If you ride bikes you probably are familiar with what is affectionately referred to as the Super Bowl of off-road racing, Unbound Gravel. It’s 200+ miles in the Flint Hills of Kansas – a grueling race that is known for chaos, mechanicals and unpredictable weather and terrain. For me, this race has always been a career goal to podium and I built a lot of my off-season prep to do that. Unfortunately, if you read my last article, you can recall my plans were derailed with an ankle surgery 12 weeks ago. I remember after the surgery what it meant for my season and I said, “well, Unbound is off the table now.” I was sad, but I committed to the process of recovery and rehab and it wasn’t until 2-3 weeks prior to Unbound that I got the okay to line up and try to ride it. At best, I viewed it as a long training ride to get back into shape for the second half of the season.

So here I was on Saturday morning lining up against the best with low expectations. My main priorities were to protect my ankle to ensure I would not have any setbacks for the second half of my season. I also opted with my coach to train through Unbound, meaning we were in a pretty heavy block of training for the last 5 weeks leading into Unbound. I even remember going into Unbound week feeling slightly tired and feeling the impacts of what I refer to as “panic training” leading into the race. I had a lot of doubts. I had a lot of insecurities about my fitness. It also doesn’t help as an athlete reading race expectations, riders to watch and hearing about everyone’s build into the race. To the world, I wasn’t even an honorable mention or wildcard rider to watch and why would I be? I just had surgery on my ankle, and with no high level race starts this season, I don’t blame those predictions. But as a high performance athlete, you always want to be considered. You want to be seen – seen for your potential but really just seen for the hard work you’ve poured into the effort to race at the highest level. So I put all comparisons aside, opted to not even look up the other women in the field that I didn’t already know and instead just focused on what I needed to do that day.

The process goals I had for myself were easy – focus on what I need to do to keep me rolling smoothly. This meant riding conservatively on the downhills to avoid flats, entering technical sections at the front and committing to consistent fueling. I wanted to protect my body and protect my equipment and I felt confident that if I did those things I would finish the race. But as the race started, we had something special happen. The women had their own race – unimpacted by the men (for the most part). This meant we had a pack of 40+ women rolling together through the first 40 miles. From there, our group dwindled to about 20-25 women at the halfway point. At this time, I could tell I was riding well and feeling good. I honestly didn’t know if I might implode at any point as this was my longest race to date and my first Unbound without a DNF early on. But I also set a goal this season to be an animator and to be aggressive. So with that, about halfway through there was a long climbing section into Little Egypt which is an iconic part of the course for splits. I decided to sit on the front and drill it for about 20 minutes. This split our group in half and then we were down to just over 10 women in the front. We eventually started to work together cohesively and caught one rider who had taken a solo breakaway earlier in the day.

From there, I continued to set a hard pace on the climbs and slowly we popped off a few other riders and took NINE women to the line for a sprint finish at the premier event of the year. Going into this finish it was very tactical and for anyone who races bikes you know at the end of a race it becomes a cat and mouse game. The group slows and we anxiously await to see who will make the jump to get away. For me, I knew my top end fitness was not the sharpest so I made a choice when I got stuck on the front of the race for a long period of time entering back into town. Instead of slowing up and waiting for someone to launch an attack from behind, I opted to set a hard steady pace knowing that it would be harder for riders to come around me. For this finish, there is a hill called Highland Hills (or rather Hotdog Hill now thanks to GoodLife Brands) – and given the strength of the women in this group I anticipated it to stay together until the sprint. So I led into the hill, the attack on the hill strung things out and then I positioned myself into the back of the pack going into the final stretch. This allowed me to get more momentum and I was able to tactically move around and be in the mix for the win. I thought for a split second that I had the win, but I gave it my best effort which was good for third place overall. I felt nothing but gratitude at that finish line for how the day unfolded.

