Home

10%

Michael Woods

The Entertainer

By InnerVoice

June 1^st, 2018

Putting on a show

Cycling is weird because it’s not a truly individual sport.

There’s such a huge portion of the peloton where their sole job is to help someone else. That’s one thing I do really like. I come from a team sport background; growing up I played a lot of hockey and I loved the sensation of winning as a team, the camaraderie and bonds you build together. I liked the process of setting someone up, like an assist in hockey. It’s what I missed during my career as a runner. I had this mentality where I was very loyal to my coach and loyal to team goals over individual success, and I found it hard to be motivated by my individual goals.

The one thing that does motivate me as an individual is putting on a show. I really enjoy performing and being a bit of an entertainer. I love the sensation after a long ride or a summit climb - the euphoria and sense of accomplishment.

Photo by Matt Beaudin | Slipstream Sports

Photo by Rob Jones | canadiancyclist.com

Photo by EF Education First | Slipstream Sports

Photo by Ian S Walton | EF Education First - Drapac

I was washed up

I took a really unconventional route into pro cycling in that I used to be a professional runner. Actually, it’s hard to say I was professional as I was living just above the poverty line. I went to the University of Michigan on a full track scholarship and had aspirations of being the next great Canadian runner. I really wanted to do something special at the Olympics and be this Canadian running hero. I had Canadian Under-20 records in the mile and the 3k and had all these people telling me I was going to achieve great things in running.

And it all fell apart by the time I was 21.

I had two navicular stress fractures in the same bone and continuously tried to come back, but each time I came back I’d end up breaking the bone again. The fractures were a result of over-training, really poor nutrition, and bad guidance. My coach at the time was a really great motivator, but he lacked a strong understanding of the science behind the sport, and rehabilitation. I’m obviously to blame for my injuries as well, but at that time I was 18, 19, 20 and was a stupid, impatient and cocky kid, and he was not the best at managing that. I never really had the perspective to take time off and heal the bone, and when I did it was too late.

After university I moved back to Canada and became this washed-up high school quarterback-like figure; working at a running shoe store, caught in the past. I could tell that the people who did know of my past accomplishments felt sad for me. It was not the greatest time in my life, however at that time I did start riding a bike to stay fit, and at the insistence of my now-wife, my dad, and a few friends, I started racing.

“I much prefer being a cyclist now, I’m making more money than I ever would as a runner and it’s a more interesting sport for me, personally.”

Live in the Moment

I’ve been working on my inner voice quite a bit, especially recently. I find I’m better able to talk to myself and have real clarity when I’m fitter physically. When I’m not as fit, which tends to be earlier in the season, I’m terrible and there’s a lot of negative self-talk. Where I’ve had the most success is to embrace where I'm at and think ‘why do I not want to be here?’. Now I try to embrace it and remember I am paid to be here and I’m technically doing this for my own pleasure. I try to live in the moment, where I am right now. It makes a huge difference when it works. A good example would be on a climb, when I’m really suffering. In the past I haven’t been good on long, long climbs, but I’ve improved a lot. In the past, I’d get 1km into a 20km climb and think ‘I’ve still got 19km to go, I can’t sustain this pace, this hurts too much.’ Whereas now I’ve found a way to break the climb down by thinking about where I am at that moment. I focus only as far as I can see ahead on the road - get to K19, then K18, then K17.

I’m a big believer in mental training and I’m always looking to try to up my mental game. It’s a frontier that hasn’t been explored enough yet. It will be pushed a lot in the years to come. In our sport, there’s Team Sky, who are huge on pushing into the margins and trying to get an extra 1% out of everything and I think the next 1% will be the mental side of training. I’m trying to get on that and explore it more. At the moment I don’t have a mental coach.

Taylor Phinney got me into meditation quite a bit and it’s something that helps.

I have a lot to learn

There’s a laundry list of things I fucked up when I was learning the ropes in cycling. I made so many ridiculous mistakes, like showing up to group rides in the wrong gear - cycling is such a snobby sport in that sense. One of the funnier ones when I first started out was that I didn’t know you could take feeds, and I didn’t know how to take feeds. One of my first races was in Quebec, it was 120km and it was 30 degrees celsius. I had no idea that I could take water on during the race. I had two bottles on my bike so I tried to ration it, and would ride straight past the feed zones. A parent would be holding the bottles in the feed zone and he’d keep waving them at me, and I didn’t know what he meant. I thought the bottles were for his son!

