Ketil Wendelbo Aanensen

Ketil Wendelbo Aanensen

My name is Ketil, and I’m closing in on 43 years of age. I’ve always used my bike as a means of transportation, and started bike commuting 9 years ago, but it wasn’t really until 2016 that I started identifying as a cyclist. Having never been anything like an athlete, I guess I adjusted my life around 2014/2015, and became more and more into cycling. I increased my volume substantially the next 3-4 years, with 10.000 km in 2017, 17.000 km in 2018, 20.000 km in 2019 and being on track for 25.000 km in 2020. These years also had me at a full time job (changing jobs 3 times), moving 3 times, and being a single dad to my two kids, now aged 7 and 10, half the time; and finishing my master’s degree on the side.

As is probably evident from the above I tend to dedicate myself fully to the activities I engage in. I commit myself, and I guess I've been handed a generous portion of stubbornness which has made me able to get myself through some rough patches, and juggling many roles and obligations at the same time. At the same time I see clearly that I have used my all-in tendencies to distract myself from dark feelings. I am a social worker by education, and have spent the majority of my working years in social services and I've also worked in a psychiatric ward, meeting and talking to people dealing with depression, suicide survivors, people that ended up succeeding in committing suicide, anorexics, patients and clients with psychosis, and all numbers of serious and milder mental health issues and diseases. With that in mind, I guess many would think I should have seen the signs in my own mental well-being, but as it turns out, it doesn't necessarily work that way. 

I know a fair deal about what depression is, but to borrow the words from Mark Hennick in his excellent talk «Why we need to talk about suicide» https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1QoyTmeAYw&ab_channel=TEDxTalks; «If I knew then what I know now. Well, it probably wouldn’t have changed very much. And it probably wouldn’t have changed very much because sometimes it doesn't matter what you know, when what you feel just takes over.»
Cycling-wise, I guess I identify as an ultra cyclist, being comfortable spending many hours on the bike at a time. Race wise I’ve done Trondheim – Oslo (540 km) twice as a team effort, Jotunheimen Rundt (430 km) as an individual race twice. I’ve also Everested twice, the first one doing 10.000 meters of elevation while raising money for the fight against human trafficking. My main achievement was doing my very own solo project raising money and awareness for the climate crisis and environmentalism in general: The ride took me from Oslo, to the Swedish border, then back through Oslo, over the mountains all the way to Haugesund, the town where I grew up, catching a short nap, and then returning to Oslo: 1.100 km and 15.000 meters of elevation in total, fully self-supported, taking 51 hours, 5 minutes, including rest stops. I ended up raising over NOK 50.000, around EUR 5.000. Next up is The Transcontinental Race number 8, which was scheduled for 2020, but postponed due to the pandemic.

 As we’ve experienced all over the globe, 2020 took us for some weird turns, but for me personally it started out pretty nice, getting to work a lot from home during the spring, with rather flexible hours freeing up time for me to tend to my kids, and get a lot of long rides.

As said, I’ve always used cycling or other solo activities as a form of meditation, and what stands out quite clear to me now, is that when I’ve been in a bad place, cycling has allowed me the right amount of mindfulness that I’ve been able to bounce back without giving a lot of thought to what I was dealing with. At its/my best, riding solo generally puts me at ease, making me focus on the road ahead, thinking "light" thoughts about what I'm getting for dinner, looking at the scenery and/or getting physically exhausted.

At some point in summer 2020, that all changed. All of a sudden I went for a fast dive into an abyss of darkness: I suddenly found myself crying from out of nowhere, getting annoyed more easily, and having a desperate need to just get out by myself not really doing anything. I was on vacation with my kids at my parents’ place, and my family soon realized that this was more than usual lows and annoyances. My mind was filled with questions like «who would really notice if I was gone», endless self hate and thinking about how to end it painlessly and without a mess. The evenings consisted of listening to people experienced with mental health problems on the internet, listening to music about suicide and sorrow, watching dark movies, and the occasional binge eating became at lot more frequent. During the days I continued to ride my bike, trying desperately to take the edge off, and get some hours without mental pain.

I think I started to understand that I was entering depression, but to know the topic of depression and experiencing it first hand are two completely different worlds. I knew full well that what I was going through wasn’t a reflection of how bad the world or my situation was. On the contrary, I became partly frustrated and partly deeply concerned that I couldn't pinpoint my dark feelings to anything concrete. I have two wonderful boys, I have a girlfriend, I have loving parents and siblings, I have a secure job, and I'm in good health. I should be "peaking", but instead I was thinking about ending it all.

