Latest / Zone2Speak Podcast / Cape Epic Unfiltered with Haley Smith: The Highs, Lows & Unbreakable Teamwork

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Cape Epic Unfiltered with Haley Smith: The Highs, Lows & Unbreakable Teamwork · Zone2Speak Podcast

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Now, let's get into the episode.
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In this episode of Zone to Speak, I am honored to welcome pro cyclist Haley
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Smith, whose impressive career spans multiple disciplines and showcases her
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resilience, skills, and passion for the sport.
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Haley's achievements include representing Canada at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics,
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securing a World Cup cross-country Olympic podium in 2019,
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claiming multiple national championship titles, and winning the 2018 Swiss Epic.
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She also made history in 2022 by winning the inaugural Lifetime Grand Prix Series,
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proving her adaptability and endurance across diverse racing formats.
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Most recently, Hayley tackled the 2025 Absa Cape Epic, one of the toughest multi-stage
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mountain bike races in the world, racing alongside Australian cyclist Ella Bluer under Team App.
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She took on unforgiving terrain, extreme heat and dust conditions,
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and a stacked field of elite competitors.
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Today, we'll dive into her experience at Cape Epic, her preparation,
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highs and lows, and the dynamics of racing as a dual. Haley,
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welcome to Zone to Speak.
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Thank you. Thanks for having me, and thank you for the lovely intro.
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Welcome. Very excited to talk to you.
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So, take us to the atmosphere at Cape Epic. When you got there,
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how was the race village like?
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It's quite a scene, to be honest. It's interesting because as a pro,
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most people choose to stay off-site.
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So at Cape Epic, there's sort of three different ways to do the event.
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You can stay in the tent village.
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You can have a mobile home, so a motor home rented on-site, or you can have Airbnbs off-site.
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And we chose to do the Airbnb route because we knew that it would help our recovery,
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have access to air conditioning, our own kitchen, that kind of thing.
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But when we were at the venue and you get to be around all of the, there's 750 teams.
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So all 1,500 people or so, well, more like 2,000 people once you include the
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support staff and everyone that's running the event.
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It's a production. There's lots of energy.
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Registration day was really, really cool. just seeing everyone
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so excited and taking photos with the logos
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and the areas they have set up to kind of commemorate this
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challenge that you're about to take on so yeah I guess that's that's what I
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would take away from it the most is that being around the event being around
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the race village is just an energizing thing and it's unfortunate that we didn't
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get to experience it every day all day but that probably also helped our performance
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because it allowed us to check out a little bit.
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Yeah, it makes sense. You have a job to deliver and you need to do what's best
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to be on the best conditions.
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And yeah, you brought up a good point because the heat was insane this year.
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I think most years it's hot, but I don't know if this was the worst heat ever
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and the dust conditions.
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So I can't believe stay on a tent. Hopefully overnight it got a little better.
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Yeah, we said a prayer. We said a prayer for people in tents every night.
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And how were the stages like was there any stage or moment that really stuck
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with you that you remember or that pushed to your limits yeah for sure the,
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every stage was quite different a couple of them were modified due to weather
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once it was modified due to absolutely extreme heat so temperatures in excess
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of 40 degrees celsius and then the final day was modified because of extreme
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storms overnight that just destroyed the tent village,
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completely obliterated the course. So we had both ends of the spectrum.
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The first stage, well, I suppose the prologue, it's not actually called stage
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one, it's called the prologue.
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So day one, that one nearly broke me.
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It was only 25 kilometers long. It took us an hour and 20 minutes.
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And I was just completely not adapted to the heat.
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So my partner really had to drag me around I was okay for about 20 minutes.
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And then when it hit me, it hit me. And all of a sudden I was just like a sack of hammers.
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I joke, I joke about it now, but in the moment I 100% had crafted a resignation
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letter to Trek telling them they had to fire me because I was incapable of being a bike racer anymore.
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So it was really, really hard for me.
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Yeah. I just really struggled in the heat.
