How I Finally Stopped Saying Sorry

Posted on February 21, 2016 by Syd Schulz

“Sorry, I’m slow.”

I used to say this a lot — or variations of it.

Sorry, I’m feeling slow today. Sorry, I’m so bad at this. Sorry, I’m so much slower than everyone else. Sorry, this trail is really hard for me. Sorry I’m so slow, I had a crash and got my chain stuck and then you wouldn’t believe it, but I got chased by a rabid badger, but really, just, sorry for being slow. Blah blah blah.

It wasn’t really because I thought I was slow (although, sometimes I did), but because I was so often riding in situations where I was slower than everything else, or at least towards the back of the group. This is the reality of being a new racer and dating a male professional mountain biker who has lots of male pro biker friends. I knew this, on some level, but I still felt shitty every time people were waiting for me. Hence, the apologizing.

Sorry, I’m slow. Sorry you had to wait for me. Blah, blah, blah.

The problem with saying “I’m slow” all the time, whether you believe it or not, is that it’s pretty much the opposite of what you should be telling yourself if you want to race fast. Our friends in Santiago did an experiment where they put two kiwifruits in different jars and labeled one “beso” (kiss) and the other “poto cara” (butt-face). They kept the jars in the same conditions and three weeks later the butt-face kiwi is covered in mold and the beso kiwi is fine. Now, don’t ask me how that works, but apparently it does, and the point is — what you say, matters, and it matters a lot.

I’ve tried to stop saying stuff like this in the past, but it’s never really stuck, because when I get to the bottom of the trail and see a bunch of people sitting around tapping their feet, I feel obligated to say something. This is because I’m a woman and have been indoctrinated by society to think that the only thing worse than drowning puppies in a swimming pool is inconveniencing people. (To be fair, I’ve heard guys say “sorry, I’m slow” but not NEARLY as often.) But, in all seriousness, when you’re the last person to roll up, saying nothing feels like ignoring the big, purple elephant sitting on the side of the trail. You can’t just pretend nothing is going on. If you do, people will probably assume you’re pissed off and they’ll be all “are you okay? did you crash?” and then you will be pissed off, and probably say something testy like “no, I’m just actually this slow, believe it or not” and then everyone will feel awkward and you will feel bad about yourself, all over again. Not that I’m speaking from personal experience or anything.

So, anyway, I was at an impasse — and then someone in my Facebook feed posted a link to this comic from Bored panda, called “Stop Saying “Sorry” And Say “Thank You” Instead,” and it was a massive lightbulb moment. It’s so good that I’m going to steal the first bit and post it below, and hopefully not get sued for copyright infringement. Seriously, though, you should go read the whole thing.

Via yaoxiaoart.com

And so, over the past few months I’ve made a concerted effort to replace “sorry I’m slow” with “thanks so much for waiting for me,” and the results are pretty astounding. (Obviously I should have titled this “She changes 3 words in her vocabulary and what happens next will amaze you.” I would have gotten a lot more clicks, missed opportunity.)

I first tried out this strategy on a moto ride, and the end result was having two motocross bros bending over backwards to help me dig my bike out of trenches and make it up hills, all the while constantly assuring me that this was the most difficult trail in the area (which does beg the question why they brought me on it on my 7th ever moto ride, but hey, we all had fun). The second test run was on a XC ride where I was seriously imploding and crawling up the hills. To be honest, I was going slow, but instead of saying that, I just thanked everyone for waiting for me and being so patient. It worked. Someone even said “it’s nice to ride with someone who just goes their own pace and has fun,” which was a nice affirmation.

Here’s why I think this works. When you thank someone for waiting for you, they feel good about themselves. They feel like they’re helping you out (which they are, of course), and doing a a good thing. They feel appreciated. And, to be honest, they probably had a fairly good idea of what your ability level was before they rode with you, so they probably knew they would be doing some waiting, and now they’re just happy that you’re appreciative of their time. When you say “sorry, I’m slow” it’s awkward for everyone involved. Whether you mean it or not, it comes off like you’re fishing to be told that you’re not slow, kind of like when you tell your boyfriend “my stomach looks fat in this shirt” and you really just want him to say “but you’re so skinny!” (Hint: don’t do that either.) The truth is, if they’re that much faster than you, they probably do think you’re slow. And they probably don’t care. And even if they do care? You shouldn’t care, because you know what — you’re out there, doing your best and it doesn’t make one iota of difference whether someone thinks you’re fast or slow or average or whatever. It changes NOTHING.

But when you thank people for waiting for you, or compliment them on how fast THEY were going, it turns the whole dynamic of the ride into something more positive. Not only do you stop sending yourself the wrong message, you make other people feel better about themselves and encourage them to help you with your riding, instead of just waiting and feeling awkward. In other words, everyone wins.

Andes Pacífico: Five Days of Racing in Chile

Posted on February 15, 2016 by Syd Schulz

One of my goals for 2016 is to write race recaps in a vaguely timely fashion. Those of you who have followed this blog for awhile probably remember that all of my race reports from last year started with some excuse about “waiting to gain perspective on the event.” And before last year, I refused to do race recaps at all, because I thought they were the scourge of the devil, but I also swore I would never use Snapchat or have long hair, and well, here we are.

