In Leogang last season I raced at the front from the gun and crossed the line in 7th - my first top 10 elite World Cup result in my seventh year of pursuing that elusive goal. When I knew during the race that I would finish in the top 10, the words running through my mind were “that’s enough, I can stop now”. There was a significance in the absence of curiosity for what was next and I think I started to say goodbye to XCO World Cup racing that day, despite not making the firm decision to close the chapter until almost a year later.

When I won the National XCO Championship against former World Champion Evie Richards in the month following my top 10, I understood resolutely that nothing in my XCO career would top this period of racing. I first beat Evie at the junior National Championships in 2014, and the only venue outside of the UK that I have been able to finish ahead of her is Leogang. I like that stat. It took me 11 years to beat her again on home soil, and it meant everything to me. She is a rider I have known from the beginning; she is pure world class and winning against her is my proudest achievement in my cycling career.

I recognised early on this year that it would be very difficult to carry these feelings into a new race season and to try to achieve even more than I had in 2025. I noticed a niggling discomfort during pre race interviews when I was asked how I felt about the upcoming WC season, as though my time for celebration had an expiry date and I was back to square one. As bystanders or observers, we can never truly understand what a result means to a sports person - perhaps it is easier to appreciate the meaning of winning a World Championship or an Olympic medal because these achievements are objectively impressive displays of elite level sport - and I would like to share why my only top 10 World Cup result and my National Title in 2025 mean so much more to me than winning a World Cup would now.

My career as a professional cyclist has been intertwined with a steady sprinkling of tragedy. There exists a level of adversity that’s inevitable in sport - illness and injury have the potential to destroy goals that have been pursued relentlessly for years. A snapped chain, a crash or a flat tyre in the first minutes of a target race can be heart breaking. But these are byproducts of the sport itself and we accept this disruption; injuries occur because our sport carries an element of risk, we are more prone to illness because our bodies exist in a permanent state of pushing the limits whilst traveling in public spaces, interacting with many different people, and mechanicals are a frustrating aspect of a sport that requires the use of complex machines.

Before I had even lined up at my first junior World Cup at the end of 2013, I was filled with an unstoppable desire to prove that I wouldn’t let adversity stop me from being the best mountain bike racer in the world. In February of that year I was hit by a car whilst out on my bike and suffered two spinal fractures, a broken collarbone, a concussion and a partially perforated lung. I was 16 years old. Six months later I finished 5th at my first junior World Cup. I reflect on this now because I believe that this chain of events set a precedent for how I would understand my relationship with success for the rest of my XCO career.

In 2018, a dear friend of mine died. I found out whilst alone in a hotel room at Val di Sole World Cup. Ben and I started traveling to races together with our Dads when we were kids. He represented my process of falling in love with bike racing and when he died I felt part of that love go with him. Three days later I finished 4th at the U23 World Cup, my best ever result. The only thing I remember about that race is warming up through tears and the black band I wore on my sleeve.

At the beginning of 2021 my sister walked out of my life without explanation, leaving a strict instruction for my family not to contact her. Some time in the same month, I lay in the foetal position on my bedroom floor in the most indescribable agonising abdominal pain that would soon be diagnosed as Diaphragmatic Endometriosis. A few months later, I finished 11th at Les Gets World Cup, a new career best.

I haven’t seen my sister for five and a half years and I now consider her estranged from my family.

In the three years following her disappearance I couldn’t confront the pain, and the only possible coping mechanism I knew was to keep marching forward with a fierce determination. I held on tightly to the hope that once again, this traumatic experience could be used as a tool for moving closer to my ultimate goal of winning because as long as I could counter my trauma with exceptional race results, I could pretend I was okay. But this didn’t happen - I tried, and tried, and tried again to find the resilience that I had been praised so much for since the beginning of my career. I felt broken, like I had lost my superpower.

Without this, racing no longer made sense to me and it was time to confront my pain and importantly, to begin the monumental challenge of untangling the coevolution of trauma and success that had developed throughout my career.

My ADHD diagnosis came in January 2024, and combined with counselling, I started to develop a healthy relationship with racing for the first time. I no longer placed racing at the nucleus of my existence and I was able to rediscover the simple joy of pushing hard, battling with friends and performing well consistently. In 2025, I learned to remove my self worth from race results and motivation for success was no longer rooted in ‘beating’ trauma.

At the end of 2024 I was dropped from my team unexpectedly and I had no clear pathway back to World Cup racing. I’d achieved no results of significance since 2021 and had more reasons to walk away than to stay. But if my career had taught me anything, it was that I could do hard things - more specifically, I was very likely to achieve something extraordinary when the odds were against me. And I did. I didn’t know it then, but I had one last match to burn on the fire of XCO World Cup racing and I left no stone unturned in what was to be my last fight to become the XCO racer I knew existed somewhere within me.

In January 2025 I wrote down my goals for the year: finish in the top 10 at Leogang World Cup and win the National Title. I achieved both of those things and so much more.

The problem was, I didn’t get the opportunity to properly explore Isla the happy, healthy bike racer for very long. One week before Leogang, an incident occurred and I would file a report for sexual assault against somebody I had both trusted and was financially reliant on.

Between 7th in Leogang and winning the National Title, I experienced some of the darkest days of my life, wondering how the meaning of a performance I had pursued relentlessly for so many years could be snatched from me in a heartbeat. I find it inconceivable that I was able to find the strength to deliver one of the best performances of my life at National Champs during those tragic circumstances. I hope that now, reader, you understand why that day means everything to me.

Part of me already knew that there would be no more comebacks for me after 2025. The only way in which I could continue racing was for it to feel easy, for it to be wholly a source of joy. There was no space for resilience in this world for me anymore.

Something I’m extremely proud of is that I went on to complete the most successful race season of my life. I was able to show up and deliver performances that reflected my ability over and over again whilst beginning a year long UCI investigation process against the individual who harmed me and receiving therapy to deal with my own recovery process. I will write about this another time.

A season like last year was a dream that I thought had passed me by. What I achieved feels like a reclamation of all of the potential that was stolen from me through death, illness and the hurt inflicted by others.

It has been incredibly hard to return to many of these race venues in 2026. I have been racing World Cups for fourteen years, and each location is saturated in memories, both joyful and tragic. When I see the bleacher-lined start straight in Nove Mesto, I feel the intense emotion of racing for 10th with legends of the sport Catharine Pendrel and Lea Davidson in 2019, but I also feel a deep pit in my stomach remembering the 2020 Olympics slip through my fingers as I suffered round in the 60s just after my sister left. If I glimpse the powerful Noce River flowing through Val di Sole, I smile at the memory of my partner waiting at the finish line for the first time at a World Cup to see me equal my career best, but my heart twists at the thought of losing Ben and I feel sick at the recollection that in this place one year ago, I had to lock myself in my room because I wasn’t safe.