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So i suppose that one stuck with me for its challenges
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but then every other day i definitely
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rode into it and i felt much better as the week went on and every day will stick
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with me this will stick with me for different reasons but i overall i'm left
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with a sense of enjoyment and accomplishment and yeah the single track the stages
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with the most single track those ones I'll remember the most fondly, for sure.
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Well, I'm glad you overcame that moment.
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I was watching, I couldn't watch the entire race every day, you know,
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because of work, but I was watching the highlights on YouTube.
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And yeah, I was trying to spot you. I saw you talking post, you know, race a couple times.
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I'm sure also there was high moments to cross the finish line every day.
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Yeah. Yeah, you, it's interesting, because it is a pairs race.
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And at least for Ella and I, we didn't really have a day where each of us felt super strong.
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So I really struggled in those first couple days. And then Ella struggled a
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little bit more later in the race.
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So those finish lines, like the first one, it's intensely emotional because
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I felt a lot of guilt that my partner had to take such care of me and that I
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couldn't perform for her. And then later on in the race,
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I felt extreme pride in my partner. So it was less about me,
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but it was more, I felt this sense of pride that she had overcome the challenges
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that she'd faced in the day.
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So there's a lot of photos in the second half of the race of me smiling as we
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cross the line and Ella looking.
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Not angry, but definitely thankful that we're at the finish line.
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And my smile is mostly because I got to watch this woman bury herself to make it there.
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And I certainly had those moments throughout the day as well.
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But yeah, the finish lines are unique.
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Because you, especially by day eight, you've developed a real bond with your partner.
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And it's just really special to watch them accomplish something every single day.
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Amazing. That's powerful. Yeah, I was going to ask about the duel.
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Did you know each other before? Because I saw some of the interviews,
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people saying, oh, I just met my partner.
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We did know each other. I can't actually remember when I met Ella.
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It wouldn't have been that long ago.
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I feel like i've always known of her because we've
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been in the cycling scene for a long time both of us
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have but we met and became friends in
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the u.s either last year the year before when she was over doing
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the lifetime grand prix and we'd raced
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around each other a little bit but we'd never done a pairs race together we'd actually
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never really ridden together and then one of
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the final races in the u.s last year at big sugar
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and in bentonville i sort of
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offhand asked her if she would want to do cape epic if that's
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something that became an opportunity and immediately she
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was like yeah i'd do that so and we just kind of went from there cool i race
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as a pair on ultra races and yeah i love it i love it but of course on the pro
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level it's different how do you manage the communication and the strategy and the pace.
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So I actually learned a lot from Ella this week on that topic.
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So I have done pairs races in the past. My only partner prior to this had been
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Catherine Pendrel and we used to race mountain bikes together.
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And at the pairs races I'd done, we were very closely matched.
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So for whatever reason, Catherine and I were always within a few watts of each
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other and within a few points on the effort scale.
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So it was very easy for us to ride together.
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Whereas this time ellen and ella and i like i
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said we we sort of had flip-flop days so
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either i was having a really challenging day or she was having a more
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challenging day and at first i didn't really know
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how to deal with that because i didn't i didn't the i didn't fully understand
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how she would communicate with me and i didn't know her tells and also i i wasn't
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i wasn't as attuned to the tiny fluctuations in pace.
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So the first day that we experienced where Ella was struggling a little bit
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more than I was, I didn't know how much to back off.
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And I also didn't know how to listen to her nonverbal communication or how to
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sort of pay close enough attention to her nonverbal communication.
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So after that day, we did a lot of talking after the
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stage on how to make it work and that's when we kind of figured out
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our our recipe for success
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and yeah it was very
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it was very simple honestly it was basically it came down to
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we decided that we needed to let the person who was suffering the most lead
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when there was no drafting benefit and that was kind of it that was the answer
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to the to the equation so if it was going uphill and and ella was hurting a
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little bit more she would lead so that she was in control of the suffering and
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it was less distressing and vice versa.
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Yeah. So we had to have some discussions off the bike to figure out how we would
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work well together. And then we were able to implement that in the ensuing stages,
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which was really successful, I think.
