I hurt my back the other day.
I'm 46, about to turn 47, and it happened the way these things always happen — no crash, no big moment, just one wrong movement and suddenly I couldn't get on the bike. The timing was almost funny, because we had a family vacation coming up, and my first thought wasn't "how do I fix this fast so I don't lose fitness." My first thought was, well, if it had to happen, at least it happened now. I could stop worrying about training and just be present for the trip.
So I took five days completely off the bike. No riding. Nothing. I let my back heal the way it needed to, and I spent that time with my family and some friends instead.
Here's what I didn't expect: when I got back on the bike, I felt better.
Not "back to normal." Better.
There was a physical piece and a mental piece, and I think both matter more than most of us want to admit.
Physically, I noticed a little bit of spring in my legs that I hadn't felt in a while — call it half a percent. I want to be clear about something here: I wasn't overtrained. I didn't have a mountain of fatigue built up. There was no red flag before this happened. I had just been training day on top of day, week on top of week, month on top of month, long enough that I'd forgotten what it felt like to not be carrying some low level of accumulated load. You don't notice you've got something extra until it's gone, and then you don't notice it's gone until you get it back.
Mentally, the break did something different. It gave me five days to disconnect and remind myself that I am not a bicycle rider. That's not what defines me. I got to separate from the identity a little bit, and by the end of it, I was actually excited to get back on the bike — not just going through the motions, but genuinely looking forward to it. That excitement and joy had been there all along, quietly buried under the routine. I just hadn't noticed it was buried until I dug it back out.
I've seen this pattern play out over and over, in myself and in the athletes I coach: you don't lose fitness as fast as you think you do.
Three days off. Five days off. Seven, even ten. It does not do the damage your brain is telling you it's doing. And yet so many of us — myself included — treat any extended break like it's off the table entirely. "There's no way I'm doing that" is the default response, driven purely by fear of losing ground.
Here's the part that should make you rethink that fear: I've brought athletes back from a full week off the bike — no riding at all — straight into an intensity session or even a fitness test. And more than once, they've crushed it. Not survived it. Crushed it. Then they look at me confused, like, how is that possible coming off a week of nothing?
It's possible because of exactly what I just described. The body wasn't broken down by the rest — it was recovering from load it didn't even know it was carrying. The legs come back with that little bit of spring. The mind comes back with the appetite it had lost somewhere in the grind of consistency.
I'm not telling you to force an injury or manufacture a crisis to justify taking time off. I'm telling you to actually look at your calendar and ask: where does a break fit?
Maybe it's a family vacation you can plan around. Maybe it's a work trip where the bike just doesn't make sense to bring. Whatever the occasion, talk it through with your family, look at your season, and find the window. You don't need an injury to give yourself permission — you just need to trust that the fitness will still be there when you get back, because it will be.
The one thing I'll ask in return: don't take a break from learning. Keep showing up for the content, keep tuning in, keep growing as an athlete even in the weeks you're not training. Rest the legs. Don't rest the mind.
— Mayito
