A Crash That Changed My Life

Sometimes the biggest misery in your life starts with something that, at the time, doesn’t seem like a big deal at all.

I crashed my bike. It wasn’t even a hard crash. Nothing that made me think: this is going to change my life.

After the crash, I mostly felt like I had hit a hunger knock. I wasn’t quite sharp, I felt a little strange, but I didn’t think much of it. I was an athlete. So what do you do? You keep going.

For two weeks, I kept training.

During those nights, I had already been feeling sick a few times. But I pushed those thoughts aside too. Don’t overthink it. Just keep going. Finish the training, recover and get back on the bike the next day.

Until, two weeks later, we had a cycling test.

During that test, my heart rate was ridiculously high. Something clearly wasn’t right.

That was the moment I finally started thinking back to the crash, to how I had felt afterwards and to all the signs I had ignored.

Then came the realization:

I had suffered a severe concussion.

And that was when the real misery began.

A concussion is incredibly difficult for people to understand if they have never experienced one themselves. From the outside, you often look completely normal. You can walk, talk and even smile. So people think: You’re okay, right? Just build things up again and get back to normal.

But it doesn’t work like that.

Every day, I had a constant ache in my neck. Pressure in my head. Headaches. Problems with my eyes. Extreme fatigue. No energy and often no motivation for anything.

And at the same time, there were people around me who wanted me to start building up my training again. My coach, my team manager, people within the sport.

I understand why. Sport is about moving forward. Getting stronger. Coming back. Continuing.

But my body simply wouldn’t allow it.

Every hard training session didn’t mean one step forward.

It meant three steps backwards.

And every time, the misery became worse.

I tried so many things. I wanted