat with them and their families. It was an afternoon of mixed emotions, happiness, and pride for us as individuals and for our country.
That evening, Joe and I bought a bunch of pizzas from Haderslev’s Hollywood Pizza, of all places, and we trekked over to one of the Team USA Airbnbs. We ate, laughed, shared race day stories, sat in the outdoor “wilderness bath” (a fancy hot tub) and soaked in the evening in the best way possible – with friends. Somehow, at the end of the day, my disappointment was partly dulled by the pride and excitement I felt for my new teammates.
The wilderness bath. Steamy.
In the days that followed, I was consumed by confusion and anger. I felt embarrassed at how my body wasn’t able to show up on race day and even more embarrassed that I didn’t have a clear reason. I directed my confusion inward, reprimanding myself for something I didn’t understand and didn’t have enough time to process.
Also in the days that followed, Joe and I visited the Lego Headquarters and Legoland in Billund, just an hour north of our Airbnb. For several hours, we were kids again, watching the magic of legos come alive around the park while laughing until we cried on rides designed for 10 year olds. On the Lego Movie ride, a flight motion simulator attraction in front of a huge curved screen, we were completely lost because the entire mini-movie was in Danish without subtitles. If you recall, the key soundtrack song from the Lego Movie is titled “Everything is Awesome”, so we were able to deduce that “awesome” in Danish is “super duper” (pronounced soo-pah doo-pah). Naturally, as we walked through a kingdom made of primary colored blocks, we fit “super duper” into our conversations as many times as possible–to make us feel part sophisticated but mostly goofy.
You’re welcome.
Llego Llama!
In between bouts of chuckling, I caught brief reminders that everything was indeed awesome, even though I was facing some frustrating uncertainty about my race. It’s funny how that happens, the duality of life coming alive yet again.
Part 2: What really happened at the XCM World Championships
The truth about the 2022 XCM Worlds experience is that it was nothing like the 2021 XCM World experience, which was by design. Before arriving in Denmark, I made a promise to myself that I would not let anxiety and Imposter Syndrome consume me in the way I had last year. I wanted this experience to feel completely different, so I promised myself (and my friends and family) that I would have fun.
I knew I was susceptible to the same dark feelings as last year’s XCM Worlds experience. A year can feel so long, but it can also feel immensely fast and I knew I had not conquered all my demons yet. If I stewed in anxiety of this race for any length of time, the self-imposed expectations, the crippling pressure, the weight of it all would crush me. The strength to face a race of this magnitude and not feel overwhelmed is not gained over the course of one measly trip around the sun. I knew all of this and still somehow expected that I might be able to fake my way through it, brute force style, just like I’ve done in so many other aspects of my life. Fake it ‘til you make it, right?
What resulted was a swing from one end of the spectrum to the other. At 2021 XCM Worlds, I spent the days leading up to the race in a crippling panic. I slipped into a dark corner of my mind and couldn’t crawl out until race morning. Conversely, at 2022 XCM Worlds, I was oddly serene and mechanical about everything, determined not to allow myself back into that dark corner for fear I might not be able to pull myself out this year.
The truth about 2022 XCM Worlds is that I still don’t entirely know what happened, and that scares me a little. With some time to process, the closest I can come to describing what really happened is this: I think I was hiding from the reckoning of race day. I assumed, not unlike the monster under my bed when I was a child, if I didn’t look it wasn’t there. If I didn’t acknowledge the race, ignored any potential feelings of Imposter Syndrome, I would be safe. I was using “fun” as an anesthetic, numbing the inevitable anxiety associated with a race of this magnitude. In the way one does with hopeless self preservation, I think I was so determined to make this experience feel unremarkable, like any other race, that I forgot this actually wasn’t just any other race.
Unfortunately, I didn’t realize what I was doing at the time. I didn’t realize until our last evening in Denmark when the pieces started inching closer together, forming the beginning of a picture.
Instead I rode with Team USA and discussed things like line choice, race tactics, strategy, and general race specifics in abstract, as if the race would be happening at some point, rather than just 4, 3, 2, and eventually 1 day from then. Every time I felt my mind sneaking into race mode, I would push the thoughts aside for another day.
Unlike every marathon race this year, I hadn’t set an intention or defined a mantra. I hadn’t even written out the distances to each aid station on a piece of tape on my top tube. All of these activities are typical of my race routine, but they also require meaningful reflection about the race and facing its reality. Facing reality felt like a later-Kelly problem; I wanted it to be a later-Kelly problem, not a problem for the Kelly that was just starting to feel part of a team. Somehow it felt like I couldn’t hold enough space to appreciate the fun I was having while also honoring my race rituals.
