Over the winter, Michael Henson took the plunge that many racers have contemplated at one time or another: He moved out west to train and take a serious shot at turning pro. Here’s what happened next.

NYVC You moved to California over the winter. How deeply were you immersed in the racer lifestyle? Was it your single-minded focus?

MH This past winter was my second off-season training trip to California. In December of 2003, I packed up my bike and a few bags and headed west in search of great training and great weather (I found both, with the exception of historical rains in ‘05). I started my season out there with Mclane Pacific in ’04 and ’05 and then headed to Pomona and Redlands. I knew that if I was going to be able to compete at all on the NRC circuit – and in the 2004 Milk Ras in Ireland – I had to have a very deep base in my legs.

I’m lucky enough to have some good friends in Laguna Beach and I landed on my feet in the winter of 2003/04. I had a great place to live and was able to teach indoor cycling classes at a few health clubs to help pay my expenses. Last winter, there was already a personal network in place and my transition back into California life was much easier. In fact, I had planned on making my move last December a permanent one, but sometimes great and unexpected things pop up that change even the best-laid plans. Although I’m currently back in NYC, California is a place where I eventually want to return. The laid back “California lifestyle” sits well with me.

Was I immersed in the racer lifestyle? Well, yes and no. Yes in the sense that my existence was Spartan. Everything from my diet, training regime, sleep, all revolved around the bike. I trained alone most of the time, so there was something very monk-like about my lifestyle. Cycling was my single-minded focus in that everything I did – every step, every physical action, every pedal stroke, everything I ate – was integrally linked in my mind to my performance on the bike. Realistically, I have a good deal of physical talent but there are guys racing at the domestic professional and international level who, clearly, have tons more than me. In being as honest with myself as I could about my innate ability, I knew that in order to exceed my genetic limitations I had to work as hard as possible, train smart, and be fully dedicated to the sport. Being a full-time bike racer is a hard life to sign up for and it takes a certain amount of myopia in order to be successful.

I’ve always been a person who has varied interests, however, and I needed to feed my brain in ways that cycling alone just couldn’t. When I wasn’t absolutely cracked from training, I tried to read things that had nothing at all to do with cycling and kept my hand in my writing (not as much as I would have liked, but I certainly tried). Not to mention that I had people around me who helped me stay sharp and a little more versatile.

@##=#<1,L>@##=#NYVC Did you have a target level of fitness, and were you able to reach it?

MH I was aiming for roughly 370-380 watts at functional LT and a body weight around or below 150 pounds. That’s the power/weight ratio that I figured I needed to be competitive at the Pro/Cat 1 level in the US. Through consistent training and some serious dieting, I was able to get my threshold (based on a 20 minute field test with the power meter) into my target range and my weight down to a low of 148 in late February.

The weight loss was the harder part of the increase power/lower body weight equation. I ended the 2004 season at 158 pounds and 6% body fat (I do body composition tests 4 times a year). I’m 5’9”, so I had to atrophy a lot of upper body muscle that my frame likes to hold on to naturally. When I’m generally active and doing things other than cycling alone, my body likes to settle in at 160-165 pounds with a fair bit of that in my torso. I was fighting genetics. It took me a few months to lose the weight and there were too many nights when I’d go bed hungry and wake up in the morning with hunger-pangs. The diet was brutal, but when I was down at 148, going uphill was a blast! It felt like that backpack that I’d been dragging around for a few years was finally gone.

NYVC So, you had the fitness you felt you needed. What was keeping you off the NRC circuit?

MH Well, nothing was keeping me off of the circuit. I raced a good number of NRC races in 2004 and “signed” with Team Cobblestone/Nature’s Path – a small but strong Cat 1 team out of Richmond, VA for the 2005 campaign. Cobblestone/Nature’s Path is made up of a great bunch of guys with realistic ambitions and a lot of talent. I was excited to race the circuit with them.

I started the 2005 season on my own on the west coast and opened with a promising 26th place at the Mclane Pacific Road Race, one spot out of the money in the first NRC event of the season. I had great position coming into the sprint, but wound up on the wrong side of the road when the field moved to the right in a chicane that swung to the left. My choice was to hit the brakes and lose 15 spots or wind up in a ditch. I chose the brakes. Such is bike racing. The result is nothing to put on a race resume, but to place fairly well out of a stacked field while racing on my own in a 120-mile road race held in early March was very encouraging.