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Yeah. Yeah. And I totally get it. And especially on the non-verbal communication,
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being that I have done some races as a pair, not mountain bike and not pro-level
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like you, but it's so important to be able to read your partner and know.
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I get, for example, very quiet when I'm doing more efforts, more concentrated.
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And now I know how to tell people. I didn't know before, but I know how to say,
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hey, if I get quiet, it's not you. It's not personal.
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I'm just struggling, but I'm pushing through. Yeah.
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Yeah. So I'm glad you guys figure it out.
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And how about your race preparation? You said you weren't ready for the heat.
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I know you're Canadian. You're based in Canada.
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Yes. And yeah, we are just coming out of winter now.
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You're super strong and you have a lot of experience, but did you do anything
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different for Cape Epic?
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I had intended to but you know the best laid plan best laid plans as they say so,
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we'd actually gone to Australia in January to
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do some to do a training camp and that exposed us to the
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heat a little bit and it also gave us a chance to I got
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to ride with Ella and hang out with her which was a good thing
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and then in February when we came home
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from Australia my intent was to use a combination of indoor training because
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it's winter here so we were using the turbo trainers in the basement as a heat
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exposure and then finishing that with a sauna session so you can use that to
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kind of help yourself prep for the heat however i got sick so about three weeks before,
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the race i got the flu and it was really bad it knocked me out for like 11 days.
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And so kind of all my heat prep went away basically the heat heat adaptation
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degrades very quickly it degrades
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much quicker than altitude preparation and other and other types of,
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like cellular adaptations so after
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getting sick i had to i just kind of had to adjust my plan so i didn't have
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time to reintroduce the sauna and have it make any meaningful changes it would
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have only made me tired and i really had to try to prioritize getting in a few
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key sessions before flying to South Africa.
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So long story short, I had intended to use the sauna and heat prep,
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which would have worked, but alas, I got sick and you have to be adaptable.
15:28
Yeah. And you got to have to be a hundred percent to show up and yeah,
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what a bummer that you got sick, but I'm glad it was at least with enough time
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for you to be a hundred percent and, and, and be at the race.
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Yeah. I don't think I mean, I think I was fully healthy when I started the race, but...
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I don't think I was as strong as I could have been had I not got sick,
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but I mean, everyone, unless you live in a bubble, everyone's going to get sick
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at some point in the year.
15:57
So you pray that it doesn't happen at one of your peak races,
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and otherwise you just have to roll with it. Yeah.
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So it's a super challenge course, different courses.
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So there are crashes, mechanicals, puncturers, can be really race-defining.
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Did you have any issues on the course?
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This we actually spoke about this on our travels home
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that so ella and i were traveling with my husband
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and his teammates so there were two teams of us and between the four
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athletes we had no major crashes no real
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mechanicals no flap which for four
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athletes is virtually unheard of at cape epic i had
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i kissed the ground twice i
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think just when it was slick i slipped out on a bridge but
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nothing to write home about so we had smooth runs which
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is knock on wood yeah like it's
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it's part of that comes down to skill but a lot of that also
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comes down to having really good reliable equipment a hundred percent yeah yeah
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i also been quote-unquote lucky i have i don't want to jinx myself but i don't
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even remember getting a flat tire ever on races or rides that people always
17:08
get one or multiple punctures.
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So yeah, it's good when you find good brands that you rely on and don't have problems. Yeah.
17:18
Yeah. Good. How about your nutrition? You said you stay on the Airbnb.
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Did you have anyone helping you both or you knew what to do when you just.
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Went grocery shopping and did your food every day so
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we did hire a sponier through a
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local company that this is kind of what they do they're all
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it's a collection of professionals that that's awesome
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yeah that they they do it'll be massage therapists
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or chiropractors or physios and then they hire themselves
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out for the week to people traveling to south africa for cape
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epic we had this wonderful woman named lisca who
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helped us throughout the week and a friend named fraser
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who's Ella's friend that came from home and the two of them helped
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take care of us so Lissy was looking after our bodies and Fraser was kind
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of the do everything man so they
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did help with they did a lot of the grocery pretty much all the grocery shopping
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and helped us prepare things but we sort of did most
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of the cooking just because it's what we're comfortable with and it's
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something that all four of us enjoyed so it was we took
18:19
care of that every day but and we ate
18:22
communally so all six of us in the house four athletes and
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the two people who were helping support us we all ate
18:28
together and we kind of we ate
18:31
very simply we ate a ton of rice this was the certainly the most carbohydrates
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i've ever ever learning 15 years into my career how to eat enough and i actually
18:44
think i finally did it this this race but yeah it was it was a lot of rice a lot of rice.