Of course, the problem with writing a race report the day after a five day race is that the overwhelming emotion is TIRED. In order to not dwell on that over the course of this entire post, let’s get this out of the way right off the bat — I’M TIRED. I’m wrecked. I’m exhausted. I actually slept through the post race disco party (like, in a tent that was literally in the middle of a disco party) that’s how tired. But it’s been a good tired, not a miserable tired, and overall, this week was one of the most awesome bike racing experiences of my life to date.

So here’s a day-by-day highlight reel. Plus some photos.

The start of the first stage of the first day looked like this. Whoa.

Day 1: La Parva Ski Resort outside of Santiago, Chile. Epicly beautiful Andean mountain vistas, epicly sketchy Andean trails. They call the terrain here “antigrip” for a reason. It’s basically like riding through a combination of deep gravel and super fine sandy dust stuff, and when you use your brakes, you speed up. The fourth and final stage of this day was definitely the trickiest. The locals called it a “festival de la curva” which was a bit of an understatement, as “curve” implies something a tad softer than what was actually going on, which was steep switchbacks with no catch berms and infinite potential of pitching yourself off a cliff. About 5,000 of them. So, yeah, festival, my ass. Pleased to say I rode every turn and only got stuck in a bush once, although I was doing a bit more foot out, strider bike, seat-bouncing than I care to admit.

Macky and some horses on one of the transitions on Day 2.

Day 2: Farellones. Another day of wicked, sketchball Andean terrain. One of these trails I had raced in a local Enduro race here in 2014 and I am pleased to say that this time I made it down without crying. In fact, I didn’t even fall off once, which basically makes it a 10 fold improvement. On this day we traded the festival de la curva for the festival of the off-camber-clinging-to-the-side-of-mountain-and-hoping-you-don’t-die, which was equally festive, let me tell you. I enjoyed it thoroughly, even though I came unglued on the third, newly cut and disgustingly off-camber stage about a bajillion times.

Getting rowdy at the start of day 3 with some new and old friends.

Getting rowdy at the start of stage 3 with some new and old friends.

Day 3: Cajón del Maipo. The last day in the Andes. Things started to be a *little* tamer today, although the third stage had more sniper baby heads than I’ve ever seen in one place in my life. It took all my energy to remember to look ahead and not at every little rock that was getting in my way. The Defcon handled this terrain marvelously, especially when I relaxed and was able to let go of the brakes a little bit. I started to feel more comfortable on this day, and started racing a bit more aggressively. I even caught some dudes on a pedally section, so that’s always fun. Also, the race promoters met us at the end of the last day with baskets and baskets of empanadas, which is pretty much the best way to end a rough day of riding. (As a aside, if you want to lose weight, pick a different race. I could write an entire post about how delicious and ample the food was, but this is not that kind of blog, so back to bikes.)

Celebrating the views on Day 3

Grapes and sweat — Day 4 in a nutshell.

Day 4: Santa Cruz. Chile’s beautiful (but hot) wine country. Two long stages with even longer hike-a-bike sections and 90 degree weather. I’m not the hugest fan of hiking or hot weather, so this wasn’t the easiest day for me, but I managed to stay in a pretty good mood by going slow, taking breaks and eating a lot of food. (By the way, those three things may actually be the key to happiness in life. Bike racing is full of insights.) The stages were awesome, fast and finally the dirt had some grip. I had two cleans run, minus a little detour off the trail on the first stage and a plunge into a rut on the second. There was a jump over the rut in question, but not being a huge fan of hitting jumps that I’ve never seen the other side of, I opted for indecision and slammed on the brakes at the last minute, which was a bad plan. Indecision kills, kids. Turns out it didn’t matter that much, because the second stage ended up being cancelled after one rider crashed into the course tape and half the field behind him got lost. That’s one thing I love about races like this — you just really never know what will happen next.

Feeling tired? A popsicle and some kitten cuddles will cheer you up!

Day 5: Matanzas. Finally, to the coast. This day took us up, down and around the rolling coastal hills until we finally descended straight to the beach on the 7th and final stage of the day. Getting that first glimpse of the ocean was an incredible feeling of relief and accomplishment. These stages were calmer than what we had had in days past, but still challenging in their own way. You had to focus to make sure you didn’t miss any corners and go veering off course, and the odd rut or off camber ledge kept things super interesting all the way to the very end. We didn’t end up finishing the day until 8:30 pm, but luckily the race crew had choripan on the grill waiting for us. The chori was just an appetizer — a full on Chilean parilla followed. Lamb ribs, beef steaks, chicken. I ate so much meat it’s pretty amazing I didn’t turn into a cow. The parilla combined with two beers (we were getting wild), meant I struggled to stay awake for the award ceremony, which didn’t happen until midnight. And then the party started and despite my best intentions of celebrating, I found myself magnetically drawn to my tent, where I fell asleep on a deflated air mattress to the sound of 1000 decibel Chilean dance music and slept for the next 9 hours. It was great.

I made it!!!!!!