I went on to have a decent race at San Dimas (formerly Pomona). My uphill time-trial was horrendous and disappointing, but I redeemed myself by surviving a wet and cold road race on a hard circuit that saw massive attrition. I held on to finish at the tail end of a fast HealthNet dominated field sprint. Not a huge result by any means, but considering the depth of the DNF list and the fact that I spent 100-miles fighting for the front without the support of a team, it was a good ride early in a season where my big goals were still a few months away. It gave me a lot of confidence.

Unfortunately, I didn’t recover well after San Dimas. I was on the start line at Redlands 10 days later at a time when, perhaps, I should have been at home resting and building my fitness back up from an unexpected post-San Dimas dip in form. It wasn’t surprising that I had a forgettable Redlands. Actually “forgettable” is putting it kindly. Looking back on it, Redlands became a major turning point.

@##=#<2,r>@##=#NYVC What happened at Redlands?

MH Here’s a long answer to a short question:

Redlands was meant to be the grand-finale in my California racing swing. I was going to pack up all of the form gained from doing a race as hard as Redlands, throw it in the back of my car and bring it back east with me to join Team Cobblestone/Nature’s for a big month of May. I was also hoping for a respectable finish at Redlands – perhaps a top-30 on GC with a top-10 on one of the stages. This was an assessment that I made based on my rising form in mid-March and some trustworthy feedback that I had gotten from two very reliable sources after riding with one of them and having the other analyze my power data from that ride.

5-days before the event, though, when I could barely ride my bike uphill without being passed by a woman on a pink beach cruiser with groceries in a basket, I began to question whether or not I should actually get into the start-house for the Mt. Rubidoux Prologue. Knowing how hard Redlands is, I was worried that I’d ride myself into a hole rather than ride myself into the race. With tempered expectations, I chose to race. I just hoped that I’d find my legs and that I’d leave Redlands with some good form. I should have listened to my gut and stayed home.

Like a lot of endurance athletes, I’m someone who needs to be “open” from some controlled but hard efforts in the days leading up to a major race. Considering that I really didn’t ride my bike in the days leading up to Redlands, I planned on using the technical, generally uphill, 5km prologue as my “opener” for the remaining stages. I muddled through, got to the top, and started the next day well down in the overall but with hopes of shaking the fatigue out of my legs and showing my face during the Oak Glen Stage. Neither of those two things happened.

As a transient bike racer, you get used to sleeping on floors that belong to the kind people who open their home for the duration of a race and put up with bike racer habits (families who host racers are saints). The last thing I needed at this point, though, was a night on a floor sans air mattress (which I brilliantly left in NY). Sleepless, dead-legged and cranky I rode over to the start and hoped that I’d come alive.

The first 30 miles of the Oak Glen stage at Redlands is generally raced at 50km/hr or faster (and yes, there are hills) followed by two laps around the barren quasi-desert landscape at Lake Matthews, then the climb out of Lake Matthews and the very hard remaining 50 miles or so to the final 10km climb up Oak Glen. For those of you who have spent any time in Southern California, you’ve probably experienced Santa Ana wind conditions. These are fierce and consistent winds that blow at 30-60 mph. We had Santa Ana conditions for Redlands.

With the winds howling around Lake Matthews, I managed to ride myself to the front and felt pretty decent for a while. I tucked myself in behind the front echelons in the crosswinds, stayed out of the gutter and rode consistently in the top-20. Coming into the feed-zone, I dropped back a bit to make sure I stayed out of traffic and got my bottles without incident. That was a bad move. Throwing years of bike racing etiquette to the wind, HealthNet or Colavita (or some combination therein) decided that the feed-zone would be the perfect time split the field. I was left twisting in the wind alone. I found a working chase group and we chased in excess of 55km/hour (I am NOT making that number up, it came straight from a cyclo-computer) for 10km or so in order to reintegrate the field. Blown from that effort, I got dropped on the KOM out of Lake Matthews but wound up in the caravan and chased back through the cars. The slight crack in the door to a good day had been shut, shut hard, and shut for good.