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In 2025 I was able to make peace with many of these places that have been the settings for such pivotal moments in my life. My second spinal injury at Lenzerheide World Cup in 2015 was rectified last year with two perfect performances that both my parents and one of my best friends and mechanic Ansophie were there for. Sprinting for 12th with Sina Frei and Haley Batten at the World Championships in Crans Montana, equaling my 2nd best World Championship result, gave me closure with the biggest event on our annual calendar. When I returned to Leogang in 2026, I felt profoundly that I did not need any new memories in this place that had already given me the best days of my career.

Since the beginning of this year I have had a strong feeling that my quest in XCO World Cup racing is complete. It has taken so much from me. Last year I took it all back, and I will never let it go. Midway through the 2025 season I lost all my income and could not pay Ansophie. Together, we finished what we set out do to through nothing but love for our sport, for ourselves and a determination that our circumstances would not stop us from allowing me to see the race season of my life all the way through to the end. Thank you, Ans. Together, we are stronger.

My XCO career has taught me never to be greedy for success. My dream of being the best began in a hospital bed with a broken spine and life would hit me hard so many times, warning me not to want too much.

For over a decade I never wavered from the goal of being the best in the world, and although I recognise now that it would have been better for me to step away from that pursuit at times, it’s the reason I could make last year a reality. 2025 was a gift to myself.

Almost all of my best performances have been fuelled by trauma and for such a long time, I thought that these performances were just a glimpse of the athlete I could have been otherwise. I see it very differently now: it is likely that my trauma was the very thing that brought out the best in me between the tape.

I am worn down by this pursuit. I always thought the ultimate goal was to win, but I was wrong. I wanted to find peace.

Peace with the death of Ben.

Peace with my chronic health condition.

Peace with the disappearance of my sister.

And I wanted the opportunity to dictate the narrative of my own career. I know beyond a doubt that I have done all of these things. Through finding peace, I have also lost the desire that carried me through so many difficult times to racing success and I honestly don’t know if I would be able to achieve great things on the XCO circuit now that trauma is no longer the fuel driving me towards those goals.

I am yet to find peace with last year’s incident but I am working through it in a healthy way. I have been unable to bring my best performances to races this season, and in a way, I’m glad. I think this reflects my ability to process this difficult time properly. I have learned to confront adversity directly, and have lost the ability to channel trauma into success as a distraction mechanism. My shift in perspective has taught me that it is okay for sport to take a back seat when an athlete is dealing with something difficult. If I could turn back time, I would do things differently and take better care of myself.

At Albstadt World Cup in 2021, shortly after my sister disappeared, I was in the GB tent after the XCC. I was crying because I was quite honestly, terrible at the discipline and felt so far away from my dreams. I said to Simon Watts, the then team manager, “I just want to win one World Cup,” through tear stained cheeks and he replied “You will,” with so much sincerity and belief that those two words have had a bigger impact on my career than almost anything else since then and I have carried them with me in countless times of need. In the end, winning a World Cup wasn’t really what I wanted and I have a feeling Simon knew that I was searching for something much more important.

My journey with XCO World Cups has reached an ending more satisfying than I ever could have hoped for.

I will continue to race full time and have set myself some ambitious goals for the final few years of my cycling career, but I will never pursue success as a means to overcome trauma again.

Thank you to the people who have been there for me through both the joyful and helpless moments. Particularly, to the individuals who never left me to suffer alone, and to the ones who gave me permission to stop being resilient.

Thank you to my brand partners, who will continue working with me towards new start-lines.

Lastly, thank you to my Dad.

Love Isla x

I feel confident living beside my imagined future most of the time rather than in it. But I sometimes find myself wondering whether I will remain in this beautiful balanced mindset of embracing my last few years as a professional athlete with curiosity and drive whilst feeling excited for what awaits me at the start of my next journey.

Because sometimes, I hold my friend’s baby and that mindset wobbles. Last month I saw a pregnant woman at the airport and felt envious (she was wearing a very nice dress in my favourite shade of green). Sometimes I worry that my parents and my partner’s parents won’t get to enjoy their grandkids if we wait too long, and that’s something I definitely want to share with them. Sometimes the sacrifices I’m making for my sport feel big, and the absence of discussion around these topics feels even bigger.

But most days they don’t. Most days I wake up curious and motivated for the possibilities when I pin a number on, and most days I remember to be proud of how I’ve learned to love racing so much after a career I’ve suffered through and to a large extent, have not enjoyed (two years ago I was diagnosed with ADHD which was the source of this life changing shift).

I’m SO ready to reward myself with this healthy relationship I’ve cultivated towards bike racing, but I’ve realised that nurturing my life outside of sport at the same time as transforming my relationship with racing into something so positive, has introduced other discoveries that dare I say, might be as important or more so to me than elite sport.

I spent most of my career obsessed with racing. This was masked as motivation, commitment and ambition but it was primarily a distraction from the reality that I did not know myself outside of this sphere. Even though I’ve put a huge amount of conscious work into nurturing life away from racing over the last couple of years, I somehow feel surprised and a little disconcerted by the fact that this has resulted in me welcoming something else into my heart with as much interest as elite sport.

I will not continue to race professionally when I decide to have a family. To continue to pursue a sports career whilst raising a family only works in very specific circumstances: it requires a partner who is willing and able to put your career at the core of well, everything really. My partner already does that in so many ways and I like that our situation feels temporary.

Even without children in the picture, people frequently ask me why my partner isn’t present at races. Within the World Cup circus we have a tendency to forget that bike racing isn’t the centre of the universe for the majority of people on Planet Earth. I’ve been with my partner since the beginning of my career and I would consider him to be one of my greatest supporters, but that duty of care works both ways in a loving relationship. Scott has his own career goals that hold as much value to us as my own. He’s a nursery teacher (kindergarten, not plant babies) and in reality, his work is significantly more important than mine. But regardless, he isn’t at most of my races because he has a full time job and assigned holiday time (another aspect of the real world I think us athletes tend to disregard). For me to continue to race professionally whilst raising a family would require a total restructuring of our lifestyle and priorities, neither of which we want to change.

I will definitely pursue a second career, just not in elite sport. I’ve found it at times, impossibly challenging to do my job well whilst navigating real life. I don’t want to choose to make it even harder. Other jobs will inevitably challenge me too, but I’ll get to sleep in my own bed most nights. Being a professional athlete is being at work constantly, all the time. Even when you’re sleeping.

I’m absolutely in support of the progress the sports world has made in allowing the possibility for women to take time off to have a child and come back at the highest level of sport. Equally, I’m obviously a big fan of reversing traditional patriarchal family roles and seeing a man focus on supporting his female partner’s career. My partner is more of a ‘housewife’ than me and we only have a cat baby.

