Four months away from home, six distant countries, eight different destinations; Laurie Greenland put it nicely: “it’s like being part of a wandering circus.”
After just one season of this touring show, a lengthy break to allow the nerves to settle back down to their usual baseline sounds very appealing to me. I am definitely feeling pretty tired, and it made me wonder how professional mountain bikers can keep up the motivation to train consistently, season after season, while still enjoying every moment they have on the bike.
Some riders have been at the top of their game in the professional racing scene for years. They must have some tricks hidden up their sleeves to have survived the World Cup circuit for so long. The mystery, however, is now out: Laurie Greenland and Sian A’Hern — two riders who are thriving in the downhill scene at the moment — let me in on how they keep a motivated mindset alive all season long.
Related:
- No Half Measures | Beechworth’s Lia Ladbrook is headed for the World Cup
- The Best of the Best | How seasoned racers tackle a World Cup Track
- Crash & Comeback | World Cup, Injuries and the UCI’s role in keeping riders safe
From childhood passion to full-time career
Riders racing at the highest level did not just magically appear there. As with a very young Albus Dumbledore, it is a hard one to imagine, but they were all beginners at some point — jumping off curbs in the street during the day and, at night, dreaming of one-day racing mountain bike World Cups.
Once the childhood passion becomes a full-time career, however, so much racing and riding can be a big commitment. The pressure to perform well, to promote sponsors — in person and socially — can threaten to squeeze out the fun in the sport. Losing sight of the reason why you first started out is always a danger, and it is the same for any full-time athlete.
“It gets harder to find a balance because your job is also your hobby and your passion, so mixing the two things can be a bit of a disaster”, says Greenland, who rides for the Santa Cruz Syndicate.
But what is mountain biking without the fun? To keep that excitement flowing strongly through the years, professional racers, like Greenland, have found loops to stay in contact with their innate passion for the sport.
Taking away some of the extra requirements professional riders have to attend to during important races is one that many teams follow. With all the online and performance expectations racers juggle as paid athletes, professional teams, including the Santa Cruz Syndicate, help remove these distractions by taking over their riders’ social media accounts for race week.
Laurie Greenland says that taking away additional jobs, like social media, during big competitions is a huge relief. He says it improves the quality of race week, helping him focus purely on riding and racing bikes.
Outside of races, keeping up with sponsors and fitness can mean racing and riding is always on your mind. To counter this, Greenland says he has developed other hobbies, besides mountain biking, to temper his exposure to it. He says that BMX riding, surfing and skateboarding have all become large parts of his life now that he rides bikes for a living.
Sian A’Hern, a professional downhill racer from Canberra, tells Flow that she has also found new interests as her career has taken off this year, keeping in touch with her more creative side by scrapbooking, practising photography and journaling.
Four months of an eat-ride-sleep-rinse-repeat layout could get a little monotonous at times. During my season this year, I made use of Greenland’s and A’Hern’s insight, actively doing something away from two wheels to break up the time on the bike. I even surprised myself by taking a liking to cooking — although I am still yet to decide whether this pastime worked to decrease or increase my overall stress levels.
View this post on Instagram
Along the journey to success of many professional riders, their position in the mountain biking world has changed. Mountain biking in their eyes, however, still holds that same source of fun and freedom they have had from the start. The danger of losing sight of why they began riding in the first place is ever present, but by integrating different hobbies into their day-to-day lives and accepting help from their teams during races, their love for the sport stands strong.
Tackling training and burnout
One of the biggest challenges of racing around the world is maintaining peak physical and mental fitness throughout the year. With travel and competitions every other week, organising training, bike maintenance, and time alone, life on the road can be a lot to handle.
The possibility of running out of gas at some point throughout the season is almost certain. Laurie Greenland admits that he finds it a particular challenge to give his body and mind enough rest-time with all the excitement of World Cups going on around him.
“It’s honestly such a fine line, I don’t think I’ve ever had a season where I haven’t burnt out… It’s such a high-pressure environment, it does take a while to find your feet every year and kind of relax into it, meaning that you end up with a bit of a midyear burnout,” Greenland says. “…mid-season, (I) just take a week or two out and go do something else… I need it.”
Greenland mentions how it is not only an overload of physical exertion which can cause this fatigue, so many other variables can gang up on a healthy mindset: cars can break down, flights can be delayed, or luggage can be lost.