At about 80-miles, the race hits the penultimate KOM before turning onto a stretch of road called San Timoteo Canyon Road. In good conditions, San Timoteo is a slog but nothing to really worry about. In windy conditions, it’s a bitch. Once again, I got popped over the KOM and managed to find a group that included a few of the Jittery Joe’s guys and some other decent riders as we made the turn onto San Timoteo. The remains of the field were in sight, maybe 15 seconds in front of us at the most. But we were stuck in a disorganized caravan and couldn’t get a good working rhythm into a seriously strong block headwind. After 20 minutes of struggling into the headwind without making up any ground on the field, my body was drained of energy and I lost my fighting spirit. I had checked out of Redlands both mentally and physically. I struggled alone for the final 10km of that road (well, there was an Aerospace Engineering guy sitting on my wheel the whole way who didn’t say a word) hoping and praying that my team’s feeder would still be in the feed-zone at the end of the road. I had no intention of climbing Oak Glen. All I wanted was to get to the car, take my number off, and regain the feeling in my right foot (which had gone away about 15 miles earlier).

I HATE abandoning races. All things considered, though, I was making the wise decision. Given how bad my body was feeling, I thought that it would be better for me to abandon, take a few days off and then resuming training in full and with force as I had been over the past few months. We all have bad days. I certainly have had my share. It’s part of the sport. This was just one little blip, a hiccup, in my season. No worries.

In retrospect – and this is a hindsight is 20/20 type of thing – the thoughts that went through my mind during those vicious miles in San Timoteo Canyon were the conscious beginnings of a difficult process of self-questioning and a brutally honest assessment of the place of bike racing in my life.

NYVC Did you ever hook up with Team Cobblestone/Nature’s Path?

MH I met up with them in late April for the start of the Tour of Shenandoah. The other three riders on the team are Craig Dodson, Ward Solar (winner of the NYC crit last year) and Jake Stephens. I drove down to Richmond two days before the start of Shenandoah and stayed with Craig and Ward.

The first day of Shenandoah starts with a very hard TT and ends with a fast evening crit. The race organization messed up our housing arrangements. We spent the hours between the TT and the crit trying to rectify that situation rather than recovering. Another team was staying in the house that was meant for us — or at least that we were supposed to share with them — and they weren’t particularly helpful or collegial. As we left them to their lunch, we were left in the lurch. We had nowhere to stay, no food and wound up driving around until we settled in a house (that wasn’t really ours to stay in) just to sit down for an hour before leaving for the night stage. [As an aside, the race organization was very apologetic and paid to put the team up in a hotel that night. It was disappointing, though, that other racers weren’t as forthcoming with help as they could have been.]

During that time, my mother called and told me that my grandfather was dying. He had been battling cancer for a while and was suddenly in rapid decline. I promised the team that I’d toe the line with them that evening, but they knew that my head was elsewhere. They were great, very supportive. My teammates are solid human beings. I rode half the crit, got a large cup of coffee, wished the guys luck in the rest of the race and drove home in the middle of the night.

With life crashing in on bike racing, I had the opportunity to assess my situation objectively. It was one of those rare moments when you can stand outside of your life look at it as if you’re watching a film. While I sincerely liked some of the characters and it looked pretty cool, I had lost the plot.

Part 2

NYVC Let’s fast forward to September, where you were doing PR for Univest. How’d you get from point A to point B?

MH After some serious reflection in early May, I decided that I had to redefine the role of cycling in my life. Of issue was that cycling had become:

A) A purely mechanical exercise that wasn’t speaking to some of my more pervasive interests in the sport like the psychology and philosophy behind why we choose to race bikes. Once it lost its intellectual challenge and became a purely physical pursuit, it felt empty. I needed to challenge my mind and cycling alone just wasn’t cutting it.

B) Following from (A), riding and racing wasn’t fun anymore. I had lost the pure joy of riding my bike. Cycling became a negative space. That was something that I needed to change.

C) I was at a crossroads. At 28 I wasn’t old by any stretch of the imagination. In sporting terms, however, I wasn’t “young” anymore either. The lines between Pro and Cat 1 in this country are blurry at best, so the reality was that even if I had my best season ever and landed some top national results I’d be rewarded a contract with a Continental Pro team that would have been different in name only from what I was doing as a Cat 1. The main difference would have been that I could have raced Georgia, Wachovia and San Fran and that I’d have two team bikes instead of one. At one point, that was what I wanted to achieve as a stepping-stone to something bigger. As an end in itself it wasn’t enough. If I were going to ride on the Pro Tour, I’d be there already. Cycling professionally just wasn’t economically viable and the sacrifices I had to make in order to race at a level that was acceptable to me didn’t seem worth it anymore. I needed to start thinking in terms of my future. To a large degree, I want that future to involve sports, and cycling in particular, since both have been a constant in my life since I was a kid. Not to mention that I was hoping to find the pure joy of riding again.

