Home

10%

Brent Bookwalter

More Than Meets The Eye

By InnerVoice

September 17^th, 2018

My inner Voice is a battle

The inner voice is a battle. At its best that voice is driven, confident, empowered and audacious, it drives me towards my goals and down a committed path. At its worst it causes me to question if I’m good enough, or whether what I’m doing is actually worth it. That voice can go entirely against things that I am absolutely sure I am capable of, and even who I am as an athlete or a person. It asks me why I am doing this. I’ve learned that while things don’t always make sense, I need to remain committed and see it through. Sometimes it means continuing on with blind faith.

When I reflect on races, I’m continuously awestruck at what transpired over the 4-6 hours, with all my internal battles, the internal battles of my competitors, the ups and downs of a race, and then the outside conditions. It is impossible to control all the variables, and it’s rare that it ever seems to click together effortlessly. During a race, you can drive yourself crazy thinking about the finish, especially with so much happening between now and then. I like to process it one kilometer or one moment at a time. When things get tough off the road, I try to make myself think this same way, and not get too far ahead of myself - one kilometer or one moment at a time. I definitely haven’t perfected this; it’s work and a constant grind.

Pride

A memorable accomplishment for me was being part of the winning 2011 Tour de France squad with Cadel Evans. The physical demands, the pressure, the mental and emotional stress were all huge, but when it played out and we were riding triumphant and victorious into Paris at the end of the Tour, it was surreal. I’d watched that final stage on TV year-after-year as a kid, and here I was, actually living it.

Some of my memorable moments, though, don’t necessarily align with being “prestigious” or “professionally noteworthy.” One memory that remains quite fresh in my mind is becoming an Olympian and representing Team USA at the Rio Summer Games. That was a multi-year quest that concluded with an intense battle for selection. It was so much more than merely representing the US in the race itself; it was the whole experience from getting the news, to team processing, and then being in Brazil in the days leading up to competition. What made it so memorable was that my family was there to share that after-race moment with me. The whole experience is deeply etched into my mind as one of my most proud and enjoyable moments as an athlete.

I loved riding my bike

Growing up in Michigan, I played most of the usual ball sports - baseball and football - and I also got into downhill skiing. In the summers, I loved riding my bike with friends and exploring the trails in the nearby forests and fields. There was a rail-to-trails path that connected my house with the town and where I went to school, so I spent a lot of time ripping up and down that trail and nearby paths off it. I loved bike riding. From time-to-time, I would see signs for local bike races. I was interested but unsure where they were or what they were about. When I was 12- or 13-years-old, my next-door neighbor got into mountain biking and was trying out some of these local races. He knew the trails at the local ski areas and offered to take me out.

The laps were small 3-4 mile loops, but were incredible compared to the primitive neighborhood trails I had done prior. I was immediately hooked and fortunate enough that my neighbor continued to get me into the sport. He helped my parents understand it and introduced me to an incredible community that was super supportive, showing me the ropes and teaching me what mountain bike racing was all about. I slowly started to inch my way up through the Michigan mountain bike hierarchy, progressing from beginner class to expert class before finally venturing out to some regional and national competitions when I was 16. I showed enough potential that I got linked up with a local Michigan crew who took me under their wing, advised me, paid for my first coach and helped get me to some of the higher-level national competitions.

My Tribe

How we process and filter the input, support, and criticism from the people around us is such a massive part of progressing as a pro athlete. I feel I’ve been successful in surrounding myself with the right people, but to a large extent the right people have surrounded me from the very beginning. They found me as much as I found them. My tribe can be broken down into different phases of my life and my career, as each period posed different challenges and needed different types of people and support.

From the beginning, the community I had in my corner growing up in Michigan was incredible. Obviously, my parents were instrumental and always supported my dreams and passions. Another huge part of this tribe was a group of local cyclists and businessmen who sponsored me with coaching, travel, and equipment, but also guided me as much as a person as an athlete.