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Is good rice is good i love it savory sweet.
18:57
Any thing that you think you would specific tricks that really helped you stay
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strong nutrition in terms of
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overall recovery in general i think that eating was the biggest thing so,
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obviously you want to go in as healthy as you can be that's a
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pretty big one you need to start from a solid
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platform and that part of that is making sure that you are you have enough resources
19:29
in your body to carry you because you will probably be in deficit at some point
19:34
in these eight days there's no way you will so you need to really make sure
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that you're robust to start the week.
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Having a recovery drink or something right after is really important.
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So that would be the first thing I drank as soon as I crossed the finish line.
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And then just really, really nailing those carbohydrates, not worrying so much
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about the other macronutrients, but making sure that you're replenishing your carb stores each day.
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I've never felt this strong on day eight.
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I've been certainly in a much, much deeper hole in training before when the
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load is much lower. And in retrospect, it's because you weren't, I wasn't eating enough.
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So that's the biggest thing I can say is just getting those, getting the carbs in.
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On some days for me that I, we calculated it and I was getting like well over
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a thousand grams of carbs in, in a day, which is a lot.
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Wow. But you're probably also using a lot of your reserves.
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So yeah. Yeah. And the guys are obviously eating much more than that,
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given their output is quite a bit higher.
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And then hygiene that's a
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basic one but you have to make sure you're washing your hands a ton
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try not to use too many public bathrooms that kind
20:44
of thing multivitamins I
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was taking a multivitamin each day just because with that
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volume of rice there's not so much room for
20:53
carrots recovery also
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for me magnesium is a big part of it I we recently discovered
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that I have likely been magnesium deficient
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for most of my life so i was taking that's the
21:06
only other supplement i would take is daily magnesium and then
21:09
just sleeping sleeping as much as you can resting yeah
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so yes i think you definitely made
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the right decision on the airbnb because you probably slept better and ate better
21:20
than being on a tent for sure yeah you and yeah just having a comfortable sleeping
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environment being able to get some refuge from the heat is a big thing And I
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guess that's another thing with recovery is getting your core temperature back
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down as quickly as you can.
21:37
Yeah, I mean, I've tented at a stage race before and I really liked it.
21:41
It was an adventure and it was super fun.
21:43
But if you're there purely or largely to perform, I think Airbnbs is the way to go.
21:49
I agree. Yeah. You're going to migration race this year, no?
21:53
I am, yes. Okay. So, oh, you're in for a treat.
21:56
But it is tense. But it's comfy. It's comfy.
22:00
Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. I mean, migration for me, for those who don't
22:04
know, it's a stage race in Kenya through the Maasai Mara, but...
22:08
That's an adventure for me absolutely equal parts
22:11
adventure and performance and that one maybe skews more
22:14
towards the adventure but i'm looking forward to sleeping
22:17
in a tent in kenya that's good that's a
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crazy life experience so i'm looking yeah it is a
22:23
crazy it's a crazy experience you'll love it you're in for
22:26
a treat yeah it's four days state race and it's
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amazing anyways back to cape
22:32
epic oh you have done so many high level races how
22:35
does cape epic compared to other endurance events you have
22:38
done and what makes it so unique because it's the holy grail of mountain bike
22:43
right yeah i think the only thing that i can say well i've done a lot of stage
22:48
racing i've only done one other eight-day event and that was the croc trophy
22:52
in australia which i don't actually think exists anymore i think last year was its final iteration.