I knew very well that my black thoughts were not rational. Had someone close to me acted and looked like I was, I would have recognised it as depression immediately, and I knew very well what I would say to that person, and how I’d try to give some sense of direction and consolation. But in my mind, all the words that were supposed to tell me how important I am as person, how I’m not a failure, how I’m not fat and ugly, how I’m not terrible at everything I do; all those words were just meaningless noises, words that were easily disproved by my feelings of self loathing and hopelessness. At a point in the summer of 2020 I was fairly certain that it would probably be my last summer. But somehow the worst passed. Again, I wish I knew what caused the passing, but I don't. For some reason the darkest feelings subsided, and after some weeks, I began to see my own experience in hindsight sort of like a movie about someone else. I'm confident that my loving kids, my parents, my siblings, my friends and girlfriend, all must have helped immensely, and I’m thankful that I don’t do drugs or alcohol at all, otherwise I’d probably gone even deeper.

This period wasn't the first time I felt down or sad without obvious cause, but it definitely felt infinitely deeper, darker and more scary than anything else in my life. 

The easiest thing in the world at that point would be to shrug it off, and go on pretending that it hadn’t been that bad. In fact, I still get those thoughts sometimes; a feeling that what I went through was just me whining about nothing, that I should just have manned up and shrugged it off, that I should have just stopped my binge eating and stopped crying. When those feelings come, I can sense a battle in my mind between my rational thoughts acknowledging the depression on one hand and a complex ball of guilt and self loathing on the other.   Instead of doing nothing, I did what several people close to me asked of me: I went to see my doctor, and was referred to the mental health specialists where I live. They contacted me immediately, and I’ve since been given sessions on a semi-weekly basis.

After the initial start with sessions I felt a little better, feeling I had started something that was good for me, but come November, I once again dove in, even harder this time. I still managed to work, and I tended to my kids, but one of my biggest concerns was that the thing that I felt had saved me so many times – cycling – was not feeling as tempting, and I made excuses not to go out. Up until then I had ridden outside more than 2.000 km each month for the previous 11 months (even during my dark summer), and averaged around 2.5 hours on the bike a day. The more I dreaded riding, the worse it got to get out, and I found myself at home, lying on the coach, feeling bad for not doing what I know is good for me.

December 8th, I made a decision. I had been contemplating doing so for a long time, and on this day, I think in the evening, I did. I posted on Instagram and Facebook exactly what my feelings were. I put my depression out there for everyone to see, making myself vulnerable, allowing everyone I know, my colleagues, my friends, former friends -- everyone -- to know that I had a clinical depression, that I engaged in binge eating and that I had had battled the urge to kill myself. Equally important, that I acknowledged that this wasn't something that had happened all of a sudden, but was more of the darkest feelings pouring over, after a very long time.

So, dark November and December also passed. I had help from my psychologist, and towards Christmas I felt better yet again, and also got started on antidepressants, on my own request. Feeling lighter I also got back more of the drive to get out, and I started riding more this January (even when it’s -10-15 degrees and tons of snow). However there is this hesitant feeling in everything. I'm dreading the time when I'm back in a bad place, and I'm still struggling with feelings of what I should do more of, or be better at. Luckily, something is very different. 

I now have a therapist that I can discuss these things with. I have a professional woman in my life that regularly asks me "Would you expect the level of perfection you demand from yourself from anyone else?" I get a nod and a smile when I tell her that I rode with some friends this weekend, and it was fun, and I didn't feel the need to use X kcals to balance my intake/output. 

Before I started seeing a therapist, I weighed everything I ate, feeding it into a calorie counter, and I weighed myself every single morning. I've done this for several years now, telling myself and others that "that's what cyclists do". During one of my first meetings being a psychiatric patient, I remember the doctor asking plainly "you're aware that this weighing of food and yourself is not normal?" I don't remember how I responded, but I came to understand that she had a point. Weighing food, and getting on the scales every single morning might be what some cyclists do, but certainly not all, and definitely not non-professional cyclists aged 40-something. And maybe there are people out there who could go through a lifetime truly just "casually collecting data", but I'm not one of those people. I'm instead one of those people who do it casually when I'm in the middle, but then connect my self worth to it, as if gaining or losing a kg is what separates me from anything.

So, I dropped the scales. I'm confident I weigh and eat a lot more than I'm comfortable with, but i try not to think of it as much, and for now I'm hoping that it will balance itself out in the end. 

With regards to cycling, I again ride quite a lot. Usually because I want to, and looking forward too, but sometimes because I feel I should. (And I'm not sure that is solely a bad thing.) I'm aware that my volume on the road will not match 2021. And that is OK. You see, I try to maintain for myself that it’s not a competition, and nobody around me cares how much or how little I ride per year. I’m still planning on doing the Transcontinental Race that I was scheduled to do in 2020, and other than that I’m going to ride just the right amount, and if the pandemic lets me I will try to enjoy a lot more rides with other people.