The team I raced for this year, Synergy37, was unfortunate enough to come across some of these stress-inducing variables the hard way. Towards the end of the season at the downhill World Cup in Loudenvielle, one of the drops on the track claimed three of Synergy37’s rear triangles, making them unrideable. There we were, stuck at the bottom of the trail, three broken bikes in hand — not the ideal position to be in with a quickly approaching race the following week, thirteen hours away in Les Gets.
A relaxing time in the lead-up to the next World Cup was definitely not what we had. Instead of focusing on our prep for the race, we were burning the candle at both ends, trying to figure out if we could race at all. Somehow we managed to source two Commencal Supreme DH bikes for our riders just in time, and Oscar O’mahoney, the team’s bike mechanic (disregarding the effects of the added sleep-debt) beat some sort of bike-building record by setting up two whole bikes in one night.
In the end, everything ended up the right way around, but the pile of stress which we can thank the Loudenvielle World Cup track for was still firmly with us for the race in Les Gets.
Not knowing whether we were going to be able to compete at all, as well as the added pressure of getting used to a brand-new bike on a World Cup track, was an exhausting experience. It was lucky there was a healthy break before the last two World Cup rounds in America.
Each season, there are always going to be situations which can set you back along the way. Greenland says it is like walking a tightrope sometimes, but he emphasised how much of a help having his team around him is; having someone to share the highs and lows of the season with, train with, and race with, is much better than doing it all alone.
“I’ve lucked out with such easy, cool people to work with…they’re my friends, they’re my family”, Greenland says.
Given how high the pressure levels are at the races, burnout is almost guaranteed to happen. Designating breaks for your body to heal and having teammates around you to fall back on keeps the riders coming back for more.
Taking a break from it all
To make a full-time career out of mountain biking, performing well enough at races and getting noticed by the right sponsors is key. It’s push, push, push to make it happen and to gain the fitness and racing experience is especially difficult for Aussie riders because the majority of the sport takes place on the other side of the world. But when you are not acknowledged for good results and are missing proper support after so much hard work, it can really work to knock your confidence on the bike.
For Sian A’Hern, when she first entered the World Cup racing scene, it was not an easy journey from privateer to professional downhill racer.
“When I started racing mountain bikes in February 2015, I kind of leapt straight into the pointy end of the sport nationally, then straight into World Cups the year after,” she says.
Being dumped into such large races, so early on in her racing career, A’Hern says she didn’t have the necessary experience or fitness for racing World Cup tracks. This led to injuries during her first season and missing the results potential sponsors were looking for. A’Hern’s results began to improve — winning the Junior World Cup Overall Series and getting multiple top ten results in elite — but she was still not receiving the support others around her were getting.
With the stress of racing the World Cups, the massive financial costs of being a privateer and the lack of support from a pro team, A’Hern decided to take a break from racing altogether.
It turns out, however, that a break was all she needed to rekindle the joy of mountain biking.
“The break really brought my love back to why I started riding in the first place, and I just enjoyed being out with mates and having fun riding,” A’Hern says.
This year, Sian returned with the YT Mob downhill team and has come home after a successful season, with multiple top-ten results in elite women now linked to her name.
In some cases, a break can help riders regain the passion they have always had for the sport, but for others, it means stepping away from competitions permanently.
Brett Rheeder is a professional freeride and slopestyle mountain bike rider from Canada. He has been in the professional mountain bike scene for twenty years, racing professionally since he was ten years old. Rheeder is a true veteran of the sport, however, the thrill of riding and motivation to continue competing has finally died out for him.
“I had reached all my goals… I won everything there was to win. I was… really hard on myself, and I got to the point where I questioned whether I was (racing) for the right reasons… I needed a step back from it”, Rheeder told Elliot Jackson and Rob Warner on the Just Ride podcast.
Leaving the competitive side of the sport, however, doesn’t mean you have to leave it forever. Elliot Jackson and Rob Warner are perfect examples of this, as they have both found careers in mountain biking after stopping racing. Elliot and Rob are now Red Bull presenters and hosts of the Red Bull podcast, ‘Just Ride’, and still travel the world, following mountain bike races around the globe.
Racing World Cups can be a pretty exhausting experience. It causes burnout, fatigue and can possibly even take away from the enjoyment of mountain biking altogether. But the bottom line is that if it is what you really want to do, you will be able to work around the inconveniences, keeping that child-like grin blazing every step of the way.
Photos: Bartek Wolinski / Red Bull Content Pool, Samantha Saskia Dugon / Red Bull Content Pool, Clint Trahan / Crankworx, Craig Cox (@coxyanga)