The back pain I was feeling was almost certainly a remnant from falling down the stairs. Its presence in the days leading up to the race should have at least indicated to me that I might have trouble in a race like this one, where I would be sprinting for much of the course. Instead, I set the thought aside and didn’t do much beyond my usual routine.
On race day, my alarm was set for 6am, which I know now was slightly too late for an 8:50am race start. Knowing the race would be fast from the start, I planned to warm up for a long time (50+ minutes). But in my overly relaxed state, I miscalculated my morning schedule. The time crunch allowed me to feel rushed and panicked in a very concrete and understandable way–I was battling time rather than my thoughts.
On race morning when my mind caught fire at 4:15am, I suspect I was subconsciously doing the work I had ignored all week. I felt unprepared to manage my uncontrolled thoughts because I truly was unprepared. My brain knew the work needed to be done so here I was, visualizing all the permutations of race start crashes while the whole city was still sleeping.
When I couldn’t eat my typical race morning pancakes, I likely wasn’t hungry because my body wasn’t in its typical race-morning anxious state. My body wasn’t on fire and instead I was in some sort of zombie state, going through motions without realizing why. It felt like any other morning, slow and inconsequential, without the desire to EAT ALL THE FOOD (said in a hangry monster voice), which is usually how I feel on race morning.
Right before entering the call-up box on race morning, I kissed Joe one last time and that’s when it hit me. Not only was I racing in just 15 minutes, this was going to be the biggest race of my season. I was standing in the same box as Pauline, Jolanda, Mona. My body was shivering slightly from the cold, but more so from the shock of it all, the realization that I was mere minutes away from chaos, pain, and a boatload of suffering.
The truth about 2022 XCM Worlds is that there’s no whiplash quite like the unexpected realization of being mentally unprepared for the biggest race of the year. I was perfectly ready from a fitness standpoint but I wasn’t truly ready. It felt like the doors were closing on a train and I just realized I had forgotten all my most prized belongings on the platform outside, just out of reach.
It turns out that being generally unprepared puts my body into a shocked state. It causes me to feel unfocused during the race start. I wheeze and panic and nearly fall apart at the seams doing the thing I love and truly feel like I’m meant to do. This is heartbreaking and it brings a wave of disappointment and the sense that I let myself down.
The most important truth about 2022 XCM Worlds is that this trip was not all bad. Not even close. In fact, it was one of the most powerful learning experiences of my race career.
I learned that being part of the Team USA rides, strategy discussions, and banter gave me purpose and meaning. The sting of my poor race was dulled by the pride I felt for my teammates and the camaraderie I helped build.
I learned that race anxiety is a necessary part of my pre-race ritual. Fun and adequate preparation do not need to be mutually exclusive. In fact, I need balance, despite being someone who lives in extremes.
I have a penchant for spiraling down into dark corners of my brain. My mind feels hardwired for negativity and darkness, the behavior innate, like deeply worn grooves in a soft piece of wood. But it turns out that I also seem to have a knack for pulling myself back out into the light. More than any other facet of my life, the bike has taught me resilience.
More than two weeks have passed since the 2022 XCM World Championships race and I finally can appreciate it for what it was: another epic experience. My racing career is full of these opportunities to learn a little more about myself. Looking back, I can see all the versions of myself unfolding, shifting, morphing, maturing into today’s version—and I can appreciate the evolution of my maturity, strength, and perspective. It’s not lost on me how privileged I am to have a safe space to experiment with different methods and techniques for pushing my limits, even if I don’t recognize the experiment at the time. Indeed, learning what doesn’t work for me is just as important as what does.
Before this trip, when someone back home asked me about any of my races, I inevitably replied with my race result and potentially a quick summary of the race day experience, maybe something notable like “I won, but crashed and had to get 5 stitches in my elbow” or “I placed 8th but I knew I could have done better so I’m going to be experimenting with caffeine consumption for the next few weeks”. This trip, however, is different. Every time someone has asked me about 2022 XCM Worlds, I reply with some version of “It was an amazing experience. I got to ride with the incredible Team USA members, race in a beautiful country, and feel like I was part of something way bigger than myself. I didn’t have the race I was hoping for, but I learned a ton.”
From this point forward, my race trip retellings will not longer focus around results; instead they will be centered on cumulative moments, interactions, and the collective experience. And you know what? That small shift in perspective feels powerful, compassionate in a way I didn’t know I needed until now. One might even say it feels super duper.