All in all, Andes Pacifico was an incredible experience and I feel that I raced well. I ended up 7th, which I’m super pleased with, although honestly I didn’t pay much attention to the results over the course of the race. This was definitely a race, but it was more about the experience, the people, the magic of being high in the mountains and riding your bike fast. I’m already hoping to come back next year!

Is Will Power Really Your Friend?

Posted on February 8, 2016 by Syd Schulz

The desire to have green boxes in Training Peaks is a powerful motivator.

When you tell people you’re a professional athlete, you often get responses like “wow, you must be disciplined,” or “I barely have the will power to make it to the gym once a week! How do you do it?” These kind of comments always make me a bit uncomfortable, because, um, me? Will power? Ha. Ha. Clearly you’ve never seen me eat chips and salsa.

Let me tell you a story. I used to be extraordinarily disciplined. As a high school athlete (and student), I was regimented, both in my thinking and my training. Things were very black and white and I was harsh on myself, my body and my seeming inability to achieve my (lofty and highly unrealistic) goals. I moved away from this thinking in college. And by “moved away” I mean, slingshotted to the opposite end of the spectrum. There was a long period of time where I couldn’t really be considered an athlete. In fact, being a serious athlete held for me a connotation of self-doubt and disappointment. I morphed into an extremely Type B person. Although I have changed a lot since college, I am still closer to that iteration of myself. Disciplined me was not a healthy or happy person, and even when I started moving towards racing enduro professionally, I knew I didn’t want to return to being that person.

Here’s what I’ve realized about will power — some athletes get where they are by pure force of will, determination and discipline. The rest of us have work-arounds. (And the former are not always the most funnest people ever to hang out with, but that’s just my opinion.)

Re-integrating serious training into my life over the course of the past two years has been a slow and deliberate process, in which I’ve tried to eliminate the role of “will power” wherever possible. Not because I can’t force myself to do something (goodness knows I can), but because I don’t believe battling my mind is the healthiest, smartest way to achieve my goals. I think there are other options, and if you’re like me and all that “ra-ra fitness just do it don’t be a pussy lift heavy shit” crap sets your teeth on edge, consider these bits of advice, instead.

Defer to the experts. (I.e. take it out of your hands).

I resisted serious interval training for the first two years of my professional career (pretty impressive run, eh?). Not because I didn’t want to do intervals, I actually kind of did, but because I was deathly afraid of over-training and/or working myself into a tizzy (a la my high school running career). Frankly, I didn’t know what to do. Starting last year, I started tossing around the idea of working with a coach. But oh dear, that would mean someone would be telling me what to do and part of the problem with being a very Type B person is that you prefer to decide your daily schedule you know, around 9am on the day in question.

In November of this past year, I finally pulled the trigger and starting working with Daniel Matheny of Matheny Endurance. Best decision ever. I quickly learned that the greatest thing about coaches is that they take the discipline out of your hands. If you know what you’re going to do ahead of time, it’s pretty easy to motivate yourself to do it. And if you’re feeling tired and sick and crappy, all you have to do is tell your coach that and they tell you NOT TO DO ALL THE THINGS. Whoa. Left to my own devices I gravitated between periods of being totally paralyzed by indecision and periods of “motivation” aka quasi psychotic training through injury and stomach flus and gail force winds. Working with Daniel has given me some much needed balance and peace of mind. And, actually, training is fun and feeling fit is awesome. (Go figure).

It’s a lot easier to train in weather like this if you go out the door with a plan.

Instead of forcing it, re-think it, and do it smarter.

I have a notebook where I record all my monthly goals and tasks. Since October I’ve been writing “do four parking lot skill sessions” and whaddayaknow I haven’t been doing it. I have plenty of excuses, mind, “it’s icy,” “it’s snowy,” “I don’t know where to find a parking lot” etc., but excuses shmooses, the point is, I wasn’t doing it. Previous me would probably have reacted to this with a slough of self-loathing, WHY CAN’T YOU MOTIVATE YOURSELF TO JUST DO IT WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU WHY DO YOU NEVER DO THE THINGS YOU SAY YOU’RE GOING TO blah blah blah. Current me is a little bit nicer to myself, so I’ve been trying to figure out why I’m not doing it, instead of just assuming I’m a failure.

When the opportunity came up to work remotely with Lee McCormack of Lee Likes Bikes on skills training, it was a bit of a light bulb moment. Ahhh, I haven’t been doing this because I have no idea what I’m doing, not because I lack the motivation. I want to do it, but I don’t have the direction I need, so it’s not satisfying and I don’t feel the payback, and there’s this constant self doubt of “am I even working on the right things.” In other words, basically the same reason I wasn’t doing intervals. With Lee’s program, I receive lessons that tell me what to do. After I complete the lessons, Lee takes a look at the video and gives me some personalized feedback. I’ve only just started, but I’ve already begun to think about skills work in a completely different way.

Use routines and incentives to your advantage.

