Cycle of Life

I was 28-years-old when I competed in my first bike race. It was one of the first times in my life where I felt strong, capable, and confident. A few days later I was out for a ride when a driver ran a stop sign and hit me.

I will never forget realizing that the driver was not going to stop. I received the full impact of the SUV, flew through the air, and landed head-first on the pavement. Airlifted to a trauma hospital, there was one course of action in my mind: be strong and fight.

I embraced the fight, but the trauma I experienced during that accident haunted me for years. I put pressure on myself to be strong in everything I did, as if my life still depended on it. Along with multiple facial/jaw/dental surgeries (nine years later, I’m currently recovering from yet another one), I was also battling a brain injury.

As I got back into cycling, people saw me as an athlete, a girl who had started riding, recovered from a near-fatal accident, and seemed to have overcome the challenges related to the misfortune. But I didn’t even feel like myself anymore—I was anxious and frustrated all the time, triggered by seemingly everything, I couldn’t think straight; I had to write notes just so I could remember what I was supposed to do next, and I was embarrassed to tell anyone how I was feeling.

I was terrified that I would never return to normal.

Meanwhile, I kept racing.

As a kid, I never dreamt of being an elite athlete. I didn’t grow up playing sports. I didn’t even realize that competitive cycling was a sport. Yet here I was, a few years after my accident and I was a two-time UCI GranFondo World Champion, Canadian Masters National Time Trial Champion and 70.3 Ironman world qualifier. I loved to push my body to the absolute max, to continually test this newfound strength I realized I had.

When I wasn’t training or racing, I just wanted to be by myself. I didn’t want anyone to see how much I was struggling. My racing success didn’t match how I was feeling inside. When not travelling for races, I was based in Arizona. On rest days I’d be in Sedona, often sitting next to Oak Creek. Sitting near the calm pools, it didn’t take long for the rising trout to catch my eye.

Seeing the trout reminded me of being a five-year-old girl, playing with my sisters, using a bucket to catch brook trout in a creek near our childhood home in New Brunswick. When I was successful with my bucket technique, I would build the fish a house out of rocks from the creek, dump them in, and watch them (seemingly) enjoy the new home I had provided for them. As a kid, the creek gave me a safe space to be myself. The activity taught me perseverance, while moments spent staring at the trout opened my eyes to the beauty found in nature. Thinking back on those times as a little girl put a smile on my face. I wanted those childlike feelings of joy back—I wanted to try and catch those Oak Creek fish.

I continued racing full-time at the professional level, but my lifestyle of traveling the world for bike races now included packing fly fishing gear. Racing brought me to incredible destinations around the world. When my race schedule permitted, I would spend a couple days exploring local fly fishing holes.

Fly fishing gave me a reset. Where some athletes lay in compression boots to help drain the buildup of lactic acid in their legs, I would put on my waders and allow the current of a river to do the same. For me, cycling and fly fishing had perfectly-contrasting cadences. The slower-paced rhythm of fly fishing balanced out the high RPMs of professional racing. I felt like I finally had things figured out. After years of recovering from injuries and receiving professional help for the trauma I experienced after my accident, life now felt like it was manageable.

Then in 2017, I flew to France to compete in my final races of the season. My plan was to return home afterward and spend my off-season on my home river, casting bombers to Atlantic Salmon before returning to Arizona. My first race went as planned, resulting in me winning my second World Championship title. Then, during my final race of the season, I was descending a mountain and came around a sharp left-hand turn to see a vehicle coming toward me on a narrow, single-lane road.

The thing I had feared most in life was about to happen again.

After I collided with the car, as I drifted in and out of consciousness, one terrifying thought kept haunting me: that I might fall asleep, only to never wake up again. I lay in that ditch for an hour and 30 minutes before an ambulance finally picked me up and drove me to a hospital that was more than two hours away.

I spent eight days in the hospital, alone, until I could fly back to Canada. I was in complete disbelief that I had been struck again. Not only would my broken bones prevent me from getting back on my bike for a few months, my injuries would also stop me from spending my off-season fly fishing. Defeat was becoming an all-too familiar feeling. Fortunately, I had experience overcoming adversity.

My off-season of fly fishing did not go as planned that year, and instead of throwing bombers to Atlantic Salmon, my casting arm rested in a sling as I recovered from broken bones. I returned to racing six months later, but my desire to chase fish started to exceed my desire to chase finish lines. I made a choice to temporarily step back from racing to explore more of what was going on below the surface—both with fishing and with myself. For the first time in five years I got on a plane to travel without a bike in tow. The only gear I packed was for fly fishing.

When I was first approached with the opportunity to have a documentary made about my story, my immediate response was no. I didn’t think my story was worth sharing, and I also couldn’t imagine allowing others to see below the surface and glimpse the truth of who I really was. But much like how catching trout in Arizona opened my eyes and gave me perspective, I began to believe my story could do the same for others.

For years I hid my struggles. All I cared about was people seeing me as someone who was strong. Today, my definition of strength has expanded. Strength doesn’t only show up in athletics. Strength is when we embrace who we are. Strength is knowing when it’s OK to let go of our past. Strength is admitting we’re vulnerable.

Fly fishing has taught me to stay curious about what’s below the surface—to take a step back and see things from a greater perspective. As a little girl, those brook trout were among my first teachers of the value of perseverance, and today, fish all over the world provide lessons about being present, embracing the conditions I’m faced with and surrendering to the unknowns. There will be thousands of casts that will leave us empty handed, but every so often a cast comes back successful, showing us the worth in staying the course, even when things get difficult. My challenge to you is to keep making the next cast, even when the ones before came up empty. You never know how close you are to a breakthrough.

Emily Rodger

Former elite athlete, avid fly fisher, and certified coach at Emily Rodger Coaching Inc., Emily was raised in New Brunswick, Canada along with her three sisters. After working as a dental hygienist, she decided to pursue her passion for triathlon and cycling. In her full first year of bike racing, she competed in 21 races, which included 17 podiums, 14 first place finishes, a National masters title, and a World Masters title in Time Trial. Emily was involved in two very serious cycling crashes where she was struck by vehicles, resulting in multiple broken bones, a brain injury, and extensive soft tissue damage. These life-altering events made her a stronger, more resilient, more grounded, and a more grateful athlete/person.