Me, Myself, and I
This story originally appeared in the 2024 Nov/Dec issue of Adventure Cyclist magazine’s Final Mile essay anthology.
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I rode with tears streaming down my face. I pedaled as hard as I could, hoping that being on my bike would fix it. It used to always fix it. But this time was different — for the first time in my life, I didn’t want to be there anymore. As cars whizzed by, I couldn’t help but think things would be easier if I rode in front of one.
In August 2019, two friends and I spent 14 days bikepacking 539 miles along the Colorado Trail. I’d spent the early months of that year training for the ride, and for much of the summer, I’d put in more than 100 miles a week on my mountain bike to prepare. But when I returned to my home in New Mexico and settled back into normal life, my anxiety and depression began to ratchet up.
It kept getting worse until those intrusive thoughts started taking up longer residences in my brain, particularly anytime I rode by myself. What was once a sacred space and a way to clear my head became something I feared because it meant I had to be alone with myself and my thoughts. And I didn’t like either. That’s when I knew things weren’t working.
I’d been in therapy for a year by the time I started to fear cycling. I’d done a lot of work to understand and regulate my emotions, which I’d come to realize had always been an issue for me — I just hadn’t fully known it. I grew up in a wonderful home with loving parents, but depression and anxiety run in the family. I also grew up in the Midwest, where “hard things” often aren’t talked about, especially among men, and until I started therapy, the only real way I’d combatted my undiagnosed anxiety and depression was exercise, particularly riding my mountain bike. After my mental health started to get worse when I returned from the Colorado Trail, I leaned into that. “I was fine on the trail,” I told myself, “I just need to ride more.”
I now know that sounds preposterous, but I’ve spent most of my career working in the outdoor recreation industry as a video producer and writer. In that time, I’ve been constantly fed the notion that all I need to do to fix my brain is simply work up a sweat outdoors. Headlines like “Science’s Newest Miracle Drug is Free,” “The Incredible Link between Nature and Your Emotions,” and “Take Two Hours of Pine Forest and Call Me in the Morning” dot the pages of Outside magazine and its website, perpetuating that idea. These articles are well-intentioned — and there are proven mental and physical health benefits to spending time in nature — but when you combine this mindset with a community of outdoor athletes that celebrates “suffering” in the mountains, lauds first descents and fastest known times, and glorifies podium finishes, things can get dark. It’s one thing to extoll the benefits of exercise and time spent outside, but doing so without mention or consideration of therapy and medication can be dangerous because it delegitimizes and undermines treatment people may desperately need.
When you pull back the curtain of stoke, you’ll find a grin- and-bear-it mentality that permeates people’s approach to mental health. It seems like some folks in the industry, such as photographer Cory Richards, have recently begun talking about this. In The Color of Everything, Richards’s recent book on his career and struggles with mental health, he writes about how his adventures grew bigger and riskier while trying to fill a void inside, and it eventually quit working. But the truth of the matter is that most people don’t talk about it. I was certainly guilty of that, and I initially resisted the idea of help of any kind. After all, I knew the cure: ride more. But it turns out you can’t actually ride away from your problems. When I could no longer control my thoughts, I finally talked to my therapist about medication.
That was four years ago, and it’s crystal clear to me now that I needed more help than therapy, fresh air, and exercise could provide on their own. Medication has been life changing. It has allowed me to fully utilize the skills and coping mechanisms I’ve learned in therapy, and, perhaps just as importantly, find joy in riding again. This year, five years after bikepacking the Colorado Trail, I rode the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route (GDMBR) solo to celebrate my 35th birthday. I spent a year and a half researching and preparing, and as my June 1 departure drew closer, the thing I was most nervous about wasn’t the physical or logistical challenges that lay ahead. I worried whether I could simply spend that much time alone.
Before I set out, friends asked me if I thought I’d be all right being by myself for so long, and how I planned to deal with it. I wasn’t sure, I told them, but I thought I’d be okay. I planned my itinerary so that I’d see people every so often. I also convinced my wife to drive along with me the last few days of the trip. Still, I knew it’d be a lot of time alone with my thoughts, and that scared me.
The farther I pedaled, though, the less afraid I became. My longest solo stretch (Salida, Colorado, to just past Lima, Montana) came about two weeks into the trip. By that point, the initial excitement had worn off, and I was anxious to see where the next few weeks would take me mentally. It wasn’t all easy riding: my dog passed away while I was battling hellish headwinds in Wyoming’s Great Basin; I had a couple of close calls with distracted drivers, moose, and grizzly bears; and I rode through hours of driving rain. But I never found myself in a spot too low to climb out of. The endless vistas, glorious gravel, and hypnotic pace helped, to be sure, but I had more tools in my arsenal. That made all the difference.
I’m proud to say that I finished my 2,700-mile ride from Antelope Wells, New Mexico, to Banff, Alberta, on July 15. I spent 45 days on the route, nearly 30 of which were alone. Just like life, the trip was filled with ups and downs, but I came to appreciate even the low moments and found joy in riding solo again. I came home with an overwhelming sense of gratitude for all of the amazing things I saw and people I met. And especially for the long days of happy, meandering thoughts on the bike. More than anything, I rode into Banff feeling more grateful to be alive than ever before.