You can’t always hire an expert to tell you what to do, of course. Sometimes you have to buck up and do it, whatever it happens to be. There are some ways to make this easier and most involve removing will power from the equation to some degree or another. (Hint: will power not your friend in this scenario.) The more you can make a task a given, an expectation, a routine — the more likely it is to happen. I’ve managed to do this with my morning “yoga.” By yoga I mean 2 -3 sun salutations. I’ve convinced myself to do this for the past four or five months by being very, very, very reasonable with my morning, un-caffeinated self. Which is to say, I only have to do my yoga until the coffee is done brewing. Yes, okay, it’s not a lot of yoga, but now it’s something that I’ve gotten so used to doing, I keep doing it without much whinging and it’s a great way to start the day. Routines like this take a bit of will power to set up, but then your brain accepts it as something that just happens. The key is to be realistic (don’t say you’re going to do an hour of yoga before you drink coffee looooool) and to convince your brain that it’s a routine and that there’s no decision making involved.

The other trick is to use incentives. I really only recommend doing this in extreme cases — the things you absolutely HAVE TO DO, that require significant time investment (i.e. are too difficult to fit into a routine) and that you can’t work around. Personally, I’m of the mind that if you really, really, really don’t want to do something, you should take a good, hard look at why you’re doing it and maybe, ya know, stop doing it. But there are some things that you have to do so that you can do the things you love — for me, these are my PT exercises for my knee. God, I have the hardest time making myself do them. I don’t know why. They aren’t exactly difficult. But they are kind of time consuming and I only really feel the need to do them when my knee is already hurting (in other words TOO FREAKING LATE). Luckily I’m sucker for gold star stickers, so for the month of December I gave myself a star in my goals notebook for every time I did the exercises. Terribly hokey, I know, but it worked, and my knee now feels 100% better.

I’m working on establishing a better stretching routine but it’s a process.

Realistically, of course, even with the stars, doing my PT exercises required will power. The good news is that because I had eliminated the need for will power in my other training, I had a lot to spare. Because that’s the thing about will power — it’s finite. It can work for you, if used sparingly, or you can drive yourself up the freaking wall trying to battle your mind over every little thing. My thoughts on will power, boiled down to the absolute basics, are these: eliminate the need for will power and discipline where you can, be realistic, have experts give you direction, and, if worse comes to absolute worse, play tricks on your brain.

I’d love to hear from your — how do you balance and conserve your use of will power? What’s your winter training motivation? Shoot me an email or comment below!

My Complicated Relationship with Mud (and some tips for shredding wet trails)

Posted on March 22, 2015 by Syd Schulz

Ah, mud-riding. Another thing for the list of “things-I-really-should-be-good-at-but-totally-am-not.” Because, really, I should be good at riding wet stuff. I grew up in Southern Ohio, riding trails that were dry, like, maybe three weeks of the year. And then I went to school in Vermont and started racing mountain bikes at the collegiate level. There was one year where I’m pretty sure every single collegiate race was a mud bath. Like drivechain so clogged with mud that you can barely pedal and you have to replace pretty much everything afterwards. And I remember really enjoying this and actually winning a surprising amount of XC races. Look, here I am all covered in mud and stupidly happy about it, circa 2011.

Look ma, no knee pads!

So, what the hell changed? Here’s my grand theory (on mountain biking and life in general): if you don’t do a thing, you won’t be good at the thing. And sometimes the “thing” in question is annoyingly specific, like, in this case “riding a mountain bike down a steep, muddy, root-covered hillside at high speeds.” The fact that I’m relatively good at riding XC style trails at XC speeds in wet conditions has, in fact, been 0% helpful in racing enduro in the mud. I learned to go fast in New Mexico on dry, gravelly, baby heads. So, shocker, that’s what I’m good at going fast on. Give me ruts, give me sand, give me loose berms. But puhhhhhlease nothing wet.

The rules and tricks I picked up learning to ride relatively non-techy wet stuff have, if anything, proved counter-productive. For example, “avoid sideways roots when wet” is not terribly helpful when faced with a trail that is, in fact, nothing but wet, slippery, sideways roots. And “don’t use your brakes when on slippery surfaces” is equally unhelpful when the trail is extremely steep (and slippery) for extended periods of time and the steep bits tend to end in turns that you would inevitably overshoot if you just let go of the brakes.

This is about how well these rules worked for me on the one wet stage in Crested Butte last year:

Recently, I’ve been getting some proper practice riding gnarly wet stuff (Thanks Cyclone Pam!) and I’ve had some revelations. First off, it’s okay that I suck at this, because, seriously, I have never ridden anything like this. It would be like thinking I could race motocross just because I can make it to the grocery store and back on my parents’ 50cc scooter. Secondly, if it rains right before the Enduro World Series race this weekend, I may be better off ditching my bike and bringing a sled, because HOLY SHIT.

So, here goes. If you’re interested in learning along with me, here are my recently-acquired tips for riding scary things in the mud:

1. Trust your tires. So, by extension, invest in tires you can trust. Somehow I managed to make it until this week without ever really using a mud tire in the mud. I hadn’t really seen the point. {Yes, I’m a dumbass.} This week I had the dubious privilege of riding the steepest, rootiest, wettest trail in Rotorua twice, once with a Vittoria Tires Goma and once with Vittoria’s mud tire, the Jafaki. The Goma is an awesome tire. I rode it in every race last year. I love it and I would happily ride it forever and always because swapping tires is a pain in the ass. But it’s just not a mud tire. On round one down this trail I probably crashed 20 times. Both my tires were so gummed up you couldn’t even see the tread. I whacked my head on the ground. There *may* have been tears. Round two went a lot better. I actually had traction on some of the turns because the Jafaki sheds mud like a boss. I attempted everything and rode most of the trail and I only crashed around five times, which is way better than 20. So, tires matter.

