Mattie Dodd journal #14: racing, rest and recovery

Second-year under-23 Mattie Dodd rides for the UCI Continental Tirol-KTM development team, and is supported by the Rayner Foundation. In his latest post, Mattie reflects on the highs and lows of racing, battling illness, and the mental struggle of navigating uncertainty in a season disrupted by setbacks.

On the very, very small chance there are any avid superfans of my journals, apologies for the bigger gap that usual between entries. The past month or two has been pretty sparse racing-wise, instead being taken up by the far less pleasant preoccupation of illness. I’ll explain more on that later.

Just after my previous entry, National Road Champs week had taken place up in Yorkshire (well, up for me at least). The time trial had been in the back of my mind for the month or so before. Taking in two laps of a pretty lumpy circuit on quintessentially British sandpaper-esque roads in and around Catterick Garrison, it was a course that really tested mastery of the art of pacing. Looking at the splits, it’s pretty clear a lot of people made pretty big errors in that area.

That’s the beauty of time trialling: the result isn’t determined by chance, the best rider always wins on the day

I had a clear plan heading in, and felt I didn’t make any major errors in the execution of that. I was pleased with the ride I’d put in, so the result would be whatever that ride was good enough to get me on the day. Fifth was a result I could take satisfaction from. Nevertheless, it’s always hard not to look for those tiny errors that, if corrected, could have closed the eight seconds to the podium over a forty-two minute effort. I was beaten fair and square by better riders on the day though, against that I’ve got no quarrels. That’s the beauty of time trialling: the result isn’t determined by chance, the best rider always wins on the day.

The lack of team support also meant the Chuckle Brothers got reunited. National Champs provides the yearly opportunity for my Dad and me to be back at races together again. I become DS, mechanic, DJ, chef and rider all rolled into one. While he takes on the role of bottler hander upper and moral supporter, also aiding in the hunt for the mysterious lost 6mm Allen key that seems to disappear into the depths of the back seat of the car at any opportunity. Ineos Grenadiers, eat your heart out.

No crit for me meant time to explore the area around Redcar for a few days, before all eyes turned to the road race. The day before the race is when things started to go a little wrong, albeit unknowingly at the time. I’ll cut a long(ish) story short about what happened next, the blow by blow details might mean fairly few people are awake by the end. Essentially, I ended up racing the road race in the early stages of a virus, my assumption being our old friend COVID given the amount going around at the time. I’d felt a little odd the day before and during the race itself, but not enough to suspect something was drastically wrong in the moment. The race itself was nothing to write home about, with a few too many mistakes on my end putting me on the back foot for the bulk of the day. That virus left me with a fever and a splitting headache for the next few days, but nothing more extreme than that.

Epstein-Barr itself never actually leaves your system, but instead just becomes dormant

When I was eight or nine, I had glandular fever, and subsequently Epstein-Barr virus twice in two years – which I’m told is quite the achievement, albeit not a good one. Epstein-Barr itself never actually leaves your system, but instead just becomes dormant (apparently 90+% of the population have it in some form in their system). It can, however, reactivate when the body has a major stressor, such as a virus like COVID…

So that’s been my last seven or eight (I’ve lost the exact count) weeks in a nutshell. Frustrating is an understatement, and I’ve had good days and slightly less good days on that front. For the first few weeks, I didn’t really know what exactly the problem was. So at least I’ve got a bit more certainty with that now, the lack of which had been something I’d found quite difficult early on.

In any high level sport, I think it’s often very easy to fall into a self-centred, internally-focused way of living. In many ways, there’s an element of that necessary to be successful – you need to be thinking all the time about how the actions you take impact athletic performance. While I’ve been encouraged to, and do, try to broaden my horizons and have other interests and projects outside of cycling, at the core of it, cycling is still the most important thing in my life at the moment. I acknowledge that I’m lucky to be in that position, as well as the fact that it’s unlikely to always be the case. As I get older, I’d imagine other things start to hold just as much, if not more importance to me, family being an obvious one that springs to mind. Though at this stage, riding bikes is the reason I wake up each day, and quite honestly, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

When the three days on, one day off cycle is broken without an obvious return to normality in sight, it becomes quite easy to fall into a bit of a state of limbo

Add in to the equation that, for a long time, cycling has been my release, and the last month or two hasn’t been much fun. When the three days on, one day off cycle is broken without an obvious return to normality in sight, it becomes quite easy to fall into a bit of a state of limbo. I’m well aware that my last few weeks has been relatively minor in comparison to the aftermath of major crashes that seem to be an occupational hazard in this sport. That said, this has still thrown a major spanner in the works as far as this second part of the season is concerned and has affected the my last few weeks pretty severely.

I’m starting to feel a little more normal each week, the expectations of what I can expect from my body on the bike has reduced massively. The advice of “listen to your body” slowly having seeped in over the past few weeks. The idea that it was possible to be tired after riding for two hours didn’t line up at all with what has come to be normal, so the temptation of “just pushing through to the other side” was constantly something I had to suppress.

The temptation of “just pushing through to the other side” was constantly something I had to suppress

What else I can get out of this season is yet to be seen. I’m realistic that by now I won’t have time to get back up the my best shape, but I’d at least like to race once more again this year. Even if for nothing less than to have a bit of a closure from a mental perspective. It would be nice to bring the curtain down on the year knowing it’s my last race of the season. Anyway, I’ll see what happens with all of that when I’m feeling myself again.

It’s worth saying that the team has been really understanding throughout this whole time, despite the fact that COVID itself has hit plenty of our riders with very poor timing. The pressure to get back racing has definitely been internal, with them giving me the far more objective advice of thinking about the long-term as opposed to racing when I could do myself more damage.

Apologies for the slightly more negative post than usual, I thought I may as well say it how it is. It hasn’t been the best few weeks, but I’m on the up and it’s an unfortunate part of the sport with the territory. As naff as it may sound, I’m just taking it day by day, and looking forward to being able to train at will soon.