I think my discomfort lies in the fact that I feel like a bit of a cliché because for me, it’s pro sport or a family. I still view these pathways as incompatible (in the sense that I have absolutely zero desire to combine the two) and sometimes I feel like a bad feminist for having these thoughts. The conversation around female athletes and family has evolved and divided into two: the high performance athlete with the family, and the high performance athlete who doesn’t want a family. I’m not sure where my desired pathway fits into the current discussion.

Women who are physically able to and are motivated to return to professional sport are incredible, of course they are. But society tends to idolise these individuals and with that comes a sense of inadequacy for those who don’t want to do that or can’t achieve it. One of my close friends is pregnant and spent most of her first trimester lying on the bathroom floor whilst her social media algorithm flooded her with inspirational stories of women running marathons whilst pregnant. No surprises there, instagram just providing the service it was made for: making us feel shit about our bodies and lives so that we buy something that’s falsely promised to make it all better.

Another consideration is that many women (and surely, a high proportion of female endurance athletes) cannot conceive the minute they step away from professional sport. I’m lucky enough to have avoided severe issues with under-fuelling and RED-S ( although spent most of my U23 years struggling with disordered eating) but I have Endometriosis and already know that the process of conceiving a child has potentially unthinkable consequences for my body and mental health, if it is at all even possible.

Thirdly, caring for a child who has additional support needs would be unlikely to accommodate a return to high level sport. I just think we need to be careful not to assume that these stories are all rooted entirely in choice. Privilege plays it’s part, as it does in all other parts of life.

Most of the women in my life who have children have had a frankly horrendous time either through pregnancy or childbirth (or both) and aren’t less badass than the professional athletes who have given birth and returned to high level sport. All of these women are incredible.

There is a point at which my future family transitioned from being an abstract concept to a conscious desire that requires a well thought through plan. That transformation has happened to me whilst my back was turned, and it has introduced new feelings and questions.

I’m still a professional athlete and don’t want to retire yet. I haven’t finished exploring the possibilities of bike racing, but I do wonder how I can better manage the pull of Baby Brain when I see my friend’s toddler laugh. Every time somebody gets pregnant or gives birth on TV I start happy crying and it’s getting a little out of hand!

When I first got my cat I genuinely felt very satisfied parentally speaking for a year or so. Maybe I should just get another three cats?

An hour later a different doctor asked my thoughts on when professional athletes know that they’ve done enough and are satisfied with their achievements.

Both of these interactions, although very different, provoked me to ask myself the same question - “when is it enough?” And it’s a question that is quite central to me at the moment. I’m almost 30 and have been pursuing the pinnacle of elite sport for over a decade.

Continuing to compete professionally on the basis that I’m not sure what else I’d do doesn’t factor into my decision making anymore because I have very definite plans post retirement that I’m really looking forward to.

The truth is, I am satisfied with my achievements and my primary motivation for continuing to race is enjoyment. The 2025 season was such a beautiful collection of results and performances that I had pursued relentlessly for so long. It’s a year that I’m incredibly proud of, at the end of which I knew, it is enough. What I’ve done is enough for me.

I still have specific targets and goals, and a few pipe dreams in mind for the remainder of my career. There wouldn’t be any point in continuing if I didn’t, but beside those goals rests the blissful satisfaction of knowing that whenever I’m ready, I’ll leave the sport feeling completely satisfied, because I am already.

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So some days, my accomplishments in the sport feel like ‘enough’ because I recognise what it took from me to reach this point of contentedness in my relationship with performance and I’m filled with pride.

Other days, this journey feels like it’s enough for me because I’ve been on the receiving end of yet another sexist, belittling comment about my body, my hormones, or my health. Before I was diagnosed with diaphragmatic endometriosis in 2021, I was told by a male doctor, “the truth is, we can’t cure everybody’s tummy aches”. Had I not received alternative medical care, my organs would have knitted themselves together by now and I’d have had half of my right lung removed.

There’s a multi-faceted audacity in a sweeping statement such as what the doctor said to me this morning. It’s 2026 and the professional sports world is deep in the midst of navigating both trans rights and RED-S (Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport); two areas that somebody with medical expertise should be up to date on.

I’ve been seeing a psychologist since last summer because a man behaved inappropriately towards me and today I intended to ask the doctor if I could extend my block of sessions. I didn’t ask, because I suddenly felt that I had indirectly been informed that my problems are not that important.

One day, will there be a comment that tips me over the line? My capacity for my own and tolerance of others’ ignorance is dwindling. I know it exists in other work places - most work places - but part of my whole plan when I leave the bike industry is to make this my work, to be paid to change toxic culture instead of trying to do it for free.

A competitor once told me that she’d never experienced sexism in the bike industry. This is incorrect and blissful ignorance isn’t a thing here. The fact that she hadn’t noticed the systemic sexism that flows through the bike industry makes it worse. We are so institutionalised to the misogynistic culture of sport that we think these behaviours are normal, and as a result we exist in a space much closer to harm than we think. I speak from experience when I say that this is a dangerous place to inhabit and it’s not our faults that we live there.

Do I need to end every article on a positive note? Maybe it’s more impactful to leave it here. Today made me angry and tired, and tired of being angry.

Planting the seed at seven years old

I watched the TV series Roots when I was very young. It was made in 1977 and is based on Alex Haley’s historical novel which follows the life of Kunta Kinte, a Gambian Muslim who is captured and taken to North America during the Atlantic Slave Trade. It’s a dramatisation of true events, so I’d hesitate to call it fiction.

My parents exposed me to all kinds of cinematic horror from a young age. I’d seen Gladiator and Saving Private Ryan by the age of six and was introduced to Roots soon after. I was captivated by it, and remember the same feelings of great interest return when we covered the Atlantic Slave Trade in high school History. I read the book whilst we were studying it and had to stop because it was too overwhelming, especially for a thirteen year old who’d been exposed to very little of the real world.

The Slave Trade and racism. These were abstract concepts to me, a middle-class white girl growing up in rural Scotland and being educated at an expensive private school for musicians in Edinburgh. Despite the intensity with which I devoured the story of Kunta Kinte and the unusual focus that I brought to History class, eventually we moved onto a new example of power abuse, (although obviously none were ever represented as such), I read another book, and my privileged little life carried on.

A tragedy that kicked me into action

When George Floyd was murdered by a white police officer in 2020, those strong feelings of interest I’d first experienced more than a decade ago returned but this time had transitioned into a sense of injustice accompanied with a bigger urge - to truly understand, rather than be simply drawn in temporarily by a sensational news story. My instagram feed was flooded with black squares that aimed to represent solidarity and allyship towards Black Lives (and specifically the Black Lives Matter movement) and I felt an acute discomfort towards it. I was concerned that for many, it was a hollow gesture; virtue signalling for fear of seeming NOT to care. I guessed that most people would add their square for all to see, and then forget about it. I felt that a genuine ally needed to contribute more than a social media trend.

