Finding Peace and My Place in Lockdown
So, life has changed. If you’re a human on the planet, you’ve been affected by Coronavirus. For us at Rocacorba Cycling in Spain, that has meant full lockdown. It happened with very little notice and, with the exception of groceries, medical care, or walking a pet, we are confined to our homes.
The notice of our lockdown came fast. In about 48 hours we went from rumours to “effective immediately” and with that came a lot of fear and questions. As the gravity of reality sank in, so did my fear about the future. In the big picture of life, sport is not an essential good. Everyone is vulnerable—physically, mentally, and economically—and in such unprecedented times, I was struggling to find peace and place in the global pandemic.
The biggest obvious challenge for me was shifting all my training indoors. I’ve always rather put on a jacket and trained outside, rain or snow, so, I’ll be honest, I wasn’t looking forward to being stuck inside. But, whether injury, illness, the racing calendar, team decisions, training, family, work, or whatever, the best athletes are the ones that can adapt, period. Ready or not, I had to rise to this scary and extraordinary challenge.
Rocacorba Cycling has always had a top-of-the-line indoor training set up thanks to our friends at Zwift. With a Tacx smart trainer and Zwift, I knew I had the best possible tools for success. Still, I wasn’t sure how I was going to keep it together mentally. A week was one thing. I was confident I could handle three even four weeks but what if it was longer? What about the Olympics? CCC-Liv?
I just started out riding around Wattopia (one of the Zwift virtual worlds). Pretty quickly, I started to discover all the people; I began joining group rides and eventually started hosting meet-ups of my own. I rode with guests who were supposed to be staying with us, friends from across the planet who I never get to ride with, and I’ve even joined the London Dynamos for what’s become a regular Saturday morning ¨race¨. A whole new world of indoor training opened up to me and with real people behind every avatar, there was real engagement, real fun, and even real DOMS. I have a meet-up almost every day now and, unexpectedly, it’s actually allowed me to be more social than ever.
It took a while but I began to make peace with the situation. The Olympics weren’t gone, they were just a little bit farther away. The races would come back and I hoped women’s cycling would be able to find more ground in a post-pandemic world. We might not be racing as CCC-Liv but we were still very much a team. We had started meeting twice a week over the internet and that was actually bringing us closer together. The future of cycling was going to be different but CCC-Liv was already building a new, stronger normal and that security and support is just as comforting as it is a source of motivation.
And I had also found my place: the indoor trainer. I felt blessed to be healthy and committed to doing my part and staying home. I was grateful that technology and Zwift allowed me to continue working and more grateful it became a source of motivation that also kept me connected to so many people.
Rising to the challenge of Coronavirus, for me, has meant finding my place and making peace with reality and the unknown. Lockdown, no matter how long it will be, is always going to be hard but doing our part and staying safe from COVID-19 is about physical distance not social isolation. Whether it’s training inside and meeting-up for virtual rides, making a home office or a home gym, or picking up the phone and giving a friend or family member a call, staying together is the best way we can all rise to the challenge, stay healthy, and make it through Coronavirus.
Season Opener: Tour Down Under
It’s been 9 days since I’m officially a CCC-Liv rider!
The excitement of signing with a brand new team has only built over the last few weeks. For the first time in my career I had a pre-season training camp so, in December, I had an early taste of what was to come: new equipment, new teammates, new management, new race schedule. Contracts only officially roll over on January 1 so after camp I had to wait. I felt like a kid waiting for Christmas and when 2019 finally arrived, the build up did not let me down.
A week after the New Year we all jetted down to Australia for the Tour Down Under. After the million-hour long flight, we all crashed at the hotel while the time change crashed into us. Thank goodness there is a strong coffee culture in Australia because the next day it felt like I needed a constant supply of caffeine just to keep one eye open. The other eye, thankfully, was being kept open by spending time with teammates, exploring Adelaide by bike, and snuggling baby kangaroos. (Hey, when in Australia, right?!).
I couldn’t think of a better way to start with a new team then with a new race. It will be my first time competing at the Tour Down Under. Since it’s also our first race as a team, the goal is just to start learning how to race together over the four-stage event. We’re all professionals with a very professional set up so everyone knows what they are doing but there is sense of unspoken communication in racing, a rapport, that just needs to be built on the road in a race. It’s learning how your teammates react to race situations, what each riders facial expressions mean, and even who likes what in their bottles. In other words, it’s all about bonding this week but, if an opportunity arises, whether that’s snuggling a kangaroo or grabbing a podium, you can bet we’re going to take it!
