A Midlife Cyclist Read online

  PRAISE FOR A MIDLIFE CYCLIST:

  ‘Rachel shows masses of heart and guts, not only in her peddling challenges but also in her ability to lay bare her fears and insecurities for all to see. We all have an inner critic and body dysmorphic disorder is more common than one would think. It’s high time it was out there and discussed. Rachel’s frank and funny style shines a light on this difficult subject and will help many people to feel seen and inspired.’

  Melanie Sykes, broadcaster

  ‘Rachel writes with a witty honesty and, at times, hard-hitting directness about her anxieties. Her dogged determination with her running and cycling is an uplifting example of how exercise can trigger such positive feeling.’

  Josie Dew, cyclist and author

  ‘A rollercoaster that any aspiring runner or cyclist can relate to. From the catastrophic lows of injury to the soaring highs of chasing down your goals – it’s both magical and exhausting all at once. You find yourself rooting for her even more the second time round.’

  Nat Scroggie, This Vet Runs blog

  ‘Will resonate with readers who suffer from body dysmorphic disorder and other mental health challenges.’

  Miriam Díaz-Gilbert, author and ultrarunner

  ‘Honest. Brutally so. Rachel’s account of dealing with injury and the despair in which she finds herself is a searing account of mental and physical torment.’

  Jeff McCarthy, RunEatRepeat blog

  PRAISE FOR RUNNING FOR MY LIFE:

  ‘I love this book for showing how, with sheer determination and dogged tenacity, you can overcome great difficulties … She might even persuade me that one day I too could love running.’

  Louise Minchin, TV presenter

  ‘It’s so inspirational to read how Rachel’s discovery of a passion for running helped her to overcome her mental health struggles. It’s heartwarming to learn how Rachel has been able to prove to herself that she really can achieve things that she would have never believed were possible.’

  Jo Pavey, long-distance runner and medallist

  ‘A searingly honest account of Rachel’s amazing journey … I’d thoroughly recommend this book to runners everywhere.’

  Tom Williams, Global COO of parkrun

  ‘What a heartfelt, moving, honest journey of self-discovery … this is a book you have to pick up.’

  Sissi Reads blog

  ‘Running For My Life is a rich, colourful and brutally honest account of one woman’s fight to beat her mental health demons.’

  The Very Pink Notebook blog

  ‘Full of heart and beautifully told … inspirational, melancholy and often very funny, it’s kind of a road map of the inner soul – I loved it.’

  Liz Loves Books blog

  ‘Written wittily, honestly and with a “take no crap” attitude, I could feel the warmth of [Rachel] as a person in her writing. Anyone who is hungry for change, looking for “the light” or even running their first marathon and needing a little insight: this book is FOR YOU! I loved every chapter.’

  Lipstick & Trainers blog

  A

  MIDLIFE CYCLIST

  My two-wheel journey to heal a broken mind and find joy

  RACHEL ANN CULLEN

  Published by Blink Publishing

  80–81 Wimpole St,

  Marylebone,

  London W1G 9RE

  www.blinkpublishing.co.uk

  facebook.com/blinkpublishing

  twitter.com/blinkpublishing

  Trade Paperback – 978-1-788-701-84-6

  Ebook – 978-1-788-701-85-3

  Audio – 978-1-788-703-20-8

  All rights reserved. No part of the publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted or circulated in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  A CIP catalogue of this book is available from the British Library.

  Typeset by seagulls.net

  All illustrations © Shutterstock

  Copyright © Rachel Ann Cullen, 2020

  Rachel Ann Cullen has asserted her moral right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This book is a work of non-fiction, based on the life, experiences and recollections of Rachel Ann Cullen. Certain details in this story, including names, have been changed to protect identity and privacy.

  Every reasonable effort has been made to trace copyright holders of material reproduced in this book, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers would be glad to hear from them.

  Blink Publishing is an imprint of Bonnier Books UK

  www.bonnierbooks.co.uk

  For Mum – because you are and always were enough.

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Introduction

  1.Loss

  2.No. Running.

  3.I Hate Cycling

  4.Trapped

  5.Help!

  6.The Cacky-Brown Cycling Shorts

  7.Denial

  8.Help Arrives

  9.Plan B: Aqua Jogging

  10.And Relax

  11.The BDD Diary

  12.Rest

  13.Avoidance

  14.Something Missing

  15.Back in the Saddle

  16.Traps

  17.Further Afield

  18.The Hill

  19.Discomfort

  20.A Cyclist Yet?

  21.Stalling

  22.The Road Bike

  23.The Review

  24.Exploring

  25.Getting Back on Track

  26.One Step at a Time

  27.Progress

  28.The Duathlon

  29.The Big Reveal

  30.The Change of Plan

  31.Anxiety Management

  32.Who Are These People?