Eventually, I made it in the breakaway, which would go on to survive. There were 4 guys left in the race, and I was one of them. I thought I had a shot at winning, but I’d gone hours without water and I cramped so hard. I had to pull off to the side of the road and just sit there and wait to be picked up.

“I’m not a huge risk taker, I’m pretty risk-averse and don’t like obscenely crazy risks, but sitting around the table, talking with the boys about some part of the stage that was super risky, I do like that.”

My Life is great

In cycling, like most endurance sports, there are so many points where you just don’t want to be there. Like, it’s raining, it’s snowing, it’s cold, the climb is hard, you don’t feel comfortable, you’ve got a big saddle sore, or you had some funky food before the stage - there’s so many things that piss you off and make you not want to be where you are. But I try to use the same mentality on the bike as off the bike; one of not being overwhelmed by the future and just enjoying where I am.

With social media and our society at the moment, it’s so easy to be existing elsewhere. If you are seeing someone being on a trip on Instagram and you think ‘I want to be there’, but for me, I live this great life and I’m fortunate to be where I am. So I try to be happy where I am and I find that when I’m like this I’m better to be around, and more tolerable to my wife, my family and friends.

In that sense, I’ve got a bit of a horseshoe up my ass. I have a great wife and I have amazing parents. We were upper-middle class growing up, and I had great schooling. My mom and dad didn’t push me too hard, they challenged me but let me find the activities I wanted. They were not helicopter parents and didn’t get angry if I did bad. They just wanted me to have an opportunity to find what I enjoyed, and there was no expectation of me becoming a pro athlete.

My life is pretty great.

Photo courtesy of Michael Woods @rusty_woods

Ignorance is bliss

Around 25, I made my first real commitment at trying to make it as a cyclist and, knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t recommend anybody trying to come into the sport at 25. There’s a lot of ageism in the sport and it’s such a crazy development curve. I thought because I was a good runner I could just transition, but there are so many technical aspects, and tactical aspects and political aspects that I was completely ignorant of and had I known of those aspects then it would have completely overwhelmed me. But ignorance is bliss and I was able to stumble my way through the first couple of years.

Having my running career ruined was probably the best thing that could’ve happened to me, because running was everything to me and I went down this rabbit hole of running being what defined me as an individual. It’s probably one of the reasons I got injured. I had no perspective and was never able to back off. Even complete amateurs, they allow how they perform to define them, and they are ruined when they have a bad performance and they’re on cloud nine when they have a good one. In my mind, the benefits of the cloud nine experience are few and far between relative to the crashes they go through.

Ultimately, not being able to run again enabled me to get a ton of perspective and make me realize I’m not the centre of the universe and no-one really cares about how fast I can run. Endurance sport is super fun and it’s amazing, but that’s all it is. It’s so insignificant compared to everything else in this world. This perspective has made me realize how insignificant my sporting performances are. If I have a bad bike race now, it doesn’t end me and it doesn’t ruin my relationships, and I’m not devastated. There are times when I’m on the team bus and they’re upset about a certain scenario and I just laugh, because what I’m doing is just a game and I’m getting paid to do it, and it’s awesome!

Footnotes

Words by Michael Woods, Cover Photo by Ian S Watson, Photos courtesy of Slipstream Sports and Cycling Canada (as attributed), Published by Travis McKenzie, Copyright NTSQ Sports Group.

Follow Mike

FootNotes

Words by Michael Woods, Cover Photo by Ian S Watson, Photos courtesy of Slipstream Sports and Cycling Canada (as attributed), Published by Travis McKenzie, Copyright NTSQ Sports Group.

Colin O'Brady

Michael Woods

The Entertainer

FootNotes

No Human is Limited

I'm Here To Win

The Humble Son

My Incredible Journey

The Most Interesting Man In The World

Season 3