22:58
And that one was i would
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say that was harder for me the croc trophy was partly
23:04
because when it came in my career i did it eight years ago so
23:07
i didn't have the durability that i have now but also it
23:10
was not a paris race so in that race also because it was mass start so i was
23:16
racing against and with the men so at crawl trophy it was literally as hard
23:21
as i could go every single minute of of every pedal stroke for the 32 hours
23:26
of racing over eight days whereas at cape epic,
23:29
when you're racing with a partner there are moments where
23:33
you're at your physical maximum them and there are lots of
23:35
moments where you're not so it it
23:39
i wouldn't say the i would say that it was easier in some ways but harder in
23:46
others probably harder emotionally and the soft skills that come with racing
23:51
it was harder in those respects but maybe not as much of a physical load as
23:55
doing an eight-day solo stage race.
23:59
Cape Epic threw everything at us. We had every single kind of mud you could imagine.
24:04
We had extreme heat, dust, rain, intense wind.
24:09
So like every type of, except snow.
24:12
The only thing we didn't have was snow, but every other environmental condition was thrown at us.
24:16
And that was very, very challenging and very different to other stage races I've done.
24:21
Like you brought up this Epic, for example, that's only four days long and it's
24:25
all in a pretty similar climate.
24:28
Like you we didn't change zones so much yeah
24:31
there's less variation exactly yeah so i would say that cape epic had the most
24:38
variety of any race i've done both in terms of challenge and in elements you
24:43
encounter and i think it takes more of you mentally as well right to yeah yeah,
24:50
endure all that anything you would do differently i would figure out how to
24:57
not get the flu and make I'm trying to keep adaptation.
25:01
Yeah, there's, I mean, it was a learning year for all of us.
25:04
We all went in kind of thinking that this was a recon year.
25:08
And because there's lots that you have to learn about Cape Epic.
25:11
We were lucky that we did have clean runs and didn't need to use our,
25:15
like, spare parts out there.
25:17
So Cape Epic is a self-supported race, meaning that every athlete,
25:21
if you have a problem, you have to fix it.
25:23
You're not allowed to have a mechanic fix it for you out on the race. but
25:26
you're allowed to pre-fill tech boxes that
25:29
will meet you at specific points along the route each
25:32
day and in retrospect i know we
25:35
were competing against teams that would have had pretty much a full bike
25:38
rebuild in each box whereas we did
25:41
not have those spare parts so we were just very thankful that nothing
25:44
went wrong but things i would do differently i would make sure i
25:47
had as many spare parts as i could and have them all in
25:50
the tech boxes i would pay more attention to
25:53
ice and like cold
25:56
water out there we did our best but for example
25:59
we didn't warm up any day really because we didn't have a way to stay cool on
26:04
the rollers whereas the people were competing against are warming up but they're
26:07
wearing ice vests or like have full ice covering them head to toe and that wasn't
26:12
we didn't have that capability i can tell you that day eight hurt a lot having not warmed up.
26:18
The zero to hero was real, real angry legs on that last day.
26:24
But other than that, I don't know that there's anything I would do differently. I loved my partner.
26:29
I loved the race. And now it's just about learning from what you did.
26:34
So it's not so much doing things differently, but about knowing what to expect.
26:39
Yeah. Just some post-race reflections. And yeah.
26:43
So I guess you'll do it again. Oh, yeah.
26:47
I crossed the line on day eight. I was like, why is it over?
26:50
It shouldn't be over yet. It can't be over.
26:53
I want to do it again. And so, yeah, if I have to, yeah, I'll be back next year for sure.
27:00
Wonderful. I'll be watching and cheering for you.
27:05
As we are wrapping up Cape Epic, you had a successful career in cross-country Olympic racing.
27:12
What inspired you to shift towards gravel and marathon races?
27:18
That's sort of a two-part question, I think. I always have loved adventure racing,
27:24
or I guess it's really just endurance racing, marathon racing.
27:28
My first experience with it was Croc Trophy in 2017.
27:33
It was my first taste of both stage racing and doing races longer than two hours, and I loved it.
27:39
It was just such an incredible experience.
27:42
And since that point, so since 2017, I'd always done a couple of those style of events each year.