  33.Riding for my Life

  34.Sick

  35. Back on the Bike

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  PROLOGUE

  SOMEWHERE IN VIETNAM,

  NOVEMBER 2018

  I am riding a bike through tiny paths, weaving in between rice fields. I look across to my left and a farmer is diligently tending to the crops in his field. A Vietnamese woman cycles towards us on what looks like a 1960s retro high-handlebar bike. It reminds me of the classic scene from E.T. when the boys ride up into the sky. She is wearing a traditional Vietnamese conical hat, which is tied underneath her chin with a floral scarf. I can see a pair of battered old shoes sitting in the rusty basket on the front of her ancient push bike and an enormous bundle of harvested grasses is miraculously tied to the back. As she passes me I catch her eye and her virtually toothless smile is almost the same width as her hat.

  I can hear nothing other than the sound of my own wheels turning and the occasional barking of a dog. I realise in this moment that I am experiencing happiness, that this is it. A feeling of peace and tranquillity fills my being, and I know that – right here – riding a bike through one of the most serene and truly peaceful places I have ever known is filling my heart with joy. There is no stress or anxiety here. The farmer quietly tending the rice crops in his field isn’t in a battle with himself, or weighed down with the burden of the daily grind. The pocket-sized Vietnamese woman cycling along, transporting her massive bundle of crops with a pair of battered old shoes in the basket of her relic bike, doesn’t appear to be battling any inner turmoil and I doubt she has been making enquiries with a local psychotherapist to tackle issues relating to her self-hatred. She looks as content riding her retro bicycle through the paddy fields as it is possible to be.

  It makes me think of my own wrangling with my ever-present angst and my bu
sy, chattering mind, which tries to tie me in endless knots and wrestle me into headlocks most hours of most days. Anxiety? That doesn’t exist, here. Worry? Worry about what? Noise? Both internal and external noise are simply not a part of this reality.

  I’m riding my Trek Hardtail bike through Vietnamese rice fields and I feel absolutely and truly peaceful. It’s a kind of peace that transcends anything I have ever known. I push down on the pedals and realise that I am IN the tranquillity. I am A PART of it. I am HERE. In this moment, nothing else matters. My worries cease to exist. My anxious chatter about the ‘hows’ and the ‘whys’ and other disproportionate concerns about life’s frustrating minutiae is – for once – completely silenced.

  I am riding my bike and I feel as peaceful and as present as I can ever remember being. Of course, I’ve experienced similar feelings whilst riding my bike back home, but something about the beauty of this place cements what I already knew: that this is a special moment for me and that my long journey to arrive here has all been worthwhile.

  I think back to my life back home and to the bombardment of ‘must-haves’. I fell for all that, once. Even now, I sometimes struggle to extricate myself from the barrage of tiresome propaganda. I look at the other school mums in the playground and I can’t help but compare myself and my life to theirs. It is surely a flaw of our society that we are now programmed to want more, and – even more worryingly – to be more. I wonder when we all became so consumed with ‘self’ and on a constant mission to pick ourselves apart.

  * * *

  I’m cycling at speed down a rough mud track somewhere along the banks of the Mekong, on our route through Cambodia. The mud here was completely saturated just a few days ago when the monsoon rains hit, but it has dried up quickly in the baking thirty-five-degree heat, leaving hardened ridges where yaks and mopeds have left evidence of their passing. My wheels become momentarily stuck in a deep groove and I skid, almost thrown from my bike. Thankfully, I manage to keep myself upright.

  I’m one of the ‘fast ones’. I’m at the front of the group, riding just behind our Cambodian biking guide. He is forging a route for me as I push on over the rough terrain, wrestling with my handlebars over the corrugated burnt orange ground.

  I’m loving riding at speed across this land. Every minute I’m concentrating hard, working out the best route to avoid the myriad deep pits, grooves and potholes in the dried mud track. Occasionally, there is a pool of orange, muddy water where the relentless sun has not yet managed to dry out the ground underneath. Sometimes, I swerve around the stagnant water, but other times I have no choice but to ride straight through it if there is no way around. The water splashes up on my face and I can taste the earth in my mouth.

  A frail, sun-baked man walks towards me on the track. He is pushing a flimsy-looking cart, which is being pulled along by the skinniest pony I have ever seen. I can see all its ribs protruding and its knee bones look enormous in proportion to the rest of its skeletal body. The cart is piled high with planks of wood, which must be at least fifteen feet long. I wonder how it is moving forward at all. This is his track and this is his job for today, along with his cart and his skinny pony. And I am cycling past him at speed on a mountain bike, dodging the grooves and holes which his flimsy cart has made over the past few days, weeks, and no doubt much longer.

  How am I here? I’m approaching my fifty-second mile of the day on this mountain bike – and I feel fast and free. Already I feel like I know this bike intimately. I understand how the gears work and when to shift them to suit the ever-changing terrain; I trust myself to swerve around any obstacles, even to navigate my way on to small boats (to cross the Mekong River) and back off again, cycling up rough, steep banking. All of this I can do and I wonder, when did this become my reality? When did I know all these things?

  I love the feeling of my heart pounding like this.

  I have learnt so much about myself since I discovered how to ride my bike. I’m so grateful for challenging myself and for realising that I can do this. Because without that, I wouldn’t be here, experiencing true joy.

  INTRODUCTION

  FEBRUARY 2017

  It’s five weeks since I’ve been able to run.

