Bouncing Back From Injury: Part One, ‘So Enduro’
For those of you who don’t know me (granted that will be a fair few of you!) my name is Rachael. I’m from Dorset, England and I have fallen in love with mountain biking. Specifically racing mountain bikes and even more precisely racing enduro, although with relative ease I can be pretty much persuaded to take part in any kind of race! It’s all down to my boyfriend, Adam, we started biking when we first met as a way to ‘date’, it involved picnics in the New Forest and pub lunches!
I was riding an old Muddy Fox but it still didn’t put me off! Soon I bought my first ‘proper’ mountain bike, a Giant Anthem and the picnics continued along with the odd XC race. In summer 2012 I realised I must really be into this biking thing as I wanted a 29er! Thus began the downward spiral into bike obsession, additions included an enduro bike (SantaCruz Nomad) in Oct 2012, a DH bike and a roadie! In between all this my beloved horse also got sold, my priorities had changed. I wanted to spend more time on bikes and with Adam rather than picking up poo on my own!
My preference for racing with gravity as an integral part of the set up was soon clear so we started doing a few small enduro races. I also set myself the challenge of doing the Megavalanche in 2013! My focus leading up to this race was to get my MTB skills to a level where I could confidently take on the Mega and be competitive at it. I did get there, with a bit of one to one coaching from Katy Curd and an all-girls coaching weekend (Diva Descent), I was happily seeing off some of the male competitors too! As is apparently becoming a theme with me (read on and you’ll see why) disaster struck: I crashed in the qualification race and broke my leg.
I thought I had given the Mega the respect it deserves but I don’t think I was ready for the immense adrenaline rush the mass start gives you, I was also too easily distracted by other riders around me, causing me to be on a let’s say – less than ideal line! Breaking my tibia and fibula and the massive recovery process that followed gave me an immense amount of focus though, it made me appreciate what I have in mountain biking, taught me not to throw away opportunities or take riding time for granted. I sat down, created both long and short term goals and decided to start blogging. I’ve never been a big fan of writing stuff down but I decided it was time to start – I’ve got an awful memory and seeing as I was now taking part in this awesome journey of mountain biking, people and racing, I thought I’d better keep a record of it!
One of my blog post documents my goals, some I can proudly say I have achieved, some have evolved to something different and some I am sad to say have not materialised yet. One of my most daunting goals was to get noticed….. the scary word – sponsorship. Well, I took my proverbial balls in my hand and started to email companies, explaining what I could do for them and asking for support in return. I am very lucky to say that On-One said yes! It just goes to show that you don’t have to be the best racer in the world, as long as you are willing to work hard for the company and give in return for the support, you are likely to find someone out there to work with. I was then extremely proud when I managed to gain support from Sealskinz, Duck Smart, Mudhugger and TF Tuned! Racing goals got bigger this year as well – the UK Gravity Enduro Series was on the list, the Enduro World Series round in Scotland and of course to complete the Megavalanche.
Skipping forward in time we have raced a lot at the beginning of the year from XC to DH to enduro getting ready for my main focus the UK Gravity Enduro’s and the EWS. I managed a 3rd and a win at the first two UKGE’s! The win was taken at an immensely tough race in Innerleithen, everyone that raced that weekend will agree with me, it was one that will not be forgotten quickly. I was on such a high that week, I’d finally won one of the race’s I’d set my sights on back when I was still getting over breaking my leg! To top this off, my boyfriend and I were staying in Scotland for the week in order to compete at the EWS the following weekend.
This was going to be one long week full of excellent bike riding, gnarly trails, great company and the biggest race to date! Making matters even more exciting, Adam chose this week to propose…. of course I said yes! So life and my biking was looking pretty sweet, the EWS was a race that I just wanted to experience and learn from, moving on from it a more knowledgeable racer. I was well aware that a real result was not even on the cards given the stiff professional competition, I was hoping for a top 30 finish and some good times compared to the other girls I usually race against.
Practice was allowed on Wednesday to Friday pre-race, with racing taking in four stages on each day, Saturday and Sunday. All in all practice went well, I was honestly not at fit as I would have liked but I rode all of the trail with minimal issues. The stages were longer than any I have ridden previously and with 8 to ‘learn’ I quickly understood that studying each nook and cranny of each trail was impossible. To be quick here would need excellent trail reading skills and quick reaction times to keep the flow and conserve energy. So with the knowledge that I had ridden some of the toughest trails in EWS history I moved on to practice stage 8/8 at the end of two hard days riding on the Thursday. Can you guess yet? You know what’s coming don’t you? It’s a massive race that I have had my sights set on for a while now so what happens….disaster.
Maybe I got complacent, maybe I was tired, maybe I didn’t do what I had been practicing and read the trail well enough, maybe my luck finally ran out after days of riding trails blind that were admittedly in a place ‘above my pay scale’. I crashed, I was a short way behind the group, I rolled down a steep slope alone into a drop, onto braking bumps, into another smaller drop in the wet and somewhere in there it all went a bit wrong. I hadn’t seen the rest of the group ride this section, I had no idea what to expect and there was no reason why I didn’t stop and take a look first but I didn’t I just rolled right in and let the brakes off.
You have no idea how much I am cursing myself right now, the guys that picked me off from the track will know how much I swore at the time. I was 100m from the end of the stage, 100m from finishing practice and being able to take part in the biggest race of my life to date. In binning it as I had on what was really a simple part of the stage, I went head and shoulder first into the bank next to the track and broke my collar bone. Instantly I had that crushing feeling in the pit of my stomach, no racing, no riding, no EWS experience and no Megavalanche this year either. I knew that all within seconds of getting my breath back.
After a quick trip to Borders General Hospital the break was confirmed, they strapped me up and advised me to travel home to get treatment at my local hospital. I took the painkillers they offered me and left, not to go home but to make the most of Tweedlove and the EWS. If I couldn’t ride in it, I still wanted to be here to experience the event. I was very glad of my choice stood on Tweed Green early on Saturday morning watching the ladies being announced and pedal off from the stage.
I felt strangely proud of my new found enduro girlfriends who I had ridden with all week and not known for much longer, watching them embark on what was to be an epic two days of racing for them. That’s what mountain biking and enduro racing does for you, brings you together with like-minded people and forges relationships. With mixed emotions I was excited to watch the whole weekend play out in front of me, with help from friends Robyn and Lee, I managed to see all the best bits of racing but I would be lying though my teeth if I said I wasn’t jealous of the other racers and disappointed in myself.
I guess, at least I have been here before, I can pick myself up from this and focus again. Only this time feels worse because I have sponsors supporting me, they quite rightly expect me to work for them and whilst I am off the bike I am less effective. More than that though, I set myself goals for this year and I have massively let myself down by one ridiculous mistake. I don’t want to do these things next year – I want to do them this year! I’m not one for sitting around and waiting. You are only on this planet once and I want to make as much use of my time as possible. With this in mind, I sit here typing, my right collar bone has a chunk of metal holding it together now and this is my first step to recovery. My next jobs are to re-configure my goals whilst I am resting, re-negotiate with my mind what is now achievable in this year and then try to preserve as much of my fitness as possible – I’ll get back to you soon, my head is in the game just got to get my body to catch up!
You can follow Rachael’s recovery here, and also check in on her Facebook Page.
Words and photos: Rachael Gurney
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