I was looking for a career path that would capitalize on all of the unique experiences that I had in my years racing bikes while addressing my creative and intellectual needs at the same time. Aside from cycling, I’m passionate about writing, communications and, in a broad sense, thinking about and discussing a wide variety of cultural subjects and social issues. My academic degrees are in Philosophy and Literature, and I wanted to find a space where I could bring all of my varied interests and passions together. Over the years I gained experience working on sponsor relations and media outreach for various outfits and had done some PR and marketing consulting work. After entertaining a whole slew of options, public relations seemed like a perfect venue for me to exercise my experience and knowledge. In a deeper sense, the PR path could provide me with the opportunity to delve into some meatier issues and establish myself as a strategic counselor, consultant and “thought leader” in the field. [This speaks to my philosophy on, and approach to, public relations as a strategy and communications tool that is more intricate than just writing press releases and pitching media.] I was doing some writing on my own and interviewing at PR agencies when had the good fortune of running into John Eustice.

This is a broad question, so I guess I have to back up and explain what put me in the position to bump into John: One of the hardest things that I had to do after deciding to shelf racing for the time being was tell my teammates. It took me years in the sport to meet a group of consistently upstanding and selfless guys. Once I made my decision, I called Craig Dodson and laid it all out. Craig was completely understanding, unconditionally supportive and left the door open for me to come back to the team at any point in the season. I learned through this process that when you’re going through a tough transition you really learn whom your friends are. Some fall down on you, some are constant in their support and some surprise you on the upside. For someone who I had known for just a few months, Dodson surprised me and has been a constant ever since. The same can be said for Ward Solar. They are two of the cycling scene’s finest people. [They aren’t the only supporters I’ve had, of course. There are many. But Craig and Ward are relevant to the story at hand.]

In June, I found my stride on the bike again. I wasn’t riding much, but it was quality. I managed to maintain some decent fitness on 4-6 hours a week of training, peppered with some running and karate. A week before the Mt. Holly/Smithville Grand Prix I was feeling good so I decided that I’d jump in the race. Craig and Ward welcomed me back with open arms. There were no expectations and nothing riding on it. I was racing my bike for fun again. I hadn’t ridden a mile over 50 in months, so I had no idea how my body would hold up over 92-miles. I went in with the intention of helping Craig, Ward, and Gerry Castro. The day before Mt. Holly, I was out for a ride in the park when I had my fortuitous run-in with John.

While telling John about what I was doing with my life, he offered me a job as PR Director for Univest. After being pleasantly surprised by my form at Mt. Holly, I thought about increasing my training specifically for a go at racing Univest. It’s a race that I love and one that I can do well in. Taking the job as PR Director was more in line with what I was trying to accomplish in the big picture, however, and was the more mature decision. So in August, I fundamentally changed my relationship with cycling by taking on the challenge of raising the Univest Grand Prix’s visibility in national, regional and trade press.

Working on Univest was an exciting and very rewarding experience. After having a conversation with John and Univest’s director of corporate communications about the challenges that the race consistently faces in its public relations efforts, I set to work to change the paradigm of the media outreach for the event and to ensure that John and Univest Corporation don’t have to do “PR triage” every year. After developing an overall strategy that addressed both short- and long-term goals for the event, and with a sophisticated messaging platform in hand, I secured the UGP and its attendant events a number of promising national level media placements while dramatically increasing the attention paid to the race by local/regional outlets and trade publications. We were very successful in getting the race’s mission and purpose out to the public. On a national level, I secured placement in USA Today as well a column on the Cyclosportif 100k (the race’s recreational charity ride) in an upcoming issue of a widely distributed magazine with a very large readership (I’m withholding the name of the magazine out of superstition. I don’t want to jinx the placement by talking too much about it before it’s actually in print).

