This Is Proof That Cycling Can Save Your Life

I can't believe I'm blubbing doing it, day one. This is Amy. She cycled the whole Tour de France route solo. But that wasn't hard enough. So she added the transfers in between the stages that the professional teams drive, making it a total distance of 4,073 miles with 74,863 metres of elevation. That's eight times the height of Everest. Why on earth would you choose to do this is a very good question. So we asked her. Why on earth would you choose to do this? Well, I'm a bit crazy, to be honest. I love a challenge. If the pros can do it, why can't I? No, I just, I wanted to do it to raise money for charity. That's the main reason. I did it for Shout, mental health charity. And so they're basically like a 24 hour, seven text support service. So anyone that's struggling can text them any time of the day. It's really hard to pick up the phone and call someone when you're struggling. But sending a text is so much easier. As well as being a mental health advocate, Amy's also a Garmin sponsored athlete. And it's thanks to Garmin that we've had a chance to sit down with her and find out more about her journey. So I was working as a mental health nurse and lockdown hit and I really, really struggled. I've always sort of struggled with being an overthinker and being quite anxious and putting a lot of pressure on myself. And when I was working as a nurse, it all got a bit too much. And very ironically, I had a breakdown, like a complete breakdown. And being a nurse, well, a mental health nurse, I kind of thought this shouldn't happen to me. I should know how to stay well. I'm helping people to stay well. So how can I not stay well myself? And I was quite hard on myself. And that's the reason I didn't ask for help soon enough. Because I kind of just tried to pretend that everything was okay and I was fine. And really I wasn't. And it all just kind of came out this one evening with my husband when I really just sort of let him know everything that was going on. And I just had to leave my job basically. I was completely just not myself. I wasn't eating properly. I wasn't sleeping. And a few weeks prior to this, my husband randomly came home with a bike from Halfords. Just a little, like the cheapest bike he could find. I'd never asked for a bike. I hadn't ridden my bike for 10 years since I was a kid. Going out on my bike into the Peak District at the weekends was just the only time where my mind could rest. And at a time when I didn't want to be here, going out and pushing up hills and seeing the views and just feeling peaceful kind of gave me perspective that there is good things in life and it's worth living. And yeah, the rest is history really. Without the bike, I probably wouldn't be... Well, I wouldn't be sat here with you, would I? So yeah, it did save my life. Whose idea was to do this with the transfers? Your route was 4,000 miles longer. Yeah, it was my idea, but I got it from being inspired by Lachlan Morton. Lots of people said, like, just do the tour, that's enough. Especially when the route was released because the transfers are massive. But I was like, no, I've said I'm going to do it, so I've got to do it now. So you didn't realise it would be that long. It was even longer than his challenge was the year before. Yeah, so it was 1,000 miles more than Lachlan. 1,000? Yeah, I don't want to compare myself to him. Like, he did it completely self-supported. Like, he was another level, like, bike bags and all that. I had my husband, so I had a little bit of help. What about during the ride? Was there any points where you were like, I'm going to have to stop here? So the worst moment was probably going up Tourmalet. I had four mountains to do that day and it's big. Have you done Tourmalet? Yeah, it's quite... Big is an understatement. And it was the biggest mountain I've ever ridden up before. I was going up there thinking, oh, I've still got another three to do after this. And I was in a bad mood, but by the end, I did enjoy the climb. Like, it's so beautiful. In what ways would you say that cycling has improved your mental health? It's made me stronger mentally. I always thought when I struggled and I left my job that I was a weak person and I was rubbish and I'm not very good at coping with hard things. And I think that's the reason why I do the long rides is because, in a way, it's to prove to myself that I can do hard things and I'm not, I don't give up easily. And I think doing the challenges I've done through my cycling has helped me to realise that, you know, having a mental health illness or going through a mental health struggle doesn't make you a weak person. It makes you a strong person because to get through that, you need a lot of strength. It's helped me get my happiness back. It's helped me to realise that you can't always be happy. I think when I was ill, I craved feeling happy again because I didn't really feel anything. Going out on the bike in the rain definitely made me feel something and I think that's why I always ride in whatever weather. Yeah, when I get that happiness on the bike, it's the best feeling ever. It's so good. But then you're going up a hill 100 