Not many know the amount of sacrifice and compromise I have had in the last 12 weeks rehabbing to get back and race this event. These sacrifices can be isolating, painful and grueling – but they make days like this past weekend worth it. As professional athletes, the wins are few and far between as the sport becomes more competitive so we cherish these moments more than anyone can comprehend. For me, knowing that I almost didn’t line up for this event, it was even more special to have such a surprising result and comeback.

So what do I think was responsible for my comeback at Unbound? Well, lots of things actually. I had an entire performance team responsible for my rehab including my surgeon, my PT, my skills coach, my strength and conditioning coach, my cycling coach and my sports psychologist. I have access to the best nutritional resources and I ruthlessly committed to not losing muscle mass through a high protein animal diet rich in collagen to also help my tendon heal. I also dedicated a lot of specific time to Unbound preparation in terms of course recon and equipment in the month prior.

Above all, I never gave up on myself. When it got hard out there, I never made excuses – and trust me a lot goes wrong in a 10+ hour race where you can easily come up with a reason to justify falling off when you are suffering that hard. But even when I knew the sprint finish was coming, instead of thinking about my lack of top end, I just ruthlessly committed to trying regardless. Commit to the process of showing up and trying – you never know when you might surprise yourself.

Photos: Eric Wynn / Slowtwitch Media House
Video: Courtesy of Paige Onweller / John Matthews

The post From Surgery to the Podium at Gravel’s Super Bowl first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

Editor's Note: Paige Onweller is a professional gravel rider, winning the 2022 edition of Big Sugar. Paige quit her career as a physician's assistant to turn pro. She'll be contributing roughly an article the month through the remainder of the year.

I’m a professional gravel cyclist in the US. That statement alone should lead you to assume I very much enjoy riding my bike, and I also spend a lot of time doing it. Some would say it’s an obsession or addiction and I wouldn’t argue against that. The definition of addiction is “when you have a strong physical or psychological need or urge to do something” which is true, but the difference is as athletes, most of us (hopefully) have a healthy relationship with our exercise habits . At the professional level, most of my life is centered around my training and I very much adopt the “monk lifestyle” as many of us pros refer to it. Limited contact with social events to avoid getting sick, 20-30+ hour training weeks seamlessly strung together week after week and a strict routine of our daily lives to get all our training, rehab, lift and recovery in.

For some, this may seem boring but for me, I live for this. The long rides on chunky gravel, endless carbohydrate consumption and a plethora of hours bonding with my training partners. Many people often remind me, “Wow, you are living the dream!” But, what happens when a full time athlete gets injured? Well….there goes that dream. It’s easy for our lives to collapse in these moments, so I am going to share some insight into my process and recent rehab journey which can apply to anyone getting injured – whether this is your full time job or not, anyone who loves exercise can understand our need to restructure our minds and habits in these moments.

Maintain a Daily Purpose and Routine

As an athlete we often have structured days and busy lives. We get a lot done when we are motivated to finish a project to go train more. But as most of us have probably experienced when we have more time on our hands, we actually get less done. This feeling of less productivity can be additive to frustrations when you are injured because you already feel less accomplished when you cannot train. For me, what’s helped tremendously is every morning I write out 3 things: my focus for the day, my goals and my emotions. My sports psychologist got me into this habit when the injury first occurred, and it’s helped a lot. If I sat around all day with my injured leg elevated and at the end of the day was getting down about being a bum – my mindset changed when I looked back and saw my daily focus was recovery and my goal was to stay off my feet – well, now I nailed that! It helped me reframe to more positive, self affirming thoughts rather than negative thoughts of laziness or boredom.

Much of my life is focused on my routine of training, which I very much love and I’m sure many of you reading can relate. So when that routine is removed, you often feel helpless, useless or without purpose. So to counter this, I designed a routine for myself that I stuck to. Waking up at the same time, rehab exercises timed out throughout the day and general structure to my day that stayed the same. This got me up, gave me purpose and held me accountable to stay on schedule even if my routine looks drastically different.