When I was a teenager I devoured the Noughts and Crosses young adult novel series by Melanie Blackman, another indication that this topic meant something to me. That seed that had been planted when I was a kid was occasionally visited but it needed patience. When George Floyd was murdered I was in my early twenties and able to view the world more critically. I was beginning to realise that this concept of racist inequality was not abstract to me or anybody else. It is one of the pillars on which modern society is built and is deeply relevant to us all. It is everybody’s business because it has a direct impact on how we are treated and the opportunities we are given.

During this time I was studying Human Biology at University. I signed up for a Sociology module as one of my electives and I fell in love with the subject. I wrote an essay on the moral panic that followed the 911 terrorist attack and quickly realised that my interest was not limited to racist police violence; I was developing a much broader passion for understanding all of the global power imbalances that collaborate to create the perfect storm that is our world today.

The shortest ever historical summary of anti-Black racism by white people

The murder of George Floyd by a white police officer is not an isolated incident but an example of modern day systemic anti-Black racism. Throughout history, as our tolerance of blatant forms of racism decrease, the racist treatment of Black people has morphed into increasingly more subtle and insidious forms that are designed to be framed as other problems, therefore making it easier to turn a blind eye to. Following the abolition of chattel slavery and the emancipation of Black slaves in British Colonies and America, the incarceration of free Black people increased drastically, and many prisoners were put to work as punishment for their crimes (the crime of being Black, you could say). Slave labour continued, but under the guise of prison labour. Around the same time, the Jim Crow Laws came into play in Southern US States: the legalisation of racial segregation, with the pretence that this separation was to protect Black people rather than the brutal truth that they were still far from being seen as equal to Whites in most Western countries. Terms and conditions applied, and still very much do.

Today, systemic racism continues to morph yet again into ever more subtle forms that cause serious harm. The over-policing of Black neighbourhoods, the severity of prison sentences handed to Black people in comparison to White people for equivalent crimes, disparities in education and employment opportunities, the ability to get onto the property ladder, access to healthcare, treatment by medical professionals - the list goes on.

Two worlds collide: meeting Iman Kagumba

Six months after George Floyd was killed, I met a woman who would shift my relationship with racism into a much more personal sphere by inviting me to be educated more fully; sharing her personal experiences with me, allowing me to ask difficult questions, say the wrong thing, and to have my views about privilege fiercely confronted for the first time. I’m sure I’ve said the wrong thing somewhere in this post, but I think imperfect conversation is better than scared silence.

Iman is a Black Muslim who grew up in a township in Mombasa, Kenya. We met because she sent me a fan mail and I thought she looked interesting so I responded. As an East African, Iman’s ancestors are more likely to have been enslaved during the Arab-Muslim Slave Trade and her relationship with racism has been enlightening for me. She’s me taught that racism also exists where there is an absence of white skin; one can be too Black, or not Black enough, in her experience. My education, which is hugely influenced by geographical relevance and the white majority voice (among other things I have no doubt), means my understanding beyond anti Black racism in the the West and South Africa, a place that equally fascinates and horrifies me, is still elementary. Racism is multi-faceted and there is still so much I haven’t learned. I haven’t even mentioned racism towards other groups under the BAME umbrella (Black, Asian, Ethnic Minority).

Iman has had two UK tourist visas denied on the basis of not meeting the necessary criteria. It is easy to wrap this up as another problem such as lack of assets, lack of income, etc but we must question why these are her problems. Racism is a key player in this rigged game. Her first application was weak - we were out of our depth and ignorant to the brutal reality of racial bias, but her second application had 123 supporting documents including a return flight, an invitation, a sponsor, and the paid involvement of an immigration lawyer. We were meticulous in the process and left no stone unturned. We later found out that UK Immigration have a minimal number of refusals to meet so they automatically refuse some without reading them and ‘find a reason’ later - Iman’s second refusal letter claimed that she had not met the financial criteria, which she had. They didn’t even look at her documents. It’s highly likely that Iman’s second Visa was thrown on the refusal pile based on her photo and her Arab name. It breaks my heart, but it breaks Iman’s more.

There is also an assumption that people like Iman have inherently worse lives than us in the West and want to escape this (the evidence Iman had to provide to prove she would return home from the UK was overwhelming). The greatest lesson I learned during my visit to Kenya was that there are many aspects of Iman’s culture that I envy deeply. Much of life there revolves around values of community and sharing that we in the West have lost through the egocentric pursuit of wealth and ownership. To assume that everything is better over here is extremely ignorant and yet another example of systemic racism.

All of the above events, totally separate from each other but undeniably connected, led me to discover a profound desire to educate myself properly in racism. I changed my degree to Sociology and Criminology and will begin my final year this autumn.

A beautiful project and a beautiful person find each other

At the time of writing, Iman is working at Tankwa Trek (a MTB stage race in South Africa) for the Pump For Peace race team, a non-profit association that provides opportunities for riders from underprivileged places to access cycling and competition. In the five and a half years we’ve known each other, Iman has faced endless obstacles that stand in the way of her and opportunity. We don’t know if or when she will finally get to visit my home country. She’ll hate the rain and we don’t clean our bums properly so she won’t want to stay for long and anyway, she’s got better things to do than deal with UK Immigration Control. For now, we are celebrating something amazing that we have worked so hard towards in the time we’ve known each other, and Iman, for her whole life.

Iman has so much to contribute to the world. She already gives so much in her local community in Mombasa, and in Tanzania where she has also lived, and she will make the world a better place wherever she is allowed to go. Meeting Iman was serendipitous; I’m not superstitious nor do I believe in fate, but when I reflect on those moments throughout my life where I felt drawn to the topics of racism, equity and power relations as a small child and then again as a young adult, it sometimes feels like Iman was destined to come into my life as the catalyst that connected me resolutely to what I am supposed to pursue and she truly has changed its course; I hope I can do the same for her.

I’m a bit cynical when it comes to new year, fresh starts and the temptation shoved in our faces by advertisements to create a better version of ourselves, to seize the opportunity to put the past behind us (and to ultimately spend money doing so).

I’ve learned through difficult experiences and the accompanying counselling that the ability to change perspective, organise emotions and move forward can not be discovered by the changing of the calendar year, fireworks or messages of goodwill to loved ones. It’s a bit too Cinderella and as far as Disney princesses go she’s super lame. Girl, you gotta process that step-mum trauma instead of running off with a sexy hunk prince.

Five years ago I became estranged from my eldest sister through no choice of my own and it took me more than three years to start processing it. As time moved on without me, others began to see it as something that had happened in my past, a singular event which surely, I should have moved on from by now. Maybe that’s why I became resistant to these kinds of celebrations, because of the power that we instil into January the 1st to wipe the slate clean for us every time, if only it was that easy.