miles into a ride thinking, why the hell am I doing this? I hate this, it's horrible. And yeah, that's how it is in life, really. Like, there's times where you're really sad and you're not happy, but that's normal. And I think being on the bike has taught me that the bad times always pass. Like, the hills don't last forever. There's always a downhill coming. So when I'm struggling in normal life, I remind myself of that. There's always a free will coming. Ever since I got on the bike, I've always liked going far. That's what I love to do. The only way my training sort of changed was I did some interval sessions on the turbo and that was quite hard. I did get a coach for this. I'd never had a coach or anything like that. I'd purely just ridden for fun and set myself my own challenges. But because of how big this was, I thought I need to get some advice on knowing how to train properly. Yeah, he set me sort of like, maybe three hard intense sessions in the week. And then the weekends I'd be doing eight hours on a Saturday, maybe. And six or seven hours on a Sunday. How many miles were you doing a year before this? I know the year before last, I did 10,000 miles. And last year I did 12,000 miles. Recovery and sleep would have been essential to you completing this challenge. Did you track it at all or? I use my Garmin watch to track my sleep. So that kind of tells me my quality of sleep. It also does my pulse and things like that. So I can see how well I was recovering each day. So that was really helpful. I always try to make sure that I got seven hours sleep minimum. Yeah, it was kind of like good and bad to track it because it was really helpful. But then on the days when I only got like five hours sleep. Your watch tells you off. Yeah, my watch was telling me off. Telling me to have rest days. I don't think it was very happy with me at the end. My body battery went down to five quite soon into the trip, which is really low. What would you say to someone who is struggling with their mental health and doesn't know where to start? I'd say, sorry. I'd say don't let the beast sting you on the head. First of all, like the fact you've recognised you're struggling is really good. Because I think sometimes we don't even recognise that we're struggling ourselves and we think, oh, we can just carry on and carry on. It'll be fine and push our own problems down. But the fact you've recognised you need help is really, really good. I'd say the main thing is do not be ashamed because the more people that you talk to, the more you realise that a lot of us struggle. It's not something to be ashamed of or be worried about talking to somebody about and don't be afraid to get professional help as well. I had counselling. I didn't just cycle. That's not the only thing that fixed me. I had counselling as well and that really, really helped. Just talking to somebody that didn't know me because I always felt so guilty like talking to my mum or Kyle because I didn't want people to worry about me. The NHS does have free counselling. That's what I used and it really helped me. So yeah, reach out for support and don't feel ashamed, I'd say. You rode up some mammoth climbs almost as big as the one we're on today. Yeah. How did you pace them? Seeing as you were doing multiple days in a row. I think what I did was reminding myself of that, that I had multiple days and multiple climbs to do. So I'd always try and go up a climb sort of like this, like being able to speak, like not let myself get too out of breath. I also use the Climb Pro on my Garmin. I find that really helpful because it tells you exactly how long the climb is, where the steep parts are. Some people don't like to know how long the climb is. But I actually really find it helpful because that helps me to pace myself as well. But sometimes I'd turn my Garmin on and it would say how many climbs I've got and I wouldn't want to know. But yeah, that helped me to pace myself knowing if I had a really steep section coming up or if I had a flat section on a climb, I could kind of go easy on that bit. Whereas normally at home, I'd go hard on the flat section of a climb to like get a good speed. But on tour, it was opposite. I was like, no, go slow on the flat section, recover. It's a marathon, not a sprint, as my dad told me before I went. Very wise, very wise. You've been open about struggling with eating disorders in the past. For all its good points, cycling is also a sport that can encourage a fixation on weight though. How do you navigate that? And what would be your advice to others that might be struggling with that side of things? Yeah, so I had an eating disorder when I was at uni, actually training to be a nurse. And then I worked within eating disorders as a nurse. So I worked with people with anorexia, which is an eating disorder. And when I started cycling, to be honest, I was probably quite unwell with it. Didn't really, well, I kind of had accepted it, but didn't really want to. Cycling, although at the start people were worried that it was another way for me to exercise and I had quite a bad relationship with running. Cycling was the opposite. It actually helped me to get better and get