Commit to the Rehab

Most athletes are really good at training. We can ride or run or swim all the miles, but at the end of the day most of us neglect the small little things off the bike or in the gym. Well, when you are injured, rehab all of the sudden becomes really important. But let me tell you, it’s not always fun. For me, I am working with a very progressive surgeon (this was intentional) so this means I am doing exercises that aren’t always fun…or let me rephrase this…they hurt like hell and I don’t want to do them. But I do, because I am committed to the rehab process. Currently, as I write this, I am about 10 days after surgery. I do 200 ankle pump motions and 5 minutes of quad holds and a series of ankle mobility which takes me about 15 minutes to complete. I do this 5 times per day in addition to 6-8 sessions of icing for 15 minutes each session. Then, aside from eating/preparing food, my leg is elevated 12 inches above my heart. This means I am lying flat most of the day, which doesn’t lend me to getting much else done. I also do a series of mental visualizations, which are pretty specific and require me to “get dressed” for the session and separate this from the rest of my day. It may not seem like a lot, but it requires me to plan everything out and commit to the process of rehab.

Adjust Your Diet

Prior to getting injured, I had about 4500tss in the 4 weeks prior (about 1225 tss per week for that month before) so without sharing all my training details, it’s safe to assume I was eating a lot. Most days I had about 4,000-6,000+ calories…the many perks of high volume training. Most of my diet was focused on carbohydrates, because let’s be honest, carbohydrates are king. But when you suddenly go from that to a sedentary life, a shift is needed in the diet. The first week of injury, I specifically did not log food and tried to focus on recovery and listening to my body. It was repairing the injury and also from the work of training the weeks prior. I ate when I was hungry and l listened to cravings. Often this meant consuming much more than my output. After discovering the injury would then require surgery and numerous weeks of no training, I got nutritional guidance and transitioned to a high protein diet that included only about 1800-2000 calories per day. Eventually my appetite normalized and the high protein diet really helped with hunger as well.

I had a tendon repair and another connective tissue structure (peroneal retinaculum) surgically repaired. So, I prioritized animal protein as my main source of protein and I did this for many reasons. Animal protein is superior to other forms of protein (soy, plant based options) because it has a higher bioavailability and a higher percentage of EAAs (essential amino acids); additionally, with my increase in the amount of protein animal protein is actually been proven to be more easily digested than alternatives. I aimed to get 2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight and I made sure that I separated protein feeding windows since our bodies can only intake a max of 40 grams per feeding window. There’s a lot more that I changed in terms of timing of eating, supplements, etc., but in summary here is a really good article about nutrition, protein and timing of everything around a surgery if you are interested in reading more.

Focus On What You Can Do

I think when you are injured it’s really easy to dwell on what has been taken away from you. But for anyone who’s had surgery you can probably relate that in those moments you are painfully reminded of how helpless you are. You need help going to the bathroom, you can’t dress yourself, you can’t prepare your own food….the list goes on and on. But when your independence is stripped away down to nothing, you then start to rebuild again. This last week I finally took a shower on my own and could balance enough on one leg to do that. I celebrated that moment so much; it felt like a huge win. Look at me, showering on my own! I guarantee you do not usually celebrate taking a shower without assistance, but maybe you should. Currently, I take my crutches for a spin outside for a few minutes each day. I could choose to focus on that not really being much exercise, or on the fact that I have bruises under my arms from the crutches, but no – it’s an intentional choice to focus on being thankful I am able to go outside for a few minutes per day. It’s transformative when you focus on the positive and what you can do versus dwelling on what you cannot do or what you are missing.

In summary, I want to end with one of my favorite quotes from Theodore Roosevelt: “Comparison is the thief of joy.” That quote is applicable in many times of my life as an athlete, but even more so now. Don’t compare my current state to what I could do 2 months ago or what my competitors are doing. Focus on what I can do, and stop the comparison. If you can execute this, I guarantee you’ll be happier in the rehab process and you’ll be building joy and confidence vs negativity and doubt which will help you down the road when you start racing again! Best of luck!

The post A Pro Athlete’s Insights On Injury and Rehab first appeared on Slowtwitch News.