John also gave me the opportunity to be his color commentary guy both live at the criterium and for the local TV coverage of the road race (thanks for the break into the TV biz, John). Announcing the criterium with John was a treat. He’s very generous and let me handle a lot of the commentary. I’ll always remember the rush that I’d get as a racer when I was coming through the start/finish line in a break and I heard my name over the PA system. It gave me that little extra bit of push, helped me dig a little deeper. This time, I was in the position to give the riders that extra energy, get the crowd behind the guys, and pay tribute to the working class racer – the athlete who spills his guts for his team only to pull out a few kilometers before the finish, his job for the day completed. A general American audience has a hard time understanding the true “fall on my sword” mentality inherent to well-executed cycling teamwork. It was a pleasure to be able to educate the thousands watching the event about how hard these guys work day in and day out, and the sacrifices that they make, in order to help a teammate get to the finish line first.

Working with John was great. He has an important vision for the future of American cycling and it was a treat to be at his side helping him articulate that vision, give it clarity of voice, and get the message out. If all of my work going forward is as fulfilling as Univest, then I’ll be happy for years to come.

Beyond Univest, I’ve recently teamed up with PublicNewYork, a cause-related marketing agency, to form PublicSports Communications. We’re a full service sports PR and marketing firm and we’re actively taking on new client work. It’s work that I enjoy and it’s a great way for me to parlay all of my experiences as an athlete into a foundation on which I can build a future for myself and for a potential family. There’s a lot of healthy and valid cynicism about the media and “PR people”. At its best, though, honest, smart and responsible public relations campaigns can raise the visibility of underexposed sports and the companies serving those activities. The marked increase in recognition that smart PR can bring to underserved sports can help provide the talented, but struggling, athlete with the means to make it to the next level. There’s also an interesting link that now exists between sport and social responsibility that is expressed through charity events, nonprofits, outdoor advocacy and cause related efforts on behalf of athletes and teams. Well-executed philanthropic efforts interest me on a very human level and are something that I’m also increasingly involved in on the PR side.

NYVC In retrospect, had you avoided burning out at Redlands, would you be somewhere else right now? Or do you think you’re where you should be?

MH That’s a tough question and one that I’ll never have a definitive answer for. That said; I am where I should be. If I had avoided “burning out” at Redlands, I think that the same thing would have happened somewhere down the line. But who knows? Maybe I would have won a big race and instead be giving you an interview about turning pro. Ultimately, though, there was something missing in my life as a full-time bike racer and it was only a matter of time before I had to fill that hole. It’s always hard to relinquish a dream, but I’m comfortable with my choice and am lucky enough to be able to set new goals and pursue new dreams with vigor.

This is why I take issue with the term “burn out”. It has a negative valence that doesn’t really fit my situation. What I experienced at Redlands and in the weeks that followed was a natural evolution in my life. I always promised myself that when I felt that I reached the peak of my abilities as a cyclist and there was nowhere else for me to go in the sport that I’d milk it for as long as I thought practical and then step aside. Of course, I wish that my peak abilities allowed me to accomplish more than I did, but that’s the reality of the situation. I’ve tried to keep perspective on where cycling fits in my life. Since there were times when I know that I lost that healthy perspective, I wasn’t sure if I’d recognize the moment when I had to give cycling up as my primary pursuit. When that moment did arrive, I was able to recognize it, deal with it candidly and was lucky enough have people around me who helped me through a difficult transition.

Filling my life with pursuits that have grown naturally out of my years as a bike racer has brought me back to the sport it a very positive way. I love riding my bike again. Rekindling that passion is what allowed me to have a great time racing at Mt. Holly and that will land me, possibly, on a few start lines in the years to come. As much as I enjoy riding now, though, the phase of my life where bike racing is a primary focus is over. I’m ok with that. The same rush that I used to get from racing, I now get from the work I’m doing. Any training that I do, any race that I enter, is for the pure, unsullied and agenda-free enjoyment of sport.

Now that I think about it, my choice to do the PR for Univest is probably the best answer for this question: Going into the race, I wasn’t sure how I was going to feel about being behind the scenes rather than on the road. I was nervous. Would I look at the guys on the start line, my former colleagues, and wish that I were out there with them? Would watching a race that was one of my big goals for the season make me seriously question the decision that I made in May? I had no idea and, frankly, the uncertainty I felt going in was unnerving. I did miss the racing a bit. There was a point when I was in the press car following the break on the finishing circuits when I wished I were out there on the bike. But while familiar pangs were there, they were muted. Ultimately, I was happier on the other side of the race. I can honestly say that in the moment when I recognized that I was happy in the role that I chose, I won my Univest.

First photo courtesy Mitchell Clinton.