back to a healthy weight. I've actually put on six kilograms since I started cycling, which a lot of people do the opposite and lose weight when they start cycling. But for me, I needed to put weight on and that's something that maybe two years ago if I said that would have really stressed me out. But now I'm at a place where I'm like, no, I want to be healthy. I want to have a regular period like I should do and I want to be strong on the bike. And I can only do that if I'm healthy weight and I'm fueling myself and I'm eating enough. And I think there's a lot of talk about weight and what's the kilo and how much you weigh. And people will ask you openly at how much you weigh when you're on a bike ride. I've been asked that before. And it's like, you wouldn't do that in normal life. Just ask someone how much they weigh. And it's like, I'm not in a pro team or something. I'm not trying to be an elite cyclist. It doesn't matter how much I weigh. And I think we get pressurized about how we look in daily life, let alone in cycling. And it's the one place where I just feel just happy and I don't want that pressure of weight. And I think I've been really headstrong in making sure that I don't get pulled into that sort of realm of needing to be a certain body shape to be able to cycle. What really helped me when I was recovering is that if we all ate exactly the same and we all moved exactly the same amount, we'd all still look completely different and have different levels. Hopefully not been getting somewhere bees. We'd all have like different levels of body fat and different shapes because we're all genetically different. So I just say, just try not to get sucked into that. And unless you're a pro elite cyclist who have the nutrition lists and the coaches and they're having their bloods monitored and they're making sure that they're okay, like an everyday person doesn't have that. And to try and copy what a pro does or have that physique might not be healthy. And I think we just need to remember it's about being healthy and enjoying yourself. And yeah, you might have targets. I had the Tour de France, but I had to eat a hell of a lot to do that. And I have to eat. I had to eat every single hour on the bike. And there were times on the tour where that eating disorder voice comes back in. I still have it sometimes. It'll say like, you know, don't eat. That is bad for you. Or if you eat that, you're greedy or you've eaten too much today, but I can ignore it. It's just a passing thought now. Whereas before I would listen to it. Yeah, I'm proud. That's the proudest thing. I think people were asking me that. Are you proud of yourself for like doing the Tour de France? The thing I'm most proud of myself for is getting to the place I am with my eating and my mental health, because that's been far harder than any day on the tour, to be honest. To anyone that struggles with that, you can definitely get better. You've just got to really want to and cakes, you may so enjoy it because you only live once. So yeah, life's too short not to eat cake. By the looks of it, you were doing 10 hours most days on the bike. What was the longest day? The longest day mileage wise was like about 197 miles in one of the early stages. I added transfer onto it and decided to make the ride top heavy. So the first two weeks were the longest mile days. And then I saved shorter miles for the Alps and the Pyrenees. Wise. Probably what felt like the longest day was the mountain stages in the Alps, like the Queen stage and going up Col de la Loz. So to do that, you've got to be pretty strong on the bike and strong mentally on the bike. Do you think endurance challenges like this can help people build mental strength that goes beyond the sport itself? Definitely. I think mental strength is a massive thing in endurance cycling. I always say if you do the training, then your body's 20% of it, then like the rest is 80% mindset because how you think can make such a massive difference. Like on days where I maybe wasn't as positive, I would just, the ride wasn't fun. Whereas when I reminded myself to be grateful and focus on the good things in the day and the reason why I was doing it, the day went much quicker and I enjoyed it a lot more. And I think, yeah, mindset is massive. And if you can push yourself on an endurance ride, like push through the pain and things like that, then I think it helps you in your daily life to put things in perspective and take on challenges a little bit easier. Yeah, it definitely gives you resilience. That's for sure. I think we can all agree. Amy is pretty cool. It was an honour to sit down with her and ride with her and hear a bit more about the behind the scenes of her Tour de France challenge. After we filmed this interview, she announced something quite big. This is not the last challenge she's doing. She's going to try and break the record with her husband, Kyle, for cycling around the world as a couple. If you want to check out all the great stuff they're doing, then head into the link in the description. There'll be a link to Amy's channel Thank you again to Garmin for sponsoring this video and making this possible. And see you guys soon.