Getting Back into Training, Part 2: The Truth About Stopping for Two Years
This won’t be a dramatic comeback chapter.
No inspirational soundtrack.
No “and then I realised how much I missed cycling” rubbish.
This is just what really happened.
I stopped riding.
Two years off the bike wasn’t restful.
It was a slow retreat.
If you don’t know, amateur cycling in Australia works like this:
Open grading, A, B, C, D and everyone fights it out.
I was a B-grader.
But barely.
Some weeks I felt like I belonged, other weeks I got spat out the back and wondered why I even bothered.
Promotion one month, relegation the next.
And every training session carried a silent threat.
Miss a day, fall behind, get dropped and get embarrassed.
That pressure didn’t make me faster.
It just made me tired.
A life that shrunk to wake–work–ride–repeat
I’d set the alarm for 4:30am for a group training no matter how destroyed I felt.
Sleep debt? Too bad.
Work stress? Deal with it later.
Body screaming for recovery? Ignore it.
The strange part is it wasn’t discipline.
It was fear disguised as toughness.
I was trying to chase improvement, but it was running from the shame of falling behind.
Then came the crashes
Two crashes in one season.
Both AC joints dislocated.
Right forearm and elbow fractured.
Nothing heroic about it.
Just bad luck mixed with fatigue and a lot of stubbornness.
That second crash didn’t just break bone.
It snapped whatever thread of motivation I had left.
I parked the bike.
And then I walked away.
I told myself it was temporary
But weeks became months, and months became two years.
I told myself I was too busy, too tired, too focused on business and too everything
But the truth was simpler, I didn’t want to feel weak anymore.
Meanwhile, at the clinic…
K-Flow Therapy opened its doors in May 2025.
Athletes came in.
I helped their rehab.
I explained load management.
I talked about programming, consistency, fatigue.
And every time I opened my mouth, a quiet voice whispered to me.
“You don’t train anymore.”
“Why would anyone listen to you?”
“You haven’t done the thing you’re telling them to do.”
The irony was suffocating.
So, I made a choice
Not for glorious podium winning.
Not for racing.
Not to return to B-grade.
Just to stop living like a hypocrite.
Back to Week 1
Reality hit harder than any crash.
Functional Threadhold power dropped from 275 to ~180
Saddle tolerance was just for 60 minutes felt like a hostage situation
Pedaling was more square than round
Coordination was like a baby deer on roller skates
Confidence was missing, presumed dead
Everything felt foreign, breathing, cadence, even balancing out of the saddle.
But I knew my body hadn’t forgotten cycling.
It just didn’t trust me yet.
Week 2
Just finished my week 2 training. Still humbling, but less violent.
Five or six hours a week, all around 60% of that sad little FTP ceiling.
Slow work.
Basic work.
No ego work.
And for the first time since I quit, I can say the sentence:
“I feel slightly better than last week.”
The plan
Six weeks of base.
No hero sessions.
No late-night panic rides.
Just building a chassis strong enough to carry real training later.
Because right now, fitness is not the goal.
What I’m relearning
Cycling isn’t about pain tolerance, suffering bravado, how early you set the alarm or how many watts you can brag about
It’s about consistency, load the body can adapt to, recovering well enough to do it again tomorrow and remembering why you actually enjoy it
This time…
I’m leaving the ego in the garage.
I’m trying not to chase my old numbers.
I’m rebuilding from scratch.
And yes, I’m bored out of my mind riding at 60%, but I’m doing it anyway.
Because right now the win isn’t speed.
It’s my pathway to get back to my sports.
And if that means slowly re-teaching my body how to move without blowing myself up?
Fine. I’ll do boring.
I’ll do basic.
And I’ll keep showing up.
One week at a time.