  In the big scheme of things, it’s no biggie: I’m very aware that people do have real problems! But the thing is, running has been my Prozac, my therapy, my lifeline, my sanity, my solace, my best friend, my quiet time, my escape route, my go-to place, and my default setting for some eight years now.

  How ironic then that for an indeterminable length of time (and I honestly have no idea), I won’t be able to run. My body won’t let me. And based on the past five weeks, it’s going to be a painful experience. I feel vulnerable, insecure, not quite right, off-kilter. It’s like a piece of me has – well, if not died, been temporarily placed in a deep, comatose state. That piece of me brought me joy and sanity.

  And I want it back.

  It’s difficult to describe what running is to me. It became something far bigger than I’d ever anticipated following the very first marathon I ran, back in 2011, when my daughter Tilly was just seven months old. Why? Because running the London Marathon symbolised everything that I believed I could never be. As an overweight teen, I’d been told that I wasn’t the ‘sporty type’. Who then expected that later in life, I would be able to run a marathon – any marathon – let alone at the very time when I’d also come face-to-face with my biggest fear: motherhood?

  Running gave me a feeling of self-worth, a sense of achievement despite my physical and mental health misgivings, and a sense that things I hadn’t at one time considered possible were entirely within my grasp. And so, rightly or wrongly, I labelled myself ‘Rach the Runner’. It gave me a newfound sense of identity, belief and of belonging, from a place where I’d had none.

  I keep having flashbacks to some of my many running adventures. I remember exploring Barcelona on broken legs the week after the Yorkshire Marathon in 2014 following a dream race and probably my greatest ever personal running achievement. I picture myself running effortlessly up snowless ski slopes in Font Romeu on my thirty-seventh birthday and the joy of discovering the Paula Radcliffe trail, which weaves around the high alpine mountain tops. The excitement of exploring some flatter routes around beautiful Lake Matemale and spotting running legend Mo Farah as he flew around the otherwise-empty track at the Font Romeu Altitude Training Centre. I remember how surreal it felt to sit down on the grass and watch him run in a way I have never seen any human run before, whilst inhaling an obscenely large Danish pastry (well, I had just run twelve miles at altitude).

  And what about those nauseating speed sets running along the sea front in Mallorca? My Other Half took the girls into town on the bus whilst I set off running alongside it like a bat out of hell, much to the fascination/amusement of the other bus passengers.

  ‘Is she really running into Port de Pollença?’ a mystified bus passenger asked him.

  ‘Erm, yes. Yes, she really is!’ was his reply.

  You see, it wasn’t a big deal at the time, only a part of my normality. I just run: I just … ran.

  Standing on the start line of the Dubai Marathon in January 2016 and running under what felt like a repressive heat lamp with a dodgy thermostat for 26.2 torturous miles. Precisely how I managed it after a long-haul flight and waking at 4 a.m. to stuff down a banana on the morning of the race escapes me. Thankfully, I emerged still breathing on the other side of the finish line.

  But hang on a minute. That’s not the full picture, is it Rach? The clues were already there. You see, I didn’t achieve the time I was hoping for at the Dubai Marathon and the morning after the race I woke battered and broken, berating myself for such a ‘poor performance’. How could you be so slow, Rachel? Why didn’t you run faster? You should have tried harder. Why didn’t you try harder? NOT GOOD ENOUGH, RACHEL. MUST DO BETTER.

  MUST TRY HARDER.

  I may have been in pieces physically following my very best efforts on that d
ay in the blistering desert heat, but devastatingly, my Bastard Chimp – the cruel, inner voice who taunts me – had me well and truly beaten. Mentally, I was on my knees, in a stranglehold, and I had no way of escaping.

  ‘I’m just going to do a few recovery miles along the Palm,’ I mumbled to my long-suffering Other Half, who was soaking in the bath after experiencing his personal horror at the very same marathon, just hours before.

  ‘You’re doing what?’ he replied, completely stunned. ‘Rachel, you ran a tough marathon yesterday, in insane heat, after virtually no sleep and with jet lag. Your legs will be completely wrecked! What on earth are you even considering going running for? THAT’S INSANE!’

  ‘Oh, I’ll be fine! My legs don’t feel too bad and anyway, it may loosen them up a little. See you in a bit – I won’t be long!’

  And so I coerced my aching, blistered feet into my godforsaken, dusty trainers and I knew that it was all wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. The truth is so painful to acknowledge at times and that morning, I knew with absolute certainty that in putting my trainers back on and making my legs run again THE DAY AFTER THE MARATHON, I was potentially damaging myself. But the Bastard Chimp had won.

  Muscles are incredible things: they work hard and break down, only to rebuild and repair to become even stronger than they were before. But there is a limit. My legs couldn’t possibly recover from the damage of the marathon by forcing more painful miles out of them the very next day. And for God’s sake, I could barely walk, let alone run! Tears streamed down my face as I hobbled six miles – in agony – along The Palm from our luxury resort. Why did I do that? How could I do that to myself?

  Reflecting on all the highs – and the many lows – of my running experiences feels like I’m on an emotional trapeze. I swing from one platform to another, from moments of sheer elation to the depths of despair, with nothing to catch me as I fly through the air in between.