Return Of The Racer

After falling out of love with cycling two years ago, fastman Rob Sharland is back on the bike and hunting down his former racing prowess

- Jim Cotton

Almost overnight, Rob Sharland went from being a cat-one racer and holder of one of the most prestigious KOMs in southern England — the mighty Richmond Park lap segment — to barely riding his bike at all. Now, after 15 months away from the sport, Sharland has rediscovered his love of two wheels, is training again and returning to racing. What went wrong, and what got him back on track?

In October 2017, a number of significant things changed forSharland practically all at once. The advertising director, then 28 and living in Kingston-upon- Thames, found himself at the end of a relationship, changing jobs and moving home all in a breathtakingly short space of time. The bombardment of life stresses came at a time when, under normal circumstances, he would have been starting his winter training — the season of cold, often lonely base miles.

“With everything happening, and after six seasons of hard racing, I started to question if I could be bothered to do all the training to be just that little bit quicker,” recalls Sharland. “I missed a few training sessions here and there, and slowly that guilt mechanism I used to have for getting me out on the bike stopped kicking in. One thing led to another and I just stopped completely.”