Therapist on a Bike: What I