Despite all this though, I have felt the desire over the last week to reflect on my own year and to understand all of its parts as best I can. The first half of 2025 was genuinely the happiest I’ve felt in my adult life. I’m sure I’m looking back with rose tinted spectacles but there was a clarity to my everyday that I’d never had before and a newfound curiosity for life. It’s deeply tied to discovering a sense of security within myself and it’s one of many things that I’m immensely proud of because it’s mostly (but not entirely) freed me of the need for public and online validation. To be able to nourish myself with real experiences that happen in my own little life instead of approval from strangers has been so liberating. I feel un-addicted to the online world. A friend of mine broke his wrist in October and as I’d been off my phone for a couple of days, I didn’t know until somebody else told me he’d had surgery; they just assumed I knew because it was posted online. It always feels like a little win when somebody tells me something and my response isn’t “oh yes, I saw that on Instagram”.

Something awful happened halfway through my summer as a result I learned about safeguarding, lost most of my income and had some of my core values challenged. I tried really hard to find a healthy strategy for confronting and processing it, without wanting it to be a defining aspect of the year. I was also racing World Cups and Championships through those months which was incredibly burdensome at times. I spent years trying to race professionally whilst dragging around the heavy weight of the loss of my sister and I’d promised myself racing would add joy, not pain, to my life anymore. I think because it took me such a long time to find some closure around my sister, those months early in 2025 when I was reaping the benefits of finally starting to move on felt so precious to me and I was terrified that they had gone in the blink of an eye. It felt quite tragic and for a time, I struggled to see past the incident and I grieved for what was before.

But racing continued to bring me joy instead of pain, and during this last week I truthfully feel that this is the dominant story of my 2025. Man, I loved racing my bike SO much in 2025! The process of working through what happened is by no means over - it has fundamentally changed a part of me - but it exists in a much smaller form than the beauty I’ve found in my work, and more importantly, the security I feel in who I am within and outside of that. I never looked towards New Year with the hope of putting the incident behind me by employing the concept of a new beginning, but there is a certain comfort in knowing that it happened last year. It adds a level of distance that can symbolise the fact that time heals if it’s accompanied by support, love and patience.*

And in the end, I really do hope it’s a happy new year for me, my loved ones and all you of who read my Shorties.

Love Scrooge x

*Throughout my adult life I have relied heavily on professional psychological support to help me deal with difficult experiences and I am a huge advocate for this.

Yesterday I spoke at a disability workshop for school kids as part of the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, which was on Wednesday. I felt very privileged to be able to talk about my disability* confidently. Sometimes it can feel uncomfortable to talk about neurodivergence as a disability, or at all, because of stigma. During the workshop, I had an epiphany; I realised that I need and absolutely WANT to do this for wee Isla, and all the other wains blindingly flailing about without an anchor. I have this incredible opportunity to be a lightbulb moment for some little kid out there.

I never had a lightbulb as a kid, I just stumbled around in the dark. My lightbulb came from a ted talk about ADHD that I watched before I was diagnosed but during a time when my awareness of that anchor and identity was gradually coming into focus. The woman doing the talk shared an anecdote about how she’d bought a 35L box at some shop and then lost it on the way to her car. That same week I’d bought two tins of rice pudding (and nothing else) at the supermarket and lost them both somewhere between checkout and the car.

I bawled my eyes out listening to that woman’s story. Obviously you can’t diagnose somebody with a disability because they lost their shopping, that’s not what I’m saying. Hearing her story was the culmination of everything I had already learned about ADHD and how it reflects my experience of the world. It was the the arrival point, the moment that I really understood.

Analogies seem to be the easiest way to translate these feelings into words. Lightbulbs and ships. I’ve always identified my experience of life with a ship. The ship was sinking before I was diagnosed and I only had a tiny leaky bucket to bail the water out. After I was diagnosed it was like somebody tipped the boat upside down, emptied all the water out then sent me on my way again. Same old ship, thriving not surviving. Sometimes a little bit of water still gets in but that’s okay, I fixed my bucket.

Maybe I was somebody’s lightbulb moment yesterday. My epiphany was that maybe I can gift somebody else an epiphany. How sublime is that?

Happy Friday x

*People are disabled by society, not by their bodies or minds.

I guess my purpose of writing these words is to hopefully help somebody else who, like me before, may have undiagnosed ADHD, which has dominated the way they live in the world. But it’s also to try to shift the discussion around ADHD from something trivial and/or othering, to more acknowledgement that it’s just another type of brain; it is not worse, it is not broken. People with ADHD thrive in as many environments as they struggle, just as neurotypical people do. The asterisk here is that the modern world has generally been built by neurotypical brains, for neurotypical brains, and as a consequence neurodivergent brains have to look a lot harder, with a lot less help, for those conditions in which they can flourish.

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It’s true that since my diagnosis, it feels like other neurodivergents are popping up left, right and centre. But that’s not because people are ‘jumping on the bandwagon’, as they say. It’s a phenomenon much more in-depth and interesting than that (might write about it next time) and I strive for a world in which ADHD is appreciated fully in all of it’s quirks, benefits and downfalls.

I’m sad about the name. There are all kinds of problems with it. Firstly, we do not have a deficit of attention. This is a huge over simplification of how we are wired; we find it very hard to focus on one thing at a time, particularly if that thing isn’t filling up our dopamine stores (ADHD brains have less dopamine than neurotypical brains and/or dysregulated dopamine function and therefore seek stimulation more often to compensate). However, when engaged in a task that we really enjoy, our dopamine stores are flooded and we will get that shit DONE. That’s what is meant by hyper focus in neurodivergent lingo. Why is that different to being focused in the ‘normal’ sense? We forget to eat, sleep, go to the bathroom - we essentially forget that the world is still turning around us. That damn dopamine feels toooooo good.

Secondly, I just don’t view it as a disorder. Having ADHD makes us better at lots of things than neurotypical people! When I was diagnosed it took me some time to decide which terms I felt most comfortable with and I settled with describing ADHD as a disability. Another asterisk is that I believe people are disabled by society, not by their bodies. Just like those with more visible disabilities could move around the world with more ease if society was structured appropriately, so could neurodivergents find their way more happily and equally.

The idea that people are claiming the ADHD ‘label’ to appear cool or different makes me scream with rage. If somebody could step inside my shoes and live my experience of the world they’d soon realise how uncool it feels to have ADHD (or in my case, to have it and not know). People don’t WANT to have ADHD, there’s absolutely nothing great about it when you live in a society that doesn’t take it seriously. I’d need to write a whole other post about this but some key descriptions of growing up come to mind: social isolation, academic exclusion, shame, anxiety and depression, all of which began at a very young age and were viewed in isolation from one another as opposed to a collection of co-morbidities. There was a lot of barking up the wrong tree for many years. Sounds SUPER cool hey?! Jump onboard!

