What a rush of happiness that was! From 26 July to 17 August 2024, I was on my own personal road trip from Berlin to Toulouse. I wanted to find out: Can I cope with a major physical challenge? Am I still ready for adventure? Am I flexible enough to deal with the unexpected? At my side for parts of the journey: my travel companions Flo and Cat. The most important object I relied on: my gravel bike – a wonderfully robust, yet relatively lightweight bicycle that faithfully completed the 2000-kilometre journey with me.
If you set yourself an ambitious goal, you usually get a lot of good, or at least well-intentioned, advice. It was the same with me. Most people, after indicating that I must be a little crazy when they heard about my travel plans, gave me tips – lots of tips. Some of them were good. But from yellow high-visibility waistcoats to camping cookers, there were quite a few things that I discarded. And I realised that it’s not so easy to distance yourself from advice – after all, who knows beforehand whether you may regret not having listened to advice? I also noticed that it takes a lot of courage to say “no” if you are confronted by opinionated advice givers. Weighing up sense and nonsense again and again is a lifelong exercise that is also fundamental in the workplace. If you are open to the opinions of others and can clearly categorise them as appropriate or inappropriate according to your own value system, then you have a great personal strength – one which is otherwise referred to as self-confidence.
Persevering
Speaking of strength: one of my strengths is perseverance. I’ve always been sporty and can rely on my body. At the same time, I am mindful and well prepared, always testing my limits. This is when mental strength comes into play. It is essential to recognise your own strengths and to attach importance to them because they offer you a great many opportunities to build on. To recognise that “these are my strengths, this is where I am resilient, this is where I can take on more” is a milestone on the road to strengthening self-esteem.
That the cycling tour didn’t take me 2,000 kilometres through Germany and France with a permanent smile on my face and in happy-go-lucky mode is also a fact and an important experience of this journey – an experience I had already made in competitions, by the way. When faced with an extreme challenge, there are inevitably moments when you question yourself. Drenched by the rain, exhausted, and having lost my way tens of kilometres ago, I asked myself more than once wether I hadn’t taken on too much. And even if you don’t want to admit it in such a situation: these are moments when you can discover your own strength and build on it. Once you’ ve gained experience and transplanted it into the mindset with a ribbon around: when a bad patch comes, pause for a moment – take a breath, clear your head, and open yourself up to the unknown. Assess the situation, assess yourself, re-evaluate your goal and then consciously do the extra mile: this how a crisis can sometimes turn into pure enjoyment of life – not always, maybe, but certainly when you are in France on a bicycle.