Fast-forward to my professional life, and my tribe still includes many of those same people but in less of a hands-on role. As a professional athlete, who you are in your job and who you are as a person are so profoundly intertwined, and both sides need respect, support, and appreciation. Now I focus on building a tribe that nurtures, supports and inspires me both as an athlete and as a person. My group supports me physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, and helps me meet the demands of being a professional cyclist while encouraging me to remain true to who I am. When I look at the people who make up that group, my wife is probably at the top of my list, followed by my physical coaches, mental coaches, and friends - some whom are former teammates, current teammates, and then people entirely outside the sport.

“I started racing mountain bikes, so when I began getting into road races I was absolutely clueless on tactics - how a team works and what I was and wasn’t supposed to do as part of a team effort. Fortunately, I had some patient teammates and mentors who didn’t get too mad at me when I would repeatedly chase down their attacks.”

Perspective on 'Bad' Days

Any demanding training session or race has the potential to push me to that place where my mind starts playing with self-doubt. One of the reasons I’m still here is that I’ve learned to balance it and don’t give in. For me, the moments where I need to dig deep to keep going happen when I feel like my best isn’t good enough. It's when I’m at a place where I’ve poured my heart, soul, mind, and body into preparation, execution, and performance and it still wasn’t good enough—either working for a teammate or in my own expectations. I’ve seen the best in the world fall apart and crumble and I’ve seen unlikely underdogs defy the odds and pull off near miracles. I know life is always more than meets the eye.

One way I can get back on track after a bad day is to lean on my support system - friends, family, coach, mental trainer/psychologist, certain teammates - which gives me some perspective that I am a person in addition to an athlete. When I’m operating as the best version of myself and experience a bad day, I give myself a finite amount of time to process what went wrong, think about how I will do it differently next time, how that will look and feel. I then stop that process and start focusing on what I can control that is coming next. Lately, I’ve definitely gotten more into some mindfulness and awareness practices to help me through the “bad” days as I feel it assists my ability to efficiently and effectively process information.

worth the effort

One of the toughest parts of being a pro cyclist is spending time away from people I love and want to spend time with. It means missing funerals, weddings, graduations and other significant life moments. It means being transient and always being in and out of town and always being that friend who is coming and going. While splitting time between two continents has provided me with a vastly diverse and unique community around me, it is challenging to form quality, deep relationships that need time and proximity to strengthen.

I have to make an effort to stay in touch with people that I want to have in my life and let them know when I’ll be around and when I’ll be on the road. Relationships are as much about giving as taking, and this means being proactive on my part, which sometimes feels a little uncomfortable, but I want to keep the relationship moving forward. The one benefit is that it does help me realize who is worth continuing to build a solid relationship with—it is those people who stay in touch, take that extra time and effort to keep up with me, reach out and stay involved despite knowing what time zone I’m in. These are the people who I really want to invest my time, effort and love into.

Every drop in the bucket

The phrase ‘every drop in the bucket counts’ is one of my bits of wisdom. Cycling has taught me the value of every little bit helping, whether it is the superfine layers that are stacked on top of each other during training, year-after-year, or saving your team leader just 1-2 seconds of energy by keeping them out of the wind. And you do these things over and over. While they don’t make a difference and aren’t always noticeable as standalone, they accumulate. When success is achieved, it’s a testament to this persistence and commitment of the small things repeated over and over.

This same concept applies to why my wife and I run our Gran Fondo, the Bookwalter Binge, in Asheville, North Carolina. We started it five years ago because we wanted to feel connected to our community and to raise money and support for local causes that we are passionate about and hold dear. Each year the ride grows a little, but it is still a modest event in terms of fundraising and numbers. We aren’t some 5000-person corporate fundraising monster. Instead, it’s a homegrown, down-to-earth, accessible event that brings a lot of fun and connection to our community. We feel by slowly continuing to add value through donated dollars, helping people get excited to ride or simply celebrating the chance to do something together as we help strengthen this community that we love.

Footnotes

Words by Brent Bookwalter, Cover photo by Stefano Sirotti additional photos courtesy Brent Bookwalter and as attributed, Edited by Cody Royle, Published by Travis McKenzie, Copyright NTSQ Sports

Follow Brent

FootNotes

Words by Brent Bookwalter, Cover photo by Stefano Sirotti additional photos courtesy Brent Bookwalter and as attributed, Edited by Cody Royle, Published by Travis McKenzie, Copyright NTSQ Sports