Mental Mechanics

Merida Miller
4 days ago
5 min read

Updated: 17 hours ago

The mechanicals no one warned me about

Words: Merida Miller

Photo: Merica Miller/Chris Lanaway/ Megan Bagley

Over the years, I've gotten pretty good at rolling through the uncontrollable ups and downs when it comes to my anxiety taking control of my mental health.

What I wasn't prepared for was when these bobbles would show up on bike, a place where I normally find my peace and confidence.

Mental Mechanicals is a little series I’ve started to help digest and process the moments a CO₂ cartridge can’t fix — the internal breakdowns, breakthroughs, and everything in between.

One of the beautifully frustrating things about gravel racing is how much is out of your control. You can train every day, study every corner of a course — and still, your race can be thrown by your tyre kissing a rock a little too hard.

When I decided to start gravel racing this year, I read a ton of race recaps by pros, amateurs and first timers. You know the ones: “Feeling great until km 50 when I got a rear puncture and… insert heartbreak emoji”.

I figured, fair enough. That’s racing. I was ready for this possibility. It was part of the game, part of the adventure.

I had braced myself for the physical breakdowns, the flats, crashes, and fatigue.

What I hadn’t trained for were the mental mechanicals — the moments when my brain decided to blow a tyre mid-race.

As someone who was diagnosed with Anxiety Depressive Disorder at the age of 18, I've had my fair share of rolling with the punches. Moments of feeling like a pressure cooker and unsure if I'm going to cry, combust or both. And honestly, I like to think of myself as someone who gives zero to little F’s, someone who is typically the first to laugh through any mistake or mishap, and I have to say... It’s been a long time since I’ve felt like a failure.

Enter: UCI, Halmstaad - the 4th race of my year, and after coming off a 2nd place at Gravel Mexico 130km, I was feeling pretty good until...

The first panic attack started at 10km, when my heart rate blew over 188bpm.

And the first feeling of failure hit as more and more riders passed me and I lost the peloton, I tried to regain focus on my breath and spinning head.

I assumed (hoped) this was a one-off. The first sting of “losing” before I’d even started but my brain had other plans.

The second panic attack crept in at 45km.

My heart rate spiked, my chest felt like an elephant was standing on it, and I bit the inside of my cheek so hard it stayed swollen for days.

I knew what was coming for the rest of my 100km unplanned time trial, and when the urge to pull over and let out a harrowing (dramatic) cry into the Swedish forest hit—

I clenched my fists on the handlebars and, from deep in my stomach, growled loudly, “Mérida, NO!” trying to literally coach myself out of the spiral.

It happened again at 75, then 95, a shaking tension of dread crept into my chest, each one seemingly coming out of nowhere. Each time, I growled out loud- “Mérida - NO!”

To say it was an exhausting day out was an understatement.

I crossed the finish line and cried- relief of it being done, finally allowing myself to let out all the tension that had been building in my body during that race, and yes tears of “woe is me” disappointment and jealousy that yet again I didn’t qualify even though physically I “should have” (whatever the hell that means).

“Gives a TEDx on confidence.

Cries at the end of a race because she's embarrassed for not being good enough.”

Shout out to my Piotr, my partner, who sticks around long after his own race finished to catch my snot and tears.

I hoped that once I crossed the finish line and took a couple of days to lick my wounds- surprisingly, this was my first gravel race without any blood- the heavy emotional feeling I had towards the whole experience would lift. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the case. This race didn’t empty me physically, but mentally. I felt like a wet deflated balloon.

It wasn’t until an unplanned rotational dismount (read: crash) three weeks later, that I finally started to exhale. Lying on my back, staring at my bike, grateful that only a spoke was injured, I smirked and thought, “It’s all part of the adventure, remember? You do this for fun!”

This was the first time I fully recognised how much my mental health plays into my physical performance. And how these kinds of mechanicals are not ones that can be fixed with a plug or a “blame the bike”. In these cases, all I have to blame is my brain. Which had me thinking, is it just me?

I have a friend…

I won’t name her by name to keep her epicness private, but let’s just call her Josie Lori.

Josie rides hard, she races hard, she hypes hard, and as any athlete has had her share of setbacks.

I like to think people would think the same of me, maybe in a different order and far less fast.

The difference between Josie and ,I though, is how she handles these setbacks.

To give you a frame* of reference;

Steel frames are known for their comfort and repairability- Josie is a steel frame. She rolls with the punches, takes the bumps in the road and absorbs them, turns them to fuel for the next race or even on the race itself. And repairability, aka resilience in human form- she’s got it in spades when it comes to her racing mindset. If a race doesn’t go her way, she's bummed of course (again she is human not a bike), takes a moment to learn from it and then set focus on her next race.

Note to the reader: This is in NO way reflective of Josie’s racing style- on bike she is fast, punchy, and aggressive.

Whereas I have found myself in more of a carbon body/ brain- comes in hot but a bit more fragile, and those rock bounces - they hit a bit sharper and take longer to repair. And during a race, I've let them wear me down.

Fun fact: carbon and anxiety share another trait — a shorter lifespan. Studies show people with chronic anxiety live shorter lives.^1”

^{Meier SM, Mattheisen M, Mors O, Mortensen PB, Laursen TM, Penninx BW.}^{Increased mortality among people with anxiety disorders: total population study}^.^{Br J Psychiatry}^{. 2016;209(3):216-21. doi:10.1192/}^bjp.bp^.115.171975

Soooo comforting.

Luckily, the good thing about humans vs. bikes is that we can grow and evolve. While, I don’t think I’ll ever be full steel - anxiety and ADHD keep things too spicy for that - reflecting on my first year of racing and setting goals for next year, I’m learning to build toward a steel-framed hybrid.

Because at the end of the day, mechanicals happen on the road and in the mind. The trick isn’t avoiding them; it’s learning to get back on, repair what you can, and keep pedaling.

I’m grateful for friends like Josie who, although she has nerves of steel, still takes the time to help us more jittery carbon-heads keep rolling. Equally, I’ve found writing all this down helps me process these moments of “failure” and cognitive dissonance- so stay tuned for my next Mental Mechanical.

And if you’ve had your own ‘mental mechanicals,’ I’d love to hear what helped you patch them up. As the old saying goes, it takes a service course… or something like that.

*see what I did there? ;-)

I don’t have many photos from the race- I was slightly distracted, but there were a few moments of joy on course, including a beautifully executed musette hand off by my friend and hype crew Megan.

Merida Miller

Socials: @mercatmiller

Read the bio

Merida on the Connections Podcast