I think I exist in a beautiful and exciting time for neurodivergents. Whether you think it’s because these ‘labels’ are a fad (they’re not), or you engage with this topic on a more scientific and considerate level, it’s true that there are more people living in the world with ADHD or autism diagnoses than ever before. There aren’t more people with these brains, just more people who have been able to get diagnosed. This is a good thing. This is saving lives.

My position underneath the neurodivergent umbrella is as a diagnosed ADHDer and an undiagnosed autistic woman. Reframing my identity and emotions through the lens of ADHD was a life changing process to go through. Especially being diagnosed in my late twenties; in the beginning it felt like discovering endless boxes from my past that had to be unpacked and resorted - boxes of emotions, experiences, and interactions that had shaped my identity and many of which needed broken apart and rebuilt. A recurring theme of this process was realising that shame was the central feeling with which I lived in the world and had been since I was a young child. Being asked how a diagnosis has helped me isn’t a question I can answer in a few words, but the ability to remould how I view myself into a person that I can nurture and love is always a good summary. I could not learn to love myself before discovering who I was at a neurological level. That’s why ADHD is not just forgetting to close the fridge or constantly turning up late for appointments. It runs much deeper.

Discovering that I’m probably autistic has been a much smaller and less emotionally bound process so far. Research into ADHD often comes hand in hand with learning about autism and so by the time I realised that I was likely autistic too, I felt equipped with the knowledge to settle into that more easily because I had already been through the monumental shift from wondering why my brain didn’t work properly to realising it just worked differently. Maybe that would change if I were diagnosed. Maybe that’s partly why I don’t feel the urge to seek a diagnosis, because there will be more boxes to unpack and I’m avoiding that work for now. But I’m generally happy with where I’m at on this journey. My psychologist, who specialises in autism (by coincidence, not design), talks to me as an undiagnosed autistic woman and I appreciate that. I can’t afford the assessment anyway.

My reasons for seeking an ADHD diagnosis were as follows:

• I got fed up telling people I ‘probably have ADHD’. I’ve found that others are more likely to be accommodating and understanding if you have a medical diagnosis (most of the time) but without it, you don’t have credibility, unless you’re fortunate to be around people who are willing to ask questions rather than delve into their extremely limited and inaccurate understanding to make judgement.
  

• For the first time in my life I had found who I was. When I started researching ADHD I would often have tears streaming down my face as I read my own experience of the world being told back to me by others. It’s difficult to find the words to explain the depth of those emotions, but I wanted to be sure that what I felt was true.
  

• I was offered an assessment via Sports Scotland that I didn’t have to fund myself. The only other route to diagnosis is on the NHS waiting list which can be years long. I will never take access to private healthcare for granted; it’s saved my life more than once and I’m saddened for those who aren’t able to access emotional wellbeing support, management strategies and medication for ADHD.

• To have the option to access medication, which I did (with great reluctance initially) and continue to do so. ADHD medication doesn’t mean that the work around figuring out how I can thrive in the world stops, it just helps to make my day to day less exhausting, more productive and happier.

It’s taken me too long to kickstart this topic on here. I’ve resisted because the misunderstanding of neurodivergence and the way in which it is viewed by society can be at best overwhelming and at worst, incredibly alienating.

To finish, here’s a quick fire list of things I have learned about ADHD:

• You cannot get ADHD from eating too much sugar. If you already have ADHD, high sugar consumption can take the hyperactivity (if you have hyperactive ADHD - not everybody does), up a notch.

• Girls and women with ADHD are much more likely to internalise their suffering, and traits can often go unnoticed early on. That’s why it’s much easier to be diagnosed as a child if you’re male rather than female. Throwing chairs around the classroom is not everybody’s coping strategy (and not every boy’s, for that matter).

• People with ADHD DO NOT want extra time in exams. We would prefer to be given 10 minutes instead of 1 hour, and we’d probably get an A. We work well when we’re in a rush.

• People with ADHD are really fun to be around. We are creative, we have the best stories (usually we are both the hero and the victim in these), and we are very empathic beings.

• It’s okay to laugh at us sometimes (we do do silly things), but never make us feel less smart because of our ADHD. Somebody told me that I didn’t have ADHD because I was intelligent - that angered me, the two are not negatively correlated. Also wtf is intelligence anyway?

• We operate in a topsy turvy fashion (‘fashion’ in the literal and strategic sense - please see future post on dopamine dressing). The fun stuff first and the boring stuff later when the brain has a fresh supply of dopamine to burn through. Never ask an ADHDer to “get this out of the way so you can enjoy the rest of your day”. Doesn’t compute.

• The ADHD brain is busy, beautiful and bold. It is often bored but it is never boring. It’s a ‘label’ I’m proud to possess.

Byeeeeee x

I want to write about how much I love my cat, especially her smell when she’s been curled up sleeping for a while. Relatable but not original; that’s alright sometimes isn’t it?

I want to write about how I’m probably autistic even though I haven’t had a conversation with my parents about it yet.

I want to write about how f***ing angry I am that my best friend, a Kenyan Muslim woman of colour, has had two UK visas refused on the basis of NOTHING because they didn’t even look at her documents, they just saw her dark skin and her Arab name and put her application in the rejection pile. “We’ll find a reason later”.

I want to write about how on my best days ADHD makes me feel like the most genius of geniuses on earth and on my worst days I feel so exhausted trying to advocate for my intelligence.

I want to write about how racing is my least favourite part of racing.

I want to write about how much I love being home. Not just in my house, but in my hills too. And how much I love to look at the pear tree on my road every time I drive home after a trip.

I want to write about how this year the pear tree didn’t bear fruit, and now I’m confused because I’m actually unsure which tree it is now or if the tree is there anymore or was there at all. Or did I imagine the whole thing?

I want to write about how my sister became estranged from me four and a half years ago and I still don’t really know why but I’m kind of okay with it now.

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I want to write about how I cook my porridge and why it’s the best way and calms me for the day ahead and that without my copper pan and wooden spoon my days are inherently worse.

I want to write about how there are more black people in prison than white people but it’s not because black people commit more crimes.

I want to write about why the death penalty sucks and that people do bad things probably for a reason but yes they should still be punished but also maybe there should be more emphasis on rehabilitation and understanding the why so that we can help to prevent other people doing bad things.

I want to write about how being cool on social media is so hard and I have no energy to try.

I want to write about how I got dropped from my team last year and in January I bought a bike because I didn’t have a sponsor and now I’m national champ and I’m ranked 14th in the world but I don’t make any money and that all makes me laugh and cry at the same time.

I want to write about things meaningful to me that I think are meaningful to other people too.

I want to write because it’s so much easier than speaking and I think it connects us in really profound and significant ways. And it makes me feel better.

