Riding with the Blues

In this month’s Psychology Today there is an article which profiles four people who live with depression. I am one of them. In fact the article opens with a picture of me and a paragraph which reads: “Last Summer, Pata Suyemoto rode her bike from Boston to Cape Cod, 125 miles in one day. An educator who has taught everything for art to English, to Reiki, she’s funny, she’s intense, and she is passionate. Never a jock, three years ago she became a relentless road warrior, riding more than 6,000 miles the first year she took up cycling. But she would not say she has conquered depression. Instead, like many people who experience major depression – and there are roughly 15 million Americans who do – she has achieved a kind of delicate détente with it.”

Although it is a bit odd to be famous for being depressed, I figure the article might help someone else and I believe silence around tough issues is never the way to go. Cycling, as the article touches upon, has helped me cope with my chronic depression, but the relationship between my cycling and my depression is more complicated than the article reveals.

Depression is the backdrop of my life right now and has been for many years. It is a constant, although varying in degree depending on the day, the circumstances, the moon and the stars. Much of what I do is to cope with my depression. However, when I got into cycling it was not with the purpose of helping the depression. I got into it at first because my partner was a big cyclist and then I made it my own because it was challenging yet fun. However, a benefit of cycling was that it helped stabilize my mood and improved my overall health.

Cycling helps me relieve stress and anxiety as well as sends those well-known endorphins into my system. It also has given me community and friends who support me as a person and an athlete. This support is critical to my healing. It also gives me a sense of purpose as I train for racing and teach bike riding to beginners.

Although cycling helps me deal with my depression, the depression sometimes makes it harder to cycle. When I am in a deep funk, it is very hard to train and to get motivated to go out. My energy is low and my ability to ride well diminishes. I know at these times, I need to ride anyway, but it is a monumental task to get there. My depression also can make my outlook less positive than is usually is, which affects my perspective about goals and training. I can fall into the “what does it matter” trap and feel like what I am doing is not productive or meaningful.

I know that there will always be a dialectic between my depression and my cycling. I know that to help manage my depression I need to ride. I also know that I have to overcome the negative thinking that goes with the depression and hinders my cycling. I am working on this and realize that it is a process of learning and growing. I also have to realize that there are times when I need to stop and rest and attend to the depression. It is not always the case that I should push through it without addressing what I might need at the moment. It is a delicate balance between the yin and the yang, and I am learning to listen to my needs. Sometimes what I need is to ride and just feel how I am feeling. There has been more than one time when I have ridden and cried, but still ridden on.

I feel fortunate that cycling is a way for me to grapple with the pain of depression while being a vehicle of growth in my life. And at this point, riding is not only for pleasure but it is an imperative. I need to ride to live.

Riding on the Margin or What Money Can't Buy

I grew up in an affluent suburb of Boston. We had good public schools and libraries. However, my mother was divorced and a single-mother. We were lucky – we had a home, plenty of food, and clothes. What we didn’t have was a vacation house on the Cape or ski trips at Christmas, or designer shoes, or a fancy car. I always felt a bit out of step in school where I was not only different because I was Japanese-American in a primarily white community, but I also was not able to keep up with the Jones – not that I even tried.

Now I am in a couple of cycling clubs. One in particular has a large population of competitive racers. (I am a racer wanna-be.) I was at a social event with this club and found myself feeling like I did in high school when my friends talked about their European vacations. At this social people were talking about their powertaps and coaches and VO2 testing. Things at this point I can’t afford. I felt a bit out of place. I have a nice bike (more than one if the truth be told), but I don’t have all the high-end expensive accessories. I wondered if I belonged there? I wondered if I could compete without these tools?

Cycling, and racing in particular, is an expensive sport. At a minimum, you need a racing bike, a cyclo-computer, a kit, and a helmet. This alone, would cost you around $3500, at a minimum. Then there is the cost of the race entry fees, the racing license, etc. . . This all adds up to quite a bit of money. And from this point, there are many other tools that one could purchase to help with training and competing such as a heart rate monitor, a powertap, a coach, a bike fitting, VO2 testing, race wheels, and more. The sport really caters to people with a lot of expendable income – which is not me.

I ride. I ride a lot. I ride hard. I am training with the guidance of books and friends. I am lucky to have what I do. For instance, my partner bought me race wheels for the winter holidays. It was a wonderful gift and I am looking forward to riding them when the weather improves. But I have to ask myself can someone like me be accepted into a club where it seems most folks have a lot more resources to spend on cycling?

I know for me, I have to get over the feeling that I am not quite good enough because I don’t have enough. This is my baggage. What I have is not a reflection of my worth as a person, or cyclist. What I have does not reflect my ability to ride. What I have does not make me a good team member. I have to remember that I bring to the club my skills as a rider and teacher and I think that there is a place for me, even without a powertap or a coach. I know that part of my task is to make that place for myself. It is a personal challenge to confront my own sense of inadequacy to realize that a lot of what I am comparing myself to is window dressing. What is at the core is a love of riding and a drive to be the best cyclist I can be. This is what I share with the other club members.

In this life time, I know that I will always feel on the margins of the mainstream. Being a mixed heritage Japanese-American woman alone, makes me feel that way. However, I don’t really mind and know there is a kind of power on the margin. From the margin, I can speak a different truth and walk my own path – the one less travelled. I can know that I am enough and bring my strengths to the team and the club, without apologies. What makes a good cyclist, is not the extras. It is combination of ability, tenacity, discipline and drive that makes a good cyclist – and none of these things can one buy.