The truth is, this dream I have, to finish the RATN, didn’t begin as a dream at all.
Back when I worked in the ICU, my life revolved around late shifts, night shifts, and sugar-fueled attempts to stay awake. My fitness crumbled. I was overweight, unmotivated, and out of shape. I had a few short-lived flings with our treadmill, but night shifts always wore me down. I just couldn’t make it stick.
One afternoon at lunch, I was venting about how shift work made it impossible to get to the gym regularly. One of my bosses looked at me and asked, “Why don’t you just bike to work? Use your commute as a workout.”
I laughed out loud. A commute by bike would total 42 kilometers a day. I thought he’d completely lost it. That kind of distance felt ridiculous. Even my commutes in the Netherlands had never topped 15 kilometers.
He told me he used to run home after a night shift to stay awake and stay in shape. Half a marathon. After a night shift. Insane. I told him, flat out, I could never do any of that. And he asked, “How do you know?”
The truth was, I didn’t. And the question stuck.
Curiosity is my greatest weakness. It gnawed at me for two months before I decided to try it, just once, to get the ridiculous idea out of my head. On the 4th of December 2019, I borrowed a bike for 10 francs, planned a route on AllTrails (because I had no idea how to get to Basel), and brought my eTrex.
It took me more than an hour to ride 18 kilometers. The sky was clear and the sun was out, but it was cold. I stopped constantly to pull out the eTrex and check where to go. But I did it. And I loved it. I really, really loved it. The sunshine, discovering new roads, the sense of doing something good for my health. I noticed I was in a better mood, and I had more energy, not less.
That’s when I decided to get a bike of my own and try commuting once a week. My bike arrived February 14, 2020, just as the pandemic hit. ICU work changed fast. I started commuting more often, partly to avoid public transport, partly needing the release. Within a few months, I was cycling every day.
And then one day, on the way home, curiosity struck again. If I was already doing 42 kilometers a day, could I do 50? I laughed at myself, fulling knowing I was doomed, that question had taken root. I planned a 50k ride, stringing together train stations in case I chickened out. But I didn’t. 50k came and went, followed by 60k, 70k, 80k. I still remember the moment my eTrex flipped from 99.9 to 100k. That number hit different, it felt surreal.
It was around this time that curiosity led me to look up what the world record for cycling was, and I stumbled into the world of ultracycling. I didn’t believe it at first. I thought they must have mistyped something. The distances, the pace, the sheer endurance, it felt superhuman. I became a dot-watcher, following riders as they crossed countries, continents, impossible distances. I couldn’t stop watching. I simply couldn’t believe it. Who were these people? How did they achieve such superhuman endurance?
And then curiosity struck again…. Would I be able to?
That journey came with its own set of problems. Years of neglect left a toll. My first 150k ended in tears from stabbing shoulder pain. The first 200k? A sharp ache in my right upper abdomen made it hard to breathe. The bleeding saddle sores during our early ultra attempts. But I never saw those things as reasons to stop. They were puzzles to solve. I could always quit, but staying, figuring it out? That’s where the juice is.
Over time, cycling became a part of me, just as I became a part of it. And slowly, quietly, I started to think that maybe – just maybe – my dream of riding the RATN wasn’t just a dream. It might actually become a reality.
Then, this past February, I had a serious health scare. The specialists cleared me: I was healthy, good to go. But something inside me shifted. February passed, then March, then April. I barely touched my bike. I didn’t trust my body. I didn’t see myself doing RATN anymore. I felt restless, sad, like I’d lost something.
When I did ride, I was scared. I rode slow. Hyper-aware of every sensation. Every ache became a question mark. The 42k commute felt impossible.
Then, at the end of April, my coworker Max walked into the room and asked if I wanted to join his Bike to Work team. My mouth said yes before my brain could catch up. No more excuses. I was in 🫣
The challenge was what made me choose the bike instead of the car on May 1st.
I had a patient the day before, a man who’d amputated part of his finger in a construction accident. The dressing was unfamiliar to me. I asked my boss, who suggested to come back the next day to do the change with a coworker who had more experience. The patient didn’t speak German well. I speak his language. He was anxious. I offered to come in on my day off to support him, translate where needed and learn to do these dressings myself.
That evening, I realized: I’d be going to work on the first day of the challenge. Not for a full shift, but still. I could technically take the car or go by train. But that felt like cheating. So I (reluctantly) decided that on May 1st, I would take the bike.
The weather was perfect. Sitting at the breakfast table, I looked out the window and felt something I hadn’t in a long time: the urge to ride. Not to train. Not to prove anything. Just to go and enjoy life as it passes by when you’re on a bicycle.
I quickly slapped together something akin to a route on my eTrex and headed out the door. So unsure was I about myself that I even marked multiple POIs on my GPS (train stations, fallback options) just in case I needed to cut it short and catch a ride home. I didn’t even realize I forgot to bring food with me until I rode into work with a grumbling stomach, realizing it was a national holiday and all shops would be closed 🤦🏻♀️
By the end of the day, I had ridden 106 kilometers. And I felt something else I hadn’t in months:
Myself.
But the days after, something else crept in. I logged my ride and saw my kilometers stack up, far above what the average participant was doing. Instead of pride, I felt shame. It felt like I had broken some unspoken rule, like I was taking up too much space in a place meant for balance and encouragement.
I started worrying that I had cheesed the system. That I shouldn’t have counted that ride. That people would think I was manipulating the challenge, or maybe even cheating when they saw the distances I was logging. It felt like being a semi-pro football player stepping into a little league match (no offence intended). I had been training for years. Wasn’t this unfair to others?
But here’s the thing: I did what I had been doing for the past few years. With or without that challenge, I would have gone in to see that patient, and with or without that challenge, I would have commuted by bike and taken the opportunity to squeeze in some saddle time. Those crazy cycling distances, they’re a part of me. If anything, I’m grateful, this challenge has given me an opportunity to get in touch with myself again.
And now I find myself at an impasse. Do I go back to training quietly on my days off, logging only the bare minimum required for the challenge? Or do I embrace this new opportunity, and satisfy the curiosity bubbling up again: how much training can I do before a shift and still function properly?
I don’t know yet. I don’t know what the correct answer is here. I think it’s one of those things where different people would choose different paths, and maybe that’s okay. For today however, there’s nothing to decide. It’s my day off and there’s some adulting to do.