I want to write about everything and more but I don’t know where to start.

I’m starting here.

A pro cyclist’s dichotomy

I am equally fascinated and exasperated by the nature of my job as a professional cyclist. It is a precarious role that seems to carry a multitude of unspoken and unquestioned characteristics that can be challenging to navigate and at times contradict themselves.

In the sports sphere, there is a constant blurring of boundaries. The personal and the professional exist alongside each other and often encroach on each others’ space in a way that would be totally inappropriate in most other jobs. We are expected to maintain a high level of professionalism at all times, to show up and deliver performances that meet the standard we expect of ourselves and the expectations of those we are representing, and to present ourselves appropriately and respectfully. But at the same time, we are living with our colleagues for a significant portion of the year. We share apartments, bathrooms and three meals a day with each other. Especially during the race season, which lasts for up to eight months of the year, we exist in this grey space between our working and our personal lives. On a basic level, that’s exhausting. If we actually stop to think about it properly, it’s really problematic. The normalisation of certain interactions can blind us in unhelpful ways, and creates uncertainty or ignorance around what is and isn’t okay.

Bringing the topic of mental health to work

What happens when what little separation exists between those two things becomes impossible to maintain? Over the last four years I suffered hugely in my personal life. For some time, I was able to sustain a level of race performance that was ‘good enough’ to continue to be supported by my sponsors and my national federation. Over time though, I stopped being able to deliver those performances and nearly lost my job and my direction. This happened because of events in my personal life that impacted my mental health significantly.

A central part of being a high level cyclist is having the ability to suffer. And I love that; it’s one of my favourite aspects of what I do. I’ve learned though that the body cannot differentiate between types of suffering, it just knows that it is experiencing something hard. I think that the brain understands suffering much better, but it cannot communicate this to the body well. By the end of 2023, I’d stopped being able to suffer on the race track because the level of suffering I was experiencing in my personal life left me no room for the type of suffering needed in my work. My body could not do both, despite my best efforts to make it happen for a long time.

So again, the personal and professional meet each other in messy circumstances of which there is no rulebook. I have often thought about how I would have navigated this in a regular job, or more importantly, how I would have been supported based on laws, protocols and written contracts. I think I would have been signed off with stress for a period of time. In sport, I never felt that was an option for me - most athletes don’t have those kind of legal rights or the employment stability to even speak up about these things.

I have particularly struggled with the fact that this merging of personal and professional life happens in a very public way. Racing without the capacity to do so makes you feel very exposed; countless times I lined up and fell short in front of sponsors, fans, teams, and family. During this time I chose not to share the details of my personal suffering, but I often wished that everybody knew because it might make me feel a little more authentic, and as a result, allow myself to be happy with my best despite difficult circumstances, knowing that people had context. It’s very easy to tell somebody to care less about what people think. It’s hard to follow through with that when your perceived failure is so public. And this was my dichotomy - to continue to keep my personal life personal, because it’s actually nobody’s business, or to remove the barrier between the two entirely in the hope that people will stop creating their own narratives.

When athletes do not share their stories, other people create their own versions and this can be extremely harmful. Not being honest about why our performances are suffering can feel like the best coping mechanism in the short term, but if it’s left to fester, it can become messy and delay recovery. But when we do speak up, we are accused of over sharing or for bringing our personal lives into professional spaces. There’s a sense of hypocrisy in this given that we are afforded very little separation between these two spaces in most other ways. In my own experience, it also almost always falls on the athlete to navigate, and sometimes challenge, this.

I think it’s a little short sighted to assume that an athlete’s performance in a race is directly related to bike racing itself. This perspective implies that athletes have less emotional capacity than other human beings, or are generally just lucky enough to all have stable, predictable and happy lives outside of racing.

Normalising fragility instead of praising strength

The word that I hear most used to describe me is resilient. It makes me want to wriggle out of my skin. I have been resilient - hugely so - but in the end I don’t think it has served me. When I was hit by a car at the age of 16 and received multiple serious injuries, I developed a level of resilience that rewarded me with an incredible strength through future adversity. In 2018, one of my closest friends passed away suddenly, and three days later I achieved a career best in the u23 category. In 2021, two months after an immediate family member suddenly disappeared from my life and I was diagnosed with Diaphragmatic Endometriosis, I rode to my best ever elite World Cup result. I did these things partly because I was resilient, but I carried on presenting myself that way mostly because that’s what people told me I was. That word had become so central to my character that I no longer felt that it was a choice not to be.

Eventually my resilience ran out and I couldn’t associate myself with that trait; it was destroying my career and my mental health. It took a very long time for me to understand that my ability to be resilient was doing more damage than good. Being resilient meant normalising my suffering, marching on despite the darkness that was descending on me, and never allowing myself an excuse not to show up. In the end, I just couldn’t show up anymore. I had to let myself crack and then shatter before I could begin to move forward and heal.

Almost one year ago, I began to talk. Emotions that I had buried away, that I felt I wasn’t allowed to feel, finally surfaced and it was the beginning of some of the most valuable lessons I’ve received. I’m very privileged to have access to private health care and to have had two psychologists that I feel able to share my emotions with.

Racing well is a bi-product of my happiness, it is not the source

People think that my ability to show up in my professional life in 2025 is a direct consequence of leaving the Ghost Factory Team. They are wrong. My ability to perform this year started with that team and I love them for that. With them, I slowly started to open up, step back and allow myself to understand what I needed to be a happier, healthier human being. Parting ways with Ghost was a business decision, and in the end, one that I’m grateful for. I needed space to heal, to understand what bike racing means to me, and to find happiness away from the race track.

When I was 7th at Leogang World Cup last month, I understood why that day was so significant to me in a much bigger sense than achieving a career best. It represented the work I have done over the last year to finally, after so long, be given a fair shot and to show the cycling world what I’m capable of. It was a symbol of healing. That evening, I persuaded my dad to join us for a drink - as the only person in the world who truly knows my whole story, he was ready for his bed after seeing two career bests in 48 hours - because I told him that I might never do a result that good again. That fact is true, and I’m perfectly okay with it, as long as I get a fair shot at it many more times. That’s all I want.

I’ve learned that standing on the start-line feeling 100% prepared is such a privilege and it’s not a feeling I’ve had too often. I’m a little distrustful of life; so far it has felt like an almost constant stream of curveballs and it can often feel unfair. The last two weeks I’ve found myself again in the difficult and all too familiar position of dealing with some critical challenges that are sitting in the murky waters between personal and professional. I’m finding it difficult to be back in a situation that I feel unable to speak about openly but I’m trying my best to handle it in a way that will allow me to continue being the happy and confident person I’ve become.