27:50
And then the pandemic hit in 2020, I was still an XCO racer,
27:55
which are short events, they're usually 80 minutes long.
27:58
And I went to the Olympics in Tokyo in 2021.
28:01
And that whole experience, the pandemic, the Olympics, all of that,
28:07
the pressure of it, it just, it just broke me.
28:09
And I said this a few times in different interviews, but I woke up the morning
28:14
of the Olympics being very sure that I would never race a bike again.
28:18
I just knew that it was done. I couldn't do it anymore.
28:23
And then this opportunity was presented to me to switch to endurance,
28:27
drop bar, and mountain bike racing.
28:29
And I guess something in me knew that I wasn't done. And I took that opportunity.
28:35
And little did I know that it was actually maybe more, well,
28:39
it had a lot of elements of what I loved about biking that XCO racing maybe didn't have.
28:45
And it's kind of, yeah, so that's what I've been doing for four years now.
28:49
So it's not so much that I was inspired to
28:51
switch but it's more that I took a
28:55
series of turns in my XCO career that kind
28:58
of led me here and it just I don't
29:00
know I don't want to say that it worked out but it's more that
29:03
I have found myself in a world that really suits me
29:06
and suits yeah just
29:09
kind of where I'm at in my life I guess and you
29:14
mentioned a little bit the 2020 Tokyo Olympics but
29:17
how how was the experience i think you you got
29:20
the bronze there no no i thought
29:24
you have bronze on the 2018 commonwealth
29:28
games yeah i won a bronze at the olympics i drastically underperformed i wish
29:33
i could say i got a bronze but alas well no maybe you underperformed there but
29:39
you still made to the olympics which is a huge achievement thank you i appreciate that But yeah,
29:47
it's funny because you get there and it's something that you wished and worked
29:53
for for a decade or more. And you get there and...
29:57
It's just another bike race. And there's lots of cool stuff about it.
30:01
But also, I mean, we were at a pandemic game.
30:05
That's true. There was no audience, nobody there.
30:08
Very anticlimactic. Exactly.
30:12
And you get there and it's just like, oh, okay.
30:17
And then, I mean, it's so cliche, but you realize over,
30:20
as you recover from the games and you recover from the letdown and the blues and whatnot,
30:25
you kind of realize that if if it didn't go whether it went to plan or not whether
30:31
you performed or not the vast majority of that whole experience of the olympic
30:37
experience is actually just trying to make it to the olympics and that's where
30:42
that's what was the really cool experience.
30:46
All the steps we took along the way and i
30:51
i yeah so my olympic experience i
30:54
really think of as like the decade leading into it
30:57
and that was the most fulfilling thing i
31:00
could possibly imagine the olympics themselves could take
31:04
it or leave it kind of how it went for me but i would not trade those 10 years
31:09
for anything yeah i guess i don't know i'm just thinking maybe athletes have
31:15
these expectations of being this huge high and like you said when you get there it's just another race,
31:21
plus the pressure factor, all that has a huge play.
31:26
And then maybe also, like you said, performing or not performing,
31:29
maybe coming back home, you have that.
31:32
Post-race blues what's next what now yeah
31:37
and it can be it can be a huge high i've had
31:39
races before that were peaks for me
31:42
that really gave me that like incredible high but that's very volatile yeah
31:49
and if you have those highs you're certainly going to have lows that's how it
31:52
works you can't stay up there forever yeah but yeah i think i think i've just my highs are now found in,
32:01
well I love to I love to win and I love to perform well it's been a while since
32:05
I've felt like I've done that but the highs for me really are in the daily experiences and the.
32:12
In the preparation I guess and that's something I
32:15
learned from how poorly the Olympics went for me was just
32:18
where I found my meaning and it's kind of in
32:21
the other other 998 hours
32:24
of the year that i spend on my bike not the not the two hours of the one peak
32:28
event yeah yeah well sometimes you have to go through those experiences to find
32:34
what truly matters what's important and where's your journey i might have a
32:41
different opinion if i let's say let's say one goal at the olympics,
32:44
i think i would look at it i actually think
32:47
i would look at it the same like you i think it would you'd
32:52
obviously have this incredible high but you come
32:55
down from it and you would realize it's you're in
32:58
the same spot sort of yeah yeah
33:02
i don't know can you talk about your experience winning the lifetime grand prix
33:08
and how influenced your career trajectory yeah so i mean naively i I would say
33:14
that it didn't change anything and it didn't really influence my trajectory.
