Coexisting as a Writer and Indoor Cycling Coach

I wrote my first “book” at the age of eight. Years later I decided I wanted to write novels for a living as I was sitting on a beach in The Bahamas, asking my mum on the phone, “Do you really think I could make a career out of this?” and her reply simply being, “Of course. Other people have done it, why not you?”

During my Creative Writing Master’s in 2017, I threw myself into what I thought constituted the writer’s lifestyle: going to coffee shops to find inspiration as I poured my heart out to endless Word documents. I experimented with Life Writing, I started developing my fiction characters, and I even posted my work on a website I had at the time. I knew that I would publish a book one day, I just had to find my footing first.

Fast forward to 2021: I was training to become an indoor cycling coach, but I was not your typical fitness instructor. I certainly did not look the part with my UK size 12-14 body, nor did I have the confidence to belong in a world where you were judged for everything you did, ate, wore. My passion (and slight obsession) overruled this adversity though; I had always loved indoor cycling and found it to be an escape from reality, almost identical to the elation I got from writing. It was a place where I could clear my head from whatever I was feeling, a moment when I could draw motivation from the dark, candlelit room.

When I started teaching, I knew I wanted to recreate this soulful atmosphere - that had saved me so many times - in my own classes. I told myself that if I helped at least one person, it would all be worth it. All the self-doubt, the body confidence issues, the fears of not being good enough, they suddenly seemed so irrelevant against this moral obligation to my fledgling community.

I realised quite quickly that I was good at talking. Not just instructing the class on what to do but giving a motivational speech during one of the songs, called the “soulful” song. I could talk naturally, taking what I was feeling that day and turning it into a life lesson. I talked, I instructed, I grew my community around me over the next three years, and everything was great as I transformed into the person I had always wanted to be and lived in the centre of the world I had only previously admired from afar. Until one day the writer inside me started screaming to be let out.

I do not know when exactly I silenced her, but somewhere along the way I had stopped writing. Stopped identifying as a writer even. I was proud to be 100% cycling instructor, to finally belong in the exclusive world of fitness, except that some small part of me yearned to dream again, to disappear inside fictional realms, to create something with my mind instead of my body. For a while I battled between my two personalities, trying to decide which one I wanted to be. I could not ignore the pull of being a writer. That was far from a job, or a passion even, it was my life purpose. But if I turned away from the fitness industry now, everything I had worked for over the past few years to build my new life would have been for nothing.

It took me far too long to realise that I cannot be one without the other. I would not be the confident, positive, motivational person I am today without indoor cycling. And I would not be the soulful, considerate, dedicated person I am without writing. On the bike, Iam fuelled to do better by the dream of seeing my first novel published. And when I write each new chapter of that novel, I find inspiration from the dark, candlelit cycling room – the same way I did all those years ago.

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