In 2025, I’ve enjoyed bike racing more than I ever have. It also definitely means less to me than it ever has. That’s a really good feeling. Whenever I do a great performance, of which there has been so many so far this season, I think to myself;

“this is a bi-product of my happiness, it is not the source”

I hope that there will be many more race days that allow me to meet my potential whilst reminding me that it’s not necessary for my wellbeing anymore. If any of my fellow bike racers read this, remind yourself that winning is often as simple as being able to love your job, prepare well, and head to the start-line ready to race. When life is settled enough that you are able to focus on those things, think yourself very lucky.

* I am a strong advocate for openness around mental health. The public nature of my work and the direct impact that my mental health has on my ability to do my job well means that I cannot talk about one without the other. My hope is that my own openness is helpful to somebody else who reads this and feels themself represented in some way.

I hope today is a good day,

Isla x

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Part 2.

It’s very difficult to condense four years of such a unique friendship into a series of blogposts and even more so to squeeze my trip to see Iman into a single post.

When I visited East Africa, I had known Iman for four years and I’d been educating my little brain on all sorts for a similar time so I felt quite open minded about what the trip would hold for me. My bike racing has taken me to South Africa four times, so I have visited the continent previously but with different intentions. South Africa is also wildly different to Kenya and Tanzania, but the key difference was that I was going to see Iman’s life for the first time, to share a little bit of it with her but to mostly to be a fly on the wall of her world. That excited me much more than a bike race could.

Iman waited at the wrong terminal for me in Nairobi airport so we spent twenty minutes trying to locate each other. It’s hard to articulate the feeling of anticipation to see a person that you’ve never met but who equally feels like one of the most important people in your life.

Writing this now, I’m reflecting on the feelings we both must have been carrying with us leading up to this adventure. Our friendship is such a complex web of navigating our own histories and positions in the world.

Iman currently lives in Dar es Salaam in Tanzania and we would make our way there via Mombasa, the place I was most interested in: a city steeped in Iman’s childhood memories and where her mother still lives. On my first night, Iman laughed at me for bringing a mosquito net (I was nicknamed Princess from then on). We stayed in a friend’s apartment and Iman had given me the bedroom. She seemed happy to sleep on the floor mattress next door; I soon learned that she can sleep anywhere, and at any time. And annoyingly, not at the times other people like to sleep. Apparently midnight is a great time of night to wash the dishes.

I’m laughing thinking back to how she wanted to give me my own room and space that first night. We ended up sleeping in the same bed after hours of talking until it was almost time for the sun to come up. I think about the ease with which our friendship continued in the same way it always had despite this immense change in our situation. Being physically in the same space was huge, but the only new challenge it presented was that the mystique we had maintained for each other would gradually erode.

That probably happened on day four, when I told her I hadn’t pooped since I’d arrived because I was scared to ask for toilet paper. In East Africa they mostly use squat toilets and Arabian showers, and they think toilet paper is gross. I loved learning that!

I thought I could write one post about the trip, and I’ve only written about the first five hours . Oops! That okay though, I’ve wanted to document our journey for so long and the process is very cathartic. If a handful of people enjoy following along, that’s very cool. If not, I’m creating a space where Iman and I can return to if we want to reminisce about these early days of friendship, or when we feel overwhelmed by what it all means to both of us.

I’ll do my best to squeeze my four days in Mombasa into the next post.

Until then,

Isla x

I’ve wanted to tell this story in its entirety for so long. Right now it’s a jumble of photos, screenshots, messages, ideas, scripts and emotions. I thought it could be very satisfying to share some of the jumble as a series of short posts here. This is part 1.

On October the 15th 2020 I received an email. A 22 year old girl from Kenya had watched me on Redbull TV race to 5th place at the MTB XCO World Championships in Leogang, Austria and wanted to connect. Her name was Iman Kagumba.

Iman Kagumba has changed my life.

In that email, Iman wanted to set up a call to ask me for some advice, as a promising young Kenyan cyclist who was struggling with nutrition. A tenuous link already existed between us as we were both supported by Hunt Bike Wheels. After a thread of fairly demanding interactions (on her part hehe), we arranged a video call. I don’t really remember much about that call other than that I was as curious about her as she was about me.

What followed was the beginning of a friendship that would take both of us to physical and emotional spaces we didn’t know existed. Initially I think the hours of Whatsapp conversations stemmed from an element of exoticism with which we viewed each other that was learned from our upbringings.

I was white, she was black.

I was Western European, she was East African,

I had no religious beliefs, she was Muslim.

I was wealthy, she was not.

But.

We both loved cycling. And I wanted to know why.

Our conversations didn’t take long to centre around all of these topics. There was a clarity from the beginning that there were so many things we didn’t understand about each other, about our lives, our circumstances and our pain. But there was also an openness and honesty present that allowed us to speak from our hearts, to make mistakes, and to teach each other about our worlds without judgement.

There are one thousand reasons why Iman and I should never have met.

There are one thousand barriers standing in the path of our friendship.

There are one thousand ways in which we cannot relate to one another.

I recently learned the phrase transnational, which means ‘extending or operating across national boundaries’. Iman and I have a transnational friendship, which was formed and sustained exclusively through digital technology for 1,474 days before we met for the first time, on October 28th 2024.

Race.

Wealth.

Religion.

Geography.

It means everything and nothing.

Iman and I are not so different.

Happy Tuesday,

Isla x

I think I have more interesting things to say than I used to. My little life has expanded its horizons in the last few years. I guess this first post is a little ‘let’s catch up with Isla’ piece because frankly, nobody wants me to dive straight into systemic racism from the get go. But as a warning, it’s that kind of thing that I’m here for.

It turns out I can’t even find my old blog on the internet. But I imagine that I was primarily writing about trying to figure out what on earth was going on most of the time, wrapped up as some different specific incident because I was an unknowingly neurodivergent who didn’t get the ‘doing life well’ script. Or I got the wrong script and I didn’t speak the language so spent 27 years guessing. I got good at guessing, but I got very tired. So tired.

Last year I was finally given the correct script and it’s been the best 12 months of my life. I love knowing why I’m mental. It’s great.

So, some housekeeping that will let you decide if my marginally filtered internal monologue is of interest to you. A word of caution; this blog will reflect a typical ADHD brain, just like my Spotify playlists. There is no consistency in theme, genre or mood. There may be several of these things present at once. That’s how my script works.

I’m a professional mountain biker from Scotland.

I’m 28 years old.

I care deeply about race inequality and prison systems.

I’m an undergrad student in Sociology and Criminology.

I was diagnosed with ADHD combined type when I was 27.

I love my cat more than you could know. She’s probably my special interest subject.

I’m not sure if I’m autistic.

Colours. The more colours, the happier I feel.

I have Diaphragmatic Endometriosis. It doesn’t affect my quality of life too much.

I really like who I am.

Wow I’m excited to finally do this! Next time… systemic racism?

I hope today is a good day,

Isla x

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