Well it has been a very long time. Cycling has been my focal point for so many years and things suddenly went south. European racing has always been my dream and I finally got a taste for what it really meant to be in the European peloton while racing for Yawadoo this year. The training was hard and the racing was even more grueling. In March, I raced something like twelve or fifteen races. April was no different. While the racing was demanding and team expectations were high, I felt like I was suited to the racing style and had adapted to the lifestyle. I had one nemesis, though, the entire time I was over there –
sickness. It was always damp, cold, and rainy and after gutting myself
day in, day out on the bike my immune system finally put up the white
flag and I came down with a nasty hack in my lungs. The pressure was
really high from the team as well as the people I was living with and
at the first sign of my cold letting up I was back on the bike fighting
tooth and nail with every other rider with the hopes of a big contract
in the forefront of their minds.

Obviously, this was about the stupidest thing I could possibly do to get healthy. Belgium is not good for anyone’s health let alone a cyclist riding in the damp and cold every day of the week. My cough quickly resurfaced
after I returned to racing and changed from your general cough to a
sound that conjured up images of the Black Lung and pictures of
smokers’ lungs. I took a couple really easy days on the rollers, an
hour on the bike maybe, to just keep the legs spinning. Then came my
last race in Belgium. It was just outside of Gent and after feeling
healthy for a few days, along with a heaping portion of pressure from
various people as to why I wasn’t racing three/four times a week, I
lined up with hopes of getting in a solid workout and getting things
back on track. Long story short, I finished the race in the third group
and immediately after stopping I broke out into a deep searing cough
that set my lungs on fire.

After
this race I was laid up in bed with a stopped up nose, bad headache,
and that same deep painful cough. This went on for the better part of a
week. I was alone. No one from my team called since I wasn’t going to
race that weekend and the people who ran the restaurant I lived behind
were disinterested and told me to ride my bike to the doctor. So after
two days of this cough, I rode my bike a couple of miles to the doctor
only to be told that it was cold and it would go away by itself. After
many sleepless and cough-filled nights, I woke up late one night to
blow my nose and spit out the latest batch of green phlegm in the
bathroom sink. Only this time, though, I didn’t spit up any green
phlegm but a big wad of blood.

At
this point I decided I needed to go home and get healthy. I was
disheartened by my team’s lack of concern and once I started to cough
up blood I knew I had to be in a better environment to get healthy. I
had to go home.

The
next day I was flying out of Brussels unsure of where I was going to go
from here. I knew I loved racing but wasn’t sure why I did anymore.
Once I was home I took a little time off to get one hundred percent
healthy and right then was when I discovered that my work permit had
fallen through and I couldn’t return to Belgium. This was the final
nail in the coffin. I was done. Didn’t want to see a bike and wasn’t
going to race bikes. I couldn’t believe it. I came so close to lining
up for the big events and somehow it had all of a sudden been snatched
away from me.

Needless
to say, there were several aimless weeks of staying up late, drinking
one too many beers, and trying to push cycling as far to the back of my
mind as I could. I called my coach, Adam Meyerson, and told him I
wasn’t going to race anymore. I think that might have been the hardest.
Having someone invest so much into me while having faith in my
abilities and talent, it felt like I wasn’t just letting myself down.
Those weeks weren’t bad – only different. I think I had been thrown for
so much of a loop that I needed to entirely clear my mind, come to
grips with what happened, and reassess my situation.

OK
enough melodrama. What I realize now, though, is how cycling is such an
addictive sport. I quickly found myself checking the results regularly
and calling people to see how Somerville went. Soon after it became
very apparent to me that I couldn’t quit racing – it is an integral
part of who I am and what I have become. That was when Mike Sherry
found me knocking on his door like an orphan looking for a home. It
wasn’t easy initially to switch from racing in Europe to back in the
States, but a change is what I needed to rekindle the fire that drove
me to train hard and dream big. The legs aren’t back to a hundred
percent by any means but, more importantly, I’ve rediscovered the
passion that I had briefly lost. Reaching the highest echelons of the
sport will always been my dream and after a brief glimpse of life near
the top I know that it is a place I can reach.