2. Modulate your front/rear brakes. Riding in wet stuff requires that you pay way, way, way more attention to your brakes. I learned early on, as a 14-year-old riding slippery Ohio singletrack, to just never use my front brake. This was certainly the safest method. And since my speeds topped out at, like, 8 mph, this worked out pretty well. Fast forward 10 years and I have a 200mm front rotor, a 180mm rear, 2.4 tires with huge knobs and I often have to slam on both brakes as hard as possible to slow down enough to make a turn. Because I’m going that much faster. So, “don’t use your front brake” is another unhelpful tidbit. That said, riding steep, wet trails in Rotorua has forced me to re-evaluate my jam and slam technique and learn a more graceful “brake dance.” It goes like this — enter corner, use both brakes to scrub speed, begin turning, let off front brake and slam on the rear, let rear wheel slide all the way around, re-apply front brake (if necessary), exit corner. If there are roots in this corner (and there probably are), you’ll have to adjust this technique so that you’re off both the brakes when crossing the roots.

3. Embrace the slide, and then learn to control it. Sometimes you slide. Sometimes it’s just your rear tire sliding and this can actually be pretty helpful, assuming it’s sliding in the desired direction. Sometimes both of your tires are sliding and this is really pretty terrifying but doesn’t *always* mean you’re doomed. I have hardly mastered this, but the less I freak out when I slide, the better things seem to turn out. (This is applicable to pretty much everything in life, not just sliding.)

4. Accept that you’re not going to be clipped in. Sometimes pulling out a foot to dab is the best way to save a squirrelly corner without losing a ton of speed. This means you then have loads of mud stuck to your foot and you’re just not going to get back into your pedals before that next slippery roll-in. So jam your foot onto your pedal and hope for the best. It really will be okay.

5. Ride in the mud. I know, DUH. I contemplated putting “learn to read the terrain” as one of these tips but then I realized that the only way to accomplish that is just by doing it. Riding in the mud and doing everything wrong. Over and over again. Until you start to understand when to be light on your bike and when to be heavy, when to brake and when to definitely NOT brake. Going back to my grand theory, you will never be good at things you don’t do. So, do the things that scare you until they aren’t scary anymore. Do the things you’re bad at, even if you don’t want to. If a trail makes you cry and fall to pieces, go do it again. And again. And again. Improving isn’t pretty, but it’s fairly simple when you get right down to it.

I’m hardly an expert on this topic, so please feel free to chime in if you think I missed something important. I’d like to say that I’ve embraced the wet and that I won’t even care if it rains before this weekend’s race, but that’s hardly true. I’m still crossing my fingers for some hitherto unsuspected and seasonally improbable drought. Of course, it’s pouring rain as I type this, so it’s not looking good on that front. On the bright side, it looks like I’ll have ample opportunity to put my own tips to use. With any luck, I’ll finish in one piece, covered in mud, with a smile on my face.

February 2015: It’s All About the Bike [Vlog]

Posted on March 4, 2015 by Syd Schulz

I start every one of these update posts with something along the lines of “whoa is it already [insert month here]?!?!” I’m getting predictable enough that if this were someone else’s blog, I would probably make fun of them. So, I’m not going to say that this time, except, just kidding, I totally am, because WTF HOW IS IT MARCH WHAT IS HAPPENING. But forget March, we’re here to talk about February.

Despite being only a confusing 28 days long, February was a big month. Lots of stuff happened. For starters, I changed the name of this blog to better reflect my focus on riding and racing bikes. I also starred (if you can call it that) in a little Valentine’s Day bike edit that Macky and Sean and I put together. It was featured on Pinkbike and got 38,000 views, plus 15,000 more on Vimeo/Youtube/FB. Yeeeeeek that is WAY more people than have ever wandered onto this website. Am I famous now??!?! I’m allowed to ponder this because no less than THREE (THREE!!!) strangers recognized me from the video. Whatttt.

Watch the video below:

February was also a big month for me because it was so singularly focused — life really was all about the bike. Contrast that to January, where we spent half the month traipsing around Southeast Asia, riding mopeds and eating Pad Thai. I’m not saying that our training was super structured (or structured at all, for that matter), just that we rode A LOT. 333.2 miles to be exact. And when we weren’t riding or eating, we were probably hanging out with bike people, talking about bikes or watching bike movies.

There was also a certain amount of silliness…

And I have to say, there is something really awesome about this kind of life (although it doesn’t always make for the most gripping blog posts). I am so grateful to have the time and the resources this year to actually dedicate most of my time to what I want to be doing. Last year at this time I was still trying to figure my shit out and agonizing over where I wanted to spend my energy — writing, riding bikes, trying to find a job? Now I’ve made up my mind and, as usual, I’m significantly happier having made that decision. I’m starting the year with 60 park laps, a lot of miles and a much stronger confidence in my ability to navigate a bicycle down a mountain. February was challenging, but ultimately rewarding, with lots of fun and ridiculousness tossed in there.

