In my decade-plus of racing bikes, I’ve seen it happen over and over. People are swept up into the racing scene, have some success, take every racing opportunity offered to them. They train constantly and end up with impressive results in a very short period of time. A couple of them have gone pro. A few have settled in to a more balanced race/life schedule. Many, many more of them have quit racing entirely.

Knocked down by the dreaded B-word: burnout.

I eased my way into bike racing, racing only in the spring collegiate road  season and finding other things to do with my summers. It was years before I was anything more than pack fill, so I always had to be motivated to race because it was fun, rather than because I thought I could win. 

As the years went on, I raced further into the summer, I started training more consistently, and I picked up cyclocross, then mountain biking. Over the years, I’ve only increased the amount of time I spend on my bike. Still, what has kept me going for so long in this sport is the overall dedication to doing bikes only up to the point at which it stops being fun.

For so many bike racers, it’s all or nothing. It’s a personality type that lends itself to 10-12 hours a week of training on top of a job in order to wake up at 4am to scream around on a bike at 25 mph within inches of a dozen other people who also want the glory of being the first across an arbitrary line on the pavement. People throw themselves into it, do 40 races a season for two seasons, burn out dramatically, and never come back. I have always said I did not want to be that person. I want to be self-aware enough to quit biking before I quit bikes. I thought I was smart about this, but it turns out it was hubris. Burnout comes for everyone eventually.

Nevertheless, without any real intention of doing so, I did 39 races in 2019. 20 road, 16 cyclocross, 3 mountain bike. At least half of those involved multiple hours in a car and, usually, an overnight Airbnb. I also, in my real life, finished and graduated from law school, studied for and took the bar exam (passed!), and started a new, emotionally intensive legal job.

Meanwhile, I started racing road and mountain bikes in March because it sounded fun. I raced and won a twilight circuit race series over the summer, because it sounded fun. I took one week off in that series, literally only because it was between Day 1 and Day 2 of the bar exam. Sometime around late October, halfway into a cross season that was going extraordinarily well for me, I stopped wanting to ride my bike. Cross racing still sounded fun, but training for it made me feel like dying. 

Training through an increasingly dark and chilly fall is always a challenge, but generally momentum propels me through Thanksgiving. This past fall, I just couldn’t. I’d get home from work and look at my bike and just sigh. That little thrust of mental energy it usually takes to start a training session just wasn’t there anymore. So I stopped. I just stopped riding my bike. I ran a little. I did a little yoga. I socialized after work without guilt. I cooked and I laid down on the couch and I made an effort not to feel bad about not getting up. (I also finished the cyclocross season! And the races were fun! I just didn’t train for them.)

This sort of burnout happens to me in some form every year, though never for this long. I usually race through mid-December, and don’t start really training seriously again until the end of January. I’ve been telling myself for years that this was me “taking a real break.” Four to six weeks off, rather than the two my coach would like. After this full month off, I am always worried I won’t be ready for spring road racing, but then end up with my best road results in March and early April.

This time is different. Six weeks off has come and gone. It’s been three months since I stopped training, and I still have no desire to consider a structured workout. In mid-December—when I first started a draft of this post and then abandoned it because it was too depressing—I thought I might quit bikes entirely. I took up running. I’ve resisted my team’s efforts to get me to set goals or commit to races for the upcoming season. I went to California for nine days, only rode my bike once, and didn’t even feel bad about it.

This kind of burnout is new for me, but I am determined not to let it break me. After all, I have so many bikes. They take up way too much of my apartment space for me to consider quitting. Selling them off? Could take years. Not to mention I only have bike friends anymore. My social life depends on me beating the burnout. I’ve decided to wait it out. Maybe until March, maybe until May. My bikes will be here when my motivation returns from its vacation.

In truth, around the new year, a faint light switched on. I wanted to ride my bike a little bit. I went outside, and I had a good time. I went on a group ride. During the work week, I’ve gotten on the trainer a couple of times. I’m not training — just a little bit of sweating, for a half hour or so, just to keep myself in shape. Last week, I rode my bike, outside, in the park, for a full hour, during a weeknight. Not training, just a little tempo, because it was cold out.

Running turns out to be great. I can achieve the same amount of physical exhaustion as on a bike in a third of the time. It’s less unpleasant to do when it is wet or very cold out. It’s also a novelty, which for the moment makes it inherently more interesting. Because I haven’t been serious about it since I was a teenager, it’s so easy to hit new milestones. Just a little push to go faster or further nets a PR. While running, you can travel clockwise through the park. Exhilarating.   

But as I’m out running in the park, I’m peeping who is doing laps. I’m training-curious. It’s almost starting to look fun again. I might just see you on the start line in March.