By Cyndi Goh Geoghegan

I’ve always enjoyed playing competitive sport, so it was probably no surprise to any of my friends and family when I started road racing in the UK. The early days were great. I raced for my local club, the Cowley Road Condors in Oxford, as well as for my university. It was a welcome break to the research I was doing as part of my PhD and a great way to make friends.

Soon, I joined a race team and began competing more seriously in the Women’s Team Series (now the British Womens Team Cup). I had been looking forward to it, started structured training under the direction of a coach and splurged on a new bike. Unfortunately, things didn’t go the way I hoped. Frustratingly, I was finding I couldn’t manage any hard efforts and despite training six days a week, I was getting slower instead of faster. It was almost like my legs, head and body just didn’t want to ride hard. After one terrible race, I decided it was time to give up racing and possibly cycling altogether. The pressure of racing had gotten to me and I was burned out, both physically and mentally.

Over the next one or two years, cycling took a back seat. I’d go for the occasional ride but only if it was sunny and there was cake involved. Even then, I’d constantly be looking at the time wondering if the ride would be over soon. Besides, there were other things to keep me occupied – I met my fiance, wrote my PhD thesis, went back to work as an anaesthetics doctor in the Covid-19 pandemic, and moved house.

Unfortunately, all these major life events contributed to a worsening of my mental health and I found myself off work and under the care of a wise doctor who advised me to go back to cycling. Since it was in the middle of winter, I set up a little turbo room/pain cave in our garden shed. A friend from my previous cycling club asked me if I wanted to race in the upcoming Zwift Racing League series and I said yes thinking I would give it a go and probably quit after one race.

Little did I know I would soon become totally addicted to Zwift racing! It was for me, exactly what I needed. All the things I loved about racing (getting a good workout, being part of a team, the sense of achievement) without the downsides (time spent travelling to races, the risk of crashing, the pressure of racing). In addition, there were other aspects to it I hadn’t quite appreciated, such as the fun of racing against others of a similar fitness to you (I was too unfit to have a hope of staying with the main bunch in a conventional race). I also became a complete geek about strategy and numbers, often watching recon videos from three or four YouTube channels before each race!

I’ve recently joined the Aeonian racing team on the recommendation of a good friend and previous in-real-life cycling team mate. Already, I have been struck by the camaraderie and support these women have for one another. I’ve felt welcomed and included right from the start and am very much looking forward to racing the upcoming season with them.