And here’s our little VLOG from the month:

Freewheel Finance: The Power of “Faking It” Mindfully

Posted on February 23, 2015 by Syd Schulz

According to google analytics only about 2,000 people read this blog on a monthly basis, which means that about 10% of you are also sending me emails asking how the bleeping hell I afford to do what I do.

Fair enough. Point taken. Everyone can relax now, as I have written a blog post.

In fact, I’ve decided to start a monthly(ish) series called Freewheel Finance, with the hope of clearing up some of the confusion and proving that it is actually possible to be a freelance athlete/writer and travel the world while simultaneously feeding oneself and [generally speaking] paying bills on time.

Back in November, a reader emailed me requesting that I write a blog post about “how I make ends meet on the road,” which made me realize two things. A) People are super curious about this and B) my blog makes it look like I have my shit together WAY better than I actually do.

I think my response to this email was something along the lines of “if I manage to pay my credit card bill at the end of this month without going into debt, then I will most certainly write that blog post because if I pull that off I might actually be qualified to tell other people things about money and while I’m at it I should just add some fancy initials to the end of my name like Syd Schulz, F.F.W., for fucking financial wizard.”

Spoiler alert — I paid off my credit card bill for that month and for the three subsequent months. And this year, I’m on track to actually make something close to a living wage. So I guess it’s time to write that blog post.

The theme of this particular blog post is “faking it until you make it” and how that works from a financial perspective. I know at least three of my relatives are cringing at this statement, but hear me out. I’m not saying goof off and pretend you know what you’re doing until a big pile of money falls into your lap — I’m talking about intentional, mindful faking. I’m talking about doing what you want to be doing, doing it well and doing it the way you want to do it — even if you’re not getting paid. Yes, I’m telling you to work for free. I know, I know, haters gonna hate, probably big time, but here’s the thing — if you want to build a living out of doing what you love, and you expect to get paid for it, you have to prove to people that you can do it well — or, in some cases, that there is a real need for what you do.

(In case you’re thinking I’m crazy, I didn’t pull this whole “work for free until you get paid” thing out of the ether — listen to this guy’s TED talk.)

2014 was my trial year. I told myself that if I ended up broke and destitute and borrowing money from my parents after a year I would go get a real job. But for one year I was going to throw all my energy into doing the things I wanted to do — traveling, racing bikes, writing — and see what happened. Here’s a brief summary of how I survived 2014. It’s not very glamorous or impressive. In fact, it’s a little bit pathetic. But remember, it was all about “faking it.”

I started the year with about $6,000 in savings from my college job. I signed up for a new credit card, which got me 30,000 American Airlines miles and my flights to New Zealand and South America. My savings lasted through early June. From then on I survived on a few freelance writing gigs (around $2,000), the money from selling off a lot of bike equipment and other possessions (another $2,000) and a generous loan from the Bank of Boyfriend ($1,400 thanks Macky I love you!). For most of this time I either lived in a van/tent, at Macky’s parents’ house or at my parents’ house. By scrounging, hoarding money and spending every cent I made before it even landed in my bank account, I was able to afford plane tickets to Italy and Thailand. When I wasn’t traveling or begging for freelance gigs to pay off my credit card bill, I was doing the following things, largely without financial compensation:

– Writing a lot of blog posts
– Figuring out social media and social marketing and building a following on twitter/instagram/facebook
– Riding my bike A LOT
– Networking with sponsors and making new connections in the bike/outdoor industries
– Representing sponsors in exchange for free (and sometimes discounted) gear
– Writing blog posts, posting social media updates and taking photos for sponsors
– Racing my bike nearly every weekend for an entire summer

It was brutal. It was stressful. It was easily the best year of my life.

And it paid off…

In 2014, I earned $200 riding my bike (and spent don’t-even-ask-how-much on bikes). 2015 will put me just shy of $7,000.
In 2014, I made about $2,000 as a freelance writer. In 2015, through a combination of freelance writing, social media consulting and copywriting, I should make around $9,000.

So no, I’m not rolling in it. I’m still spending every dollar that comes into my account (usually before it gets there. More on living “ahead of the curve” in a future post). I still spend the latter half of every month wondering when I’m going to get paid and if it will make it in time for me to pay my CC bill. My income has gone up, but so have my expenses (hello, Enduro World Series), and I’ll probably be selling off a lot more bike stuff to try to close that gap. Oh, and I’m still going to be doing a lot of work that I’m not getting paid for, because I’m still trying to build a career out of nothing, and it’s a bike-racer-eat-bike-racer kinda world out there.

This strategy requires a certain amount of financial and emotional risk. Good bye stability, hello roller-coaster. I get not everybody wants to live like that. But I would also argue that, in the long term, the “build-your-own-career” plan is no less risky than a lot of the options recent college grads are facing in 2015. Throw all your energy and time into a corporate job that you hate and that may dry up by the time you turn 25? Make minimum wage bussing tables while you spend all your time (and money) trying to get interviews for dream jobs that 10,000 other qualified people are applying to? Spend [another] $50,000 on grad school? Or spend a few years scraping together freelance work, working remotely, living on next-to-nothing and create your own job doing what you love?

