Team LoveYourBrain Spotlight: Eliza Sampey
Meet Team LoveYourBrain Rider, Eliza Sampey (she/her)! Eliza is a pro rider for Revel Bikes and runs a physical therapy and adventure coaching company. She learned about LoveYourBrain through Revel, and used the LYB Yoga and Mindset Programs as her first resource when she sustained a TBI in 2020. LYB was a significant part of her healing journey, and she continues to integrate accessible mindfulness and yoga tools into her own work and life.
We sat down with Eliza, to learn more about her and how she is challenging the culture around brain injury within cycling!
This is my perspective as a person who has been an avid cyclist and mountain biker for 25 years, who experienced a brain injury two years ago and has navigated a return to mountain biking, cycling, and adventure in my own life. I’ve also developed this perspective through hearing from many others in the time since my injury who have also been in my position.
I think the culture around brain injury within cycling is starting to change for the better as there seems to be more awareness in general, which is good. But I do think there are still issues to be addressed and improvements to be made in this area.
It seems to me that a big part of the issue with TBI and the cycling culture lies in the injury that is most invisible, the mild TBI or concussion. This is more likely to be overlooked as “normal” with the hardcore adventure crowd. I don’t think most people in the cycling and adventure communities realize how much of a problem a “mild” traumatic brain injury has the potential to cause.
In my personal experience, “just a concussion” changed my life. But because I didn’t spend weeks in an ICU after my injury, and I “looked fine,” it was hard to get people to understand that I actually was not fine, and am not fine, even two years later. Behind the scenes, I am still working hard on learning how to adapt to my remaining impairments. But I look fine, and I am expected to behave as such.
The culture of adventure sports like mountain biking or self-supported bikepack racing, the niche of mountain biking in which I participate, is very hardcore – or at least it likes to appear that way. There’s a lot of emphasis placed on mind over matter, mind over body, the sufferfest mentality, and “no excuses.”
As a result of that, I lost several friends in the mountain biking community who didn’t understand and were not supportive of my new limitations due to the impacts of lingering post-concussion issues I was having (and still have) with insomnia, balance, memory loss, executive dysfunction, emotional dysregulation, and motor coordination.
Important side note: If you’re not familiar with motor coordination, it is the orchestrated movement of multiple body parts as required to accomplish intended actions. The brain orchestrates that movement, and this is something that can be impaired in TBI. If you’ve never experienced this, it can be next to impossible to understand, and it’s incredibly frustrating for someone dealing with it. For me, this manifested in the inability to prepare even simple meals, tie mountaineering knots, build my own mountain bikes, ready myself and all necessary gear for a bike ride, pack my bikes for bikepacking, or set up camp. All things I have done countless times over the years that became completely unavailable to me, and completely baffling to those who watched me go through this.
It is these lesser-known and less visible impacts of TBI, yes, even mild TBI, that I feel compelled to bring to light in order to help change the culture of cycling and mountain biking around brain injury.
This “hardcore” culture showed itself to me by people’s suggestions that my symptoms could actually be just because I am getting older (I was 38 when my concussion happened), because of my depression and anxiety (that didn’t exist before my concussion), telling me to just think positively and I will be fine (tried that, bad idea), or worst of all, the dreaded “But everyone…” statements. *facepalm*
These were interactions I came to expect. In addition, people in my life from the mountain bike community started to drift away when for so long my only answer to the question “you look great, are you better yet?” was “not really.” In light of these things, I stopped talking about my experience with TBI for a long time. But that doesn’t help change anything, and that’s why I’m here writing this piece now.
Eliza, how would you describe the culture around brain injury within cycling?
How are you challenging the culture around brain injury within cycling?
I am hopeful that the culture around brain injury within cycling will continue to change for the better as those of us who have experienced it share our stories of how it has impacted us. I know that people in our lives get sick of hearing about it, and I do think there is a balance to be found between sharing to promote awareness and understanding, and not dwelling on this one aspect of our lives and the impairments it’s caused. I’m personally fortunate to be able to renegotiate my relationship with mountain biking and adventure post-TBI, and while it doesn’t look the same as it did before, it’s still valuable to me. I want to share that part of my story as well.
I do not want the culture around TBI within cycling to do a pendulum swing from ignoring the impacts of TBI to assuming and asserting that everyone who experiences one can or should never be on a bike again. I do want people to be aware of the impacts that even a mild TBI can have on someone’s life, to respect the challenges and the limitations that it can cause, and to support their friends going through it if they feel capable of playing that role.
Eliza, how do we move forward and create meaningful change?
To that end, I have a few suggestions:
For those of you who have a friend who has experienced a TBI: Support looks different to every individual and to every relationship, so instead of assuming, I’d like to suggest the option of asking, “how can I support you?” If your friend with a TBI would like to return to the bike, you can be a support to that in helping them do it in a way that feels good and healthy to them and not pushing onto them what you think they should be doing or feeling. You may get your riding buddy back; it may just have to look different than it used to.
For those of us who want to return to riding bikes with our friends post-TBI: I think it’s helpful to attempt to have a conversation about it and how it might impact you, them, and your adventure together, if you feel comfortable with this and if you feel it’s necessary. I think it’s important for us to have discernment around who we share these things with, and sometimes for me, it isn’t necessary. I’m fortunate that I can now go on a simple day ride with friends and not have to explain anything. People don’t have to know that it takes me two hours to get ready for a four hour bike ride; I can struggle on my own before I show up. But for longer backcountry adventures, it’s a different story. It’s up to each of us to choose what is safe and necessary to share and to let be seen, and with whom.
For all of us: We must choose our companions wisely, know our own limits, and respect our own boundaries. It is true that we teach people how to treat us, and as such it’s important to treat our own brains and our own bodies with respect and compassion when we’re out there trying to get back to what we love in our own way, with who we are now, after a TBI or after any life-changing event. Only when we start with ourselves can we begin to change an entire culture.
We are so grateful to Eliza and all of the wonderful humans joining us for this year’s Ride for Resilience!