33:20
But if I look at it objectively, certainly as a Canadian, I think it probably
33:26
made American brands aware of who I was.
33:29
So I can't deny that it did open professional doors for me.
33:36
It certainly did. But at the same time, I don't really feel like it changed
33:39
my trajectory because I would still be doing the same thing if I didn't win.
33:45
I would still be trying to perform at the same races. I would still be trying to reach my potential.
33:51
So yeah, I suppose that it just gave me the freedom to be able to continue to
33:57
do this because it increased my market value, I guess.
34:02
Yeah absolutely so i guess yeah business-wise he
34:06
opened doors and enabled you to continue
34:09
to do what you love but your integrity and what
34:12
you wanted we wouldn't have changed victory or
34:15
not yeah and i've never really been someone who
34:18
like looks at a series overall even when i was racing world
34:21
cups like it was never i just don't think about an an overall title that's just
34:28
not something it that's it's not my approach to sport but I yeah so even then
34:34
I was sort of targeting individual races and that's what I'm doing now as well at least trying to.
34:40
You are known for being an advocate for mental health,
34:45
how do you balance the pressures of professional racing with maintaining your mental well-being,
34:50
this question always makes me laugh because my answer is not well I don't balance
34:56
them very well i'm still learning but yeah for those who don't know or who don't
35:02
know who i am or my history i i was first diagnosed with an eating disorder
35:06
when i was 13 so well before i came to cycling,
35:10
and it's been a long journey since then but yeah long story short i've sort of struggled with,
35:17
like debilitating generalized anxiety depression and some form of obsessive controlling.
35:25
Underlying behaviors pretty much my whole life.
35:27
And at times, cycling has made that much better. It helps me manage them.
35:32
And at other times, it's made it much worse. And typically, you know.
35:37
I tip to the worst side of the spectrum when the pressure, when I have an imbalance
35:45
in the pressure that I feel. And usually pressure is invented.
35:48
It doesn't actually exist. No one's life is riding on what I do.
35:52
If I didn't have a job tomorrow, if I got fired by all my sponsors,
35:56
I'd be able to find a different job. I wouldn't be destitute.
36:00
So all this to say that pressure is really made up
36:03
and yeah I'm learning
36:06
as I go through sport every year I learn a little
36:09
bit more about how to understand where
36:12
my pressure is coming from and how to work with it a little better so
36:16
I think I think I'm cycling is
36:19
teaching me how to find a
36:22
balance between mental health and performance and I
36:27
think what it's teaching me is that it doesn't have to
36:30
be balanced does not mean sacrificing
36:35
performance and it doesn't mean sacrificing anything else
36:38
in your life either it's i think that when people
36:41
hear the word balance they assume that one must have to give
36:44
for the other but i think it's more that your your
36:49
your conceptualization changes you
36:53
you have a more balanced understanding of what's happening so in your brain
36:58
or in your in your approach i'm probably probably losing people a little bit
37:03
here because no no it makes total sense it makes total sense and i think you
37:07
bring up a good point because when we say balance we do i do imagine.
37:14
Tranquility and i think it's not that i think balance is managing this inside
37:23
voice this inside pressure this inside expectation exactly yeah yeah i think
37:28
that's what i'm kind of trying to,
37:31
articulate is that how I balance it now is more just trying to understand myself
37:37
a little bit better and understand what I'm experiencing and feeling and that
37:41
that just gives me faith to make decisions as opposed to react to things that I'm feeling,
37:48
Yeah, I think that it maybe lies in, it's similar to mindfulness,
37:52
I suppose, but it's more like this self-awareness.
37:55
Yeah, naming it, yeah.