Obviously I’m biased, but I’m really not judging anyone — all of these decisions are fine choices given today’s over-saturated and hyper-competitive job market. But the important thing to realize is that they’re all risky [i.e. I’m not actually crazier than you]. Maybe in 1975 you could get a master’s degree and be guaranteed a lifetime of employment, but it’s not 1975 anymore, and all three of these options are equally likely to blow up in your face (and also equally likely to work out great).

This isn’t a “get-rich-quick” plan. In fact, it isn’t a “get-rich-ever” plan. My goal is not to make heaps of money, but rather to have heaps of fun, ride lots of bikes, have lots of adventures and be fulfilled by what I’m doing. But I’m not nearly as big of a dirtbag as some of you may think I am. I do have career plans; they’re just a tad unconventional.

So, for everyone who’s been dying to know how I’ve been “making it,” you now have the truth. I’ve been faking it hard, and now I’m sorta making it.

If you make a living doing what you love, leave a comment — I’d love to hear your strategy. And let me know if there are any particular topics you’d like me to cover in a future post!

Here’s What You Learn When You Do the Things You’re “Bad” At

Posted on September 12, 2014 by Syd Schulz

I am a klutz. This has been a central truth of my life since I turned 12 and sprouted up to almost six feet tall. Yes, I was the world’s most awkward middle schooler, we don’t need to go there. Things have improved somewhat in the past few years, but I still have a long way to go. My dad says that he hit peak coordination at age 35, so, you know, I’m not holding my breath.

I follow some really cool cats on instagram (you know who you are) who are always posting pictures of themselves doing yoga on mountain tops and other beautiful places. Sometimes they even do headstands. I want to be them. But then I try to do a tree pose on a mountain top and it looks like this, because, unfortunately, I’m basically a tree, as is, and we all know that tree pose is a ridiculous concept because TREES DON’T DO YOGA.

I pretty routinely walk into walls and stub my toes and break plates for no apparent reason other than that I forget I am carrying them. I’m basically a mess. I also race enduro mountain bikes, which, for all intents and purposes, is kind of a sport for coordinated people. I imagine this is a surprise for some people — not necessarily that I became a serious athlete, but that I did so in a sport that requires skill, fast-twitch muscles, body-space awareness, etc., because, for most of my life, my talents so obviously lay elsewhere.

For example, I have always been really good at continuing slowly in a straight line for an extended period of time. I discovered this in middle school, when, right around the peak of my awkwardness, I joined the track team. After brief and tumultuous careers with hurdles and pole vault (read: one track meet), I settled on long-distance events and everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief. Here was something that Syd could do relatively well, and with pretty limited risk of hurting herself or others. Phew.

And, as it turned out, I was pretty good at running in circles. I even had just enough body-space awareness to survive cross-country running races without twisting my ankles, which was pretty much all that was required for me to become a long-distance running star in rural Ohio. I wasn’t spectacular, but I was good enough that people said I had promise. People said I could run in college, or that I should try half-marathons, or full marathons or maybe even ultras. It was pretty clear — where I was concerned, the longer the better. If it was a race of attrition, it was all mine. If it came down to a sprint, I was doomed.

Here I am at a track meet in high school and if it looks like my eyes are closed, it’s probably because they were. (Which explains A LOT actually.)

For the 10 years following my first ever track meet, I stuck to “straight-line” sports. Swimming, cycling, running. I dabbled in triathlons and road cycling and started racing cross-country mountain bikes in college. As far as the mountain biking went, the less technical, the better. And, naturally, the longer the better.

And then, last year, 11 years after I first tripped over a hurdle and nearly speared myself on the pole vault, I started racing enduro.

Here is a brief one sentence explanation of enduro for those who still aren’t clear on what it is (which, by the way, is almost everyone and includes people who race it, so don’t feel bad): enduro is a series of timed downhill stages over the course of a day (or two or three or five days, depending on the race), in which racers pedal to the start and then race down the hill, traversing technical rocky sections and going off jumps and drops and generally just trying to go very, very fast.

Put another way, everything I’m bad at. Then add in the fact that the average enduro stage is under 15 minutes, and according to basically everyone, I should be totally, utterly hopeless. But the funny thing is that I’m not (at least not totally).

I have a feeling I know why that might be — I did my first enduro race because it looked fun. Not because I thought I would be good at it. With the exception of one just-for-fun water polo class in college (in which I may or may not have gotten a concussion), it was the first time I had embarked on an athletic endeavor without thinking, oh hey, maybe I’ll be good at this, maybe this will be my thing. The very first time. How messed up is that?

My high school coaches weren’t wrong about me — my natural talent probably does lie in long-distance events. I was the one who was wrong when I took “natural talent” to be a dictum of what I should be doing. I was wrong when I thought I had to be immediately talented at something for it to be “my thing.”

