I Ride to Live; I Ride to Thrive

Rob Nelson - Rider Engagement Representative

It sounds odd to say that a sport or hobby can save your life but that’s what I believe riding bikes has done for me. There have been more days than I care to count where I wouldn't have had the impetus to get out of bed were it not for the beckoning of my bike. The stigma attached to that admission makes it hard to write this--a voice whispers "you're weak"; and I'd believe it if it weren't for the fact that I can ride my bike up mountains and race down them.

I found cycling at a low point in my life--maybe that's what made me open to this unlikely pursuit. After a difficult semester in college, I had essentially dropped out. I was sick and tired and tired of being sick. I felt wayward and without hope. And then, flipping through the channels on a lazy summer day, I came across the Tour De France and somewhere in that brightly-colored peloton, I recognized my salvation. I couldn't tell you exactly what grabbed my attention but it swept me up.

I immediately devised a plan to get a road bike. I knew little of the sport of cycling—I lived in the South Carolina low country, not the European one--and I had no one to guide me so I consumed cycling media with a monastic zeal. I bought a Trek 1.5 but it might as well have been a Madone. I rode, I trained, I bonked, I raced, I failed and I came back for more. I went back to school and joined the university cycling team. I met friends, raced bikes, felt healthy-felt happy. 

10 years, or so, later a doctor in Miami asked me, "when was the last time you were thriving?". It was a simple question but it struck me as profound. My wife and I had traveled across the country, from Montana, to see this doctor who specialized in a disease that had threatened to ruin my life. When was the last time I thrived? I had been so preoccupied with trying to live that I never dared to think about thriving. My mind rifled through the past few years of sickness and darkness and hopelessness--the physical and mental struggles. I cast my mind back a little further to those early years of cycling--the racing and the progression, the dedication and perseverance. I had ridden my bike plenty in the intervening years but I no longer felt like a cyclist. Riding bikes had been my identity and it affected a change in me, physically and mentally. I vowed to get back there. 

I started training again; started racing. I got dropped often and kept coming back. We up and moved to Western North Carolina and I landed a job at Cane Creek. I lived and breathed bikes. I became a cyclist again.

Years on from that doctor's visit I ride my bike every day that I am able to. I also work for a company that prioritizes health and happiness and allows me to ride when I need to. I no longer just see bikes as fun machines but also as healing things. I now ride to be a better father and a better husband. I ride to quell an anxious mind and I ride to mend a battered body. I ride to live; I ride to thrive.