What I Learned About Myself as a Pro Cyclist

Being a pro cyclist is like going to school every day, coming home thinking you might have it all figured out, and then going back the next and realizing you’re still learning. More or less, it is a never-ending education.

When I think about what I learned as a professional cyclist, a few things become apparent to me. The first that comes to mind is that cycling taught me how to really push my limits, seek out barriers, and try to break through them. There were countless times during training and racing where I thought I had reached both my physical and mental limits, but I made myself try, and I prevailed more often than not. Cycling helped me learn that barriers are meant to be broken. They are not stopping points – they are meant to be goals that you achieve and reset.

Another thing cycling taught me is that helping a teammate achieve success is just as rewarding as individual success. I tasted individual success on several occasions throughout my career, but I also played an instrumental role in many of my teammate’s successes. Working toward those achievements was just as rewarding for me as winning individually. When I extend that beyond cycling, it helps me to see that helping others and being good to people is just as rewarding if not more so than focusing on what I want personally.

The school of cycling was hard, but it certainly taught me more about myself than I could’ve ever expected.