Rachel Neylan

The bike doesn't care what you've been through. It just moves forward, and so do you.

But here's the non romantic caveat. It doesn't do it for you. You still have to put the effort into the pedals.

After a career spent racing at the highest level, I thought I knew everything the bike had to teach me. Olympics. World Championships. Years of suffering and joy in equal measure.

Twelve months ago I discovered there is a whole world of riding I had never touched. Different terrain, different pace, different reasons to be out there.

Less podium, more presence.

The bike gave me my career. Then it gave me something quieter and actually just as good. Strength. Resilience. Ridiculous fun. Respect for nature that you can only earn by riding through it. And a global community who gets it without you having to explain a word.

Grateful for all of it. The racing years and the discovery years. Turns out the next chapter rides pretty well too.

Happy World Bicycle Day to every cyclist out there, whatever chapter you're in 📖

Signed and sealed 🎓

Master of Science in Coaching Psychology, . The world's first postgraduate program in the field, and the longest running.

The third pillar is in place.

Sport gave me the lived experience of performance under pressure. Applied science undergraduate & former Physiotherapy career gave me the body and the physiology beneath it.

Now, Coaching Psychology gives me the science of how people think, decide, act, recover and sustain.

Three lenses on one question. How do people perform at their best while making it sustainable for the human being at the centre?

In sport, in leadership, in healthcare, anywhere the stakes are high, performance that costs everything is not performance, it is extraction. My work ahead is in building the alternative.

To my professors, supervisors, peers and the colleagues who challenged me along the way, thank you.

Not a new start, just a gentle evolution.