37:57
Yeah, that you kind of, as you get older, you acquire this awareness about your triggers.
38:04
About your priorities, and it helps you just,
38:08
I don't think you're looking for, I don't think I'm looking for balance so much
38:13
as I am looking for the ability to prioritize what's actually.
38:18
A priority for me and then that it just kind of
38:21
it takes care of it sort of yep
38:24
yeah i don't know sorry this is no
38:27
it makes total sense and thanks for opening up
38:30
and sharing this i appreciate it and i'm
38:33
sure you will be relatable to others and
38:36
hopefully help others everybody we all
38:39
like we all have our exactly battles inside
38:43
battles yeah i've never met someone who didn't say
38:46
that they've you know felt depressed or
38:49
anxious or something at some time in their life we all experience it
38:53
i'm just i'm just quite lucky that cycling has
38:56
given me the chance to confront it on sort
39:00
of a daily basis and in order to succeed i have had
39:03
to confront it and not everyone is so lucky to
39:06
have a pursuit in their life that forces them to
39:09
face these things yeah so
39:12
yeah i think cycling or
39:15
any sports it's really helpful for
39:18
a lot of people yeah so you
39:21
you also you can't like figure out what your weaknesses are or what
39:24
your your vulnerabilities are unless you're faced with
39:27
them and sport really throws them in your face so yeah i'm just very waxing
39:34
poetic right now but i i'm very grateful for getting the having the opportunity
39:39
to explore my mental health through sport because I think it's given me been
39:43
the type of therapy and it's helped me just understand it a lot more.
39:47
Wonderful. I'm glad to hear it. So what's next?
39:51
What are your goals? What are you aiming for the next phase of your career? Any upcoming races?
40:00
Yeah, I have probably another 15 or between 15 and 18 events this year. Wow.
40:08
Obviously, I'm not trying to peek at all of those. I kind of have a few goals
40:12
that are important to me.
40:14
Unbound is one of them. I'd really like to crack that code.
40:19
Which distance are you doing? I'll do the 200, so 200 miles, 328 kilometers.
40:25
I've done it three times now, and I've been in the top 10 every time,
40:29
but I'd really like to get a little higher than that.
40:32
So Unbound is a performance goal.
40:35
Leadville is a performance goal.
40:37
Mountain bike marathon, on World Championships, our performance goal.
40:41
And then after Cape Epic, I...
40:44
I'm seriously considering putting gravel burn on my schedule,
40:47
which is a seven-day gravel schedule in South Africa. I want to do that.
40:52
Yeah, so I was actually Googling flights right before this podcast.
40:58
But immediately what's coming up is a three-weekend race block.
41:02
We have Sea Otter Classic, which is a gravel race.
41:05
Levi's Grand Fondo, which is a road race. It'll be my first road race ever.
41:09
And then the Whiskey 50, which is a marathon mountain bike race.
41:12
So I'll do that three-week block, which will set me up for my final month training
41:16
camp before Unbound 200. Amazing.
41:21
And the Sea Otter you mentioned is the one in California, not in Spain. Correct. Yeah.
41:27
The OG Sea Otter. Yeah, OG Sea Otter. Yeah.
41:32
Well, you're going to be very busy, top fit, incredible.
41:37
I wish you all the best on your 2025 season. and I'm very excited about Unbound.
41:43
I don't think she has announced yet, but she did tell me on the podcast I recorded with her last week.
41:48
So Laura King will also be doing the Unbound 200 this year.
41:53
Yeah, it'll probably be the biggest year it's had.
41:59
It's only growing in popularity and in status and prestige.
42:04
So I think we're going to see a really, really strong women's field this year.
42:09
It's so exciting yeah well hailey
42:14
thank you so much for sharing your journey
42:17
your time at cape epic i really appreciate your time and maybe we can have a
42:23
catch-up at the end of your season yeah thanks for having me on juliana and
42:27
of course if you want to catch up at any time just send me an email and we'll
42:31
make it happen awesome thank you and that's all for today's episode.
42:37
I want to thank the listeners for tuning in. Your support means everything.
42:42
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42:46
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42:50
Music.