Photo: Nick Ontiveros

It would be a lie to say that my first season racing pro enduro was all fun and games. I basically cried myself through my first three races. Old habits die hard — and so do old expectations. Somewhere along the line I had trained myself to expect immediate success. Don’t worry, I know this is stupid, but sometimes it can be hard to be logical in the face of what your brain is telling you, over and over again, is failure. Somewhere around the middle of the season, I had a mental breakthrough. I started to be able to see my own improvements –even though I was still lagging behind my competitors — and I stopped being afraid of failing. Because, frankly, being last while doing something you love is hardly the worst thing that can happen to a person. (Hint: not doing the thing you love because you’re afraid of being last is WAY WORSE.)

I can say completely honestly that I have almost no natural talent for racing enduro. I can’t sprint to save my life (at least not yet, that’s this winter’s project), I require a two-hour warm up to not feel like crap, and sometimes I forget what I’m doing and fall over at 0.5mph and impale my face on my handlebar. Then I have to go to the hospital and get seven stitches in my chin and explain to every single person I see that, no, nope, wasn’t doing anything epic at all.

**warning: slightly graphic picture of the gaping hole in my face #sorrymom***

However, I can also say, completely honestly, that having no natural talent for enduro is the best thing that has ever happened to me, athletically speaking. While being naturally talented at something can be great, more often than not it is just a gigantic and completely unhelpful mind-fuck. I’m starting to realize that it’s lot more satisfying to be really bad at something and then get okay at it, as opposed to being really good at something and just staying good at it.

Here’s the thing…natural talent is pretty irrelevant when compared to a lot of other factors — grit, drive, determination, and most importantly, loving what you’re doing. It’s one of those “asking the wrong questions” kind of scenarios. Instead of trying to find the thing I was “great” at, I should have been looking for the thing that I loved enough to become great at (or not, in which case, no biggie, cause I love doing it anyway).

I love racing enduro. I love riding my bike fast. I love letting off the brakes on a slippery, rocky section and realizing just how fast I really can go. I love how, after hours and hours of practice, I have done things this year that six months ago I thought I could never do. I also love how everything I have accomplished this year is directly related to how hard I have worked for it. The victories were small, yes, but they were also huge because they were all mine.

I didn’t exactly trample my competition this season. I hardly had that break-out-stellar-prodigy-superstar season that I always expected I would have if I ever managed to find that thing that I was made to do. More accurately, I held onto the rear-end of the pro women’s field by the very tips of my fingernails. I scrabbled. I crashed. And yeah, I lost. Pretty frequently. But a lot of important things happened — I learned a lot. I had fun. I was actually disappointed for the race season to be over. And I think maybe, against all odds, I found my thing.

Inca Avalanche (Or, That One Time I Barfed on Ancient Ruins)

Posted on May 9, 2014 by Syd Schulz

Here’s the thing about traveling — sometimes things go wrong.

And here’s the thing about traveling as a mountain biker — you are doing something relatively dangerous and strenuous and you are hauling around extremely expensive equipment so when things do go wrong, it tends to be catastrophic. Continue reading →

Mountain Biking in La Parva, Chile

Posted on April 14, 2014 by Syd Schulz

La Parva is a ski resort about an hour outside of Santiago and, at the moment, it is holding the title of My-Favorite-Place-in-Chile. A little ski town, perched high up in the Andes at almost 9,000 feet, and surrounded by nothing but rock and soaring, snow-capped peaks, La Parva is nothing short of epic (and pretty much the last place you’d want to be in event of an earthquake). The road up to La Parva is equally epic, with 39 switchback curves. Yes, 39. And that doesn’t count 90 degree turns, only full 180 degree switchbacks. I know because they’re numbered and I’ve now driven all 39 of them approximately 6 times in the past week. (And I didn’t throw up once! Win!)

photo cred: Sean Leader

Of course, I’m biased, but I really believe the only way to experience this place is on a mountain bike. However, I’m not going to lie–the trails here are really, really difficult. I have bruises and scrapes on pretty much every inch of my legs to prove it. An outside observer might think that, instead of doing a mountain bike race on Saturday, I spent the weekend cage fighting with rabid squirrels. I would post a picture, but I really don’t want to get Macky arrested for domestic abuse.

Instead, enjoy this video of Sean crashing spectacularly on a bunch of pointy rocks: (if you’re into that kind of thing, which if you’re a mountain biker you obviously are, because I know we all LIVE to watch other people eat it.)

As you can see, these trails are loose, rocky and treacherous. As our Chilean friends put it, “there is no such thing as a soft fall at La Parva.” The climbs are all hike-a-bike. Or, um, drag-a-bike, if you’re me. There is nothing easy about riding here. Nothing easy at all. And in fact, after our first ride, I was pretty convinced there was nothing FUN about riding here. I may or may not have cried multiple times on one descent. But then, this weekend, something clicked. I stopped thinking about my bruises and started looking at the views. Which are fucking spectacular.

Mountain biking can be a frustrating sport, especially when you’re riding trails that are way different than anything you are used to (and arguably far beyond your ability level). But, in the end, it’s always worth it because you end up in some pretty special places you never would have gotten to otherwise. And at the end of the day, you can count your bruises and scratches and feel really damn accomplished, even if you did happen to get dead last in your first ever pro enduro race (um, hypothetically, cough cough).

What do you think? Would you ride here? How do you turn frustration into a sense of accomplishment?