Steve and I are slurping spoonfuls of chicken soup in the quiet hilltop town of Laraos, Peru. It’s been a demanding few days through the rugged, barren mountain landscapes of the Andes. I’ve caught a bit of a cold, haven’t taken a rest day since the start, and halfway up a 40-kilometre climb, I can feel the fatigue setting in. It’s barely 1 p.m. when an idea strikes me. It’s simple yet almost radical.

I turn to Steve and say, “Hey, what if we just got a little guesthouse here and took the rest of the day to relax and explore the village?”

He looks up and replies, “I’m up for that. It’s up to us, after all.”

After years of competing in ultra-distance races, the idea of stopping early still feels like cheating, as if anything short of a full-gas effort is something to feel guilty about. But this wasn’t a race. This was an adventure of our own making, and the detours, the pauses, the chance encounters along the way had become the best part.

This year has marked a shift in my relationship with cycling—part of a broader shift in life. After more than a decade as a bicycle courier and years of freelancing, adventuring, and racing full-time, I signed my first full-time job contract that doesn’t have anything to do with bikes.

I’ve had to remind myself countless times this year that most cyclists do have full-time jobs—fitting rides around work, family, and everything else. I’ve been amazed thinking about how they manage it, after so many years when riding every day was simply my routine. My time in the saddle is shorter now, but it feels more special.

The bigger change I’ve been working on is one of simplification.

A few years ago, I realized my life had become quite complicated—living in Mexico, racing around the world, juggling invoices from odd jobs, paying taxes in Denmark, family in Scotland. Keeping everything afloat required constant management. At some point, it hit me: all this complexity was voluntary. I was the one weaving all these strings together, and I could untangle them if I wanted to. It wasn’t that I wasn’t good at living with this kind of complexity; it was realizing I didn’t have to.

Spoiler alert: simplifying isn’t passive. When you’re used to saying yes to everything, to piling on “more” because it feels like motion, learning to choose “less” takes real work. Having said all that, when I showed my calendar of plans for the year to my friend Matias at Omnium, he said, “You’re really going to do all that? It seems like a lot.”

And for most people, he’d be right. But for me, it felt like the right balance of time away and time at home, each trip chosen carefully. This year’s plan was to ride and race in seven countries across four continents: Mexico, the United States, Spain, Sweden, Peru, Indonesia, and Italy.

I’m lucky to have generous annual leave compared to most, but still far less than I was used to. So, I’ve had to make the most of it, and be far more selective about how I spend it.

Photo by Nils Laengner

Another shift: slowly stepping back from ultra racing. I’ve learned so much about myself and the world through these races, but lately, they’ve started to feel more punishing than joyful. I’ve always said that in ultra, the best motivation is a strong why. But after achieving so much in the sport, my why has faded. I’ve learned what I’m capable of and really pushed my comfort limits. I know how to do hard things. So I started asking, “Why does everything have to be so hard?”

Curiosity about a location, such as, “I think (insert country) sounds so beautiful,” doesn’t always cut it when you’re shivering through a sleepless night on the bike. When things get tough, that kind of motivation can run dry on you.

I’ve written and spoken a lot about the “ultra mindset” of persistence and purpose. But this year, my rehearsed answers have felt less convincing. I’ve leaned heavily on one expression in particular: It can’t rain forever. You keep going, and the storm will pass. Just push through.

One afternoon this summer, I shared it with a visiting friend. He looked at me curiously and said, “You know, it’s not always go or give up. You can also pause, take shelter, let the worst of it pass, look after yourself, and move forward when the time is right.”

It kind of floored me. The adage I’d leaned on for years—the one that had kept me stubbornly pushing through when I maybe shouldn’t have—cracked in an instant.

For most of us, this is truly the mindset for the long term, in life and in cycling, to get the most out of both. It’s important to always be calculating risk, but we should also be calculating the cost and reward of our enjoyment. It’s not just okay to slow down and scale back; it can often be the better choice. Stubbornly plugging away and adding on more and more just because we can doesn’t make it the best decision for our experience in the end.

Amid all my plans for the year, one thought kept resurfacing, “What if you went somewhere epic for the first time, completely on your own terms?” No stopwatch, no pressure. Just curiosity. Cycling used to be only about fun—about discovery. Maybe it’s time to rediscover that side.

That feeling of discovery doesn’t need to come from the most extreme of circumstances. Part of my journey of simplification has been to learn to become better at feeling that sense of discovery in the more everyday. A fresh carpet of autumn leaves, a break in the clouds, an idea for a shortcut that does or doesn’t work out.

When most cyclists spend their day-to-day lives off the bike, the time we give ourselves in the saddle—be it a Sunday spin through the forest, a short weekend overnighter, or our grand adventure once a year—should feel like a gift, a break, a taste of the freedom beyond our routine. And that’s exactly what this year has felt like: refreshing, celebratory, and new, even in my 12th year of big bike adventures.

No trip this year showed me this more clearly than cycling across the Andes in Peru. It was an ambitious route with plenty of challenging riding, but the pressure was off. My focus had shifted entirely from distance and daily mileage to simply being in the place.

The result was one of the most enriching adventures I’ve ever had, helped in no small part by the epic scale of the mountains that framed every day. I realized early on that my experience in ultra racing—riding through wild, remote landscapes—had quietly prepared me for this and helped me relax in these otherwise extreme environments. Having the volume of the ticking clock in your head turned all the way down and taking time to stop and look around felt like that gift I wanted to give myself.

I’ll admit I’ve never been the most disciplined rider. I’ve always preferred to surf the wave of chaos rather than plan every detail to perfection. So, when the inevitable delays cropped up in Peru—a long lunch, a late lunch, no lunch, a stubborn mechanical, an unexpected hike-a-bike section—there was no stress, no sense of lost time.

I’m still someone who believes in possibility, and I love that I still live a life where anything might appear around the next bend, and that I’m confident enough to follow where it leads. For that reason, I’d never say my racing days are over. But after a dozen years of adventure on two wheels, I’ve marveled this year at how cycling continues to evolve alongside me—how it keeps teaching me new things about the world, and about myself.

For me, the bicycle has always been the best tool I have for expanding my horizons. And it still is.

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