Privateer Diaries: Life on the Road
Privateer Diaries: Life on the Road
Bike racing is a lot more than just bike racing
Starting writing at 22:57 on a Saturday evening while lying on the bed of an airport hotel is hardly a normal move. It usually means I need to splurge a load of thoughts and feelings onto a page.
I spend a lot of time on the road - it’ll be some 200+ nights away this year. I’m usually staying with friends and at races, it’s rare that I get an in-between downtime like this. It’s these moments where I can properly sit back and reflect.
Life has been running at a million miles an hour since the start of last year when I decided to go down this whole privateer route. Whether it be spending hundreds of hours in the Catalan mountains training, packing my bike who knows how many times, trying to find sponsors, setting up Rebellion, or working a few different jobs to keep it all alive. It’s rare that I step back and reflect.
Everything I do is with the goal of being the best athlete, or keeping my privateer show on the road. Sometimes they’re symbiotic, other times they’re not. I’m in a pretty cool position to live the life I do. I get to travel to all these places, meet all these new people and live a crazy life that the kid leaving Caistor Grammar School five-years ago would never imagine. Damn, it’s been five years since I left school? I’m getting old.
I’ll be boarding a flight to Bend, Oregon tomorrow and then meeting up with some friends to race the Oregon Trail. It’s a five day stage race in the Cascade mountains, and what makes it unique is that we race to camp every night. It’s known as one of the best races of the year, and I’m pretty sure it’s going to be one hell of an experience.
From Oregon, I head to Vancouver and it’s finally seeing Maggie again. We’ll be approaching some eight-weeks apart as she’s navigating Olympic-prep and I’m doing the gravel thing. A sweet and short week together, and then she’ll be off to training camp.
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While being on the road is tough, it’s amazing how welcoming the cycling community is. I know this is cliche, but when you’re thousands of miles from home, it means so much.
Let’s take this Northern America trip for example.
It started in Kansas for Unbound Gravel. The Emporia local, Jim Markel, who I met last year greets me with a big hug at the airport. He turns into my local fixer on the ground, anything we need, he can make happen. I bump into him after the race, I’m dejected with how I’ve gone, but seeing him cheers me up as we cheers over a beer. I’ll be back next year, mate.
From Emporia it was to Boulder. Boulder is cool as fuck. It has that small city vibe nestled at the foot of the mountains. It’s beautiful and it’s the well needed rest that I need. The week in Boulder was time to decompress, I’m invited to stay with the Lydics for a week, and they make me feel as if I’m one of their own.
Rob and Patty - thank you. Andy - next time we race through a bog, don’t bring road cleats, you idiot xoxo
To Collingwood I go, a small town nestled two hours north of Toronto. Another town which has become an adopted home. I stay with Jody and Laura, we were connected last year by a mutual friend, and staying with them has become one of my favourite weeks of the year.
My time in Collingwood started because there’s a UCI Gravel World Series there, but it’s about so much more than that. It’s about jumping off the pier after one of our evening rides. It’s about riding down to the brewery on the 75-year-old cruiser that becomes my wheels whenever I’m in town.
It’s about Mike, who is perhaps the nicest man in the world, and who’s also one of the best mechanics I know - mate, if I could afford to, I’d try to bring you to every race. Mike’s the sort of guy who will magic a carbon repair up for you 18 hrs before you start a race. He’s a legend.
Collingwood has very quickly become one of my happy places.
We spend so much time worrying about performance, worrying if we have enough money to keep the show on the road and worrying about what sponsors will think. Sometimes, it’s easy to get caught up in all that. Sometimes, it’s nice to sit back and smile about all the experiences that I’ve had along the way.
I’ve still got big ambitions in racing. I want to do this for at least another decade. I want to develop into my full potential as an athlete and give Unbound the crack I think it deserves. I love riding my bike, and I bloody love the process of training.
Bike racing has given me everything. Though funnily enough, I think that when I look back in however many years, it’s going to be as much jumping into lakes on Canadian summer evenings and exploring the Colorado mountains as I’ll remember as it will be the following wheels and chasing the results.
Guess you’ve just gotta live life a little. Somebody should’ve told roadie Joe that a few years ago.
I guess I just needed to get some words onto a page. It’s 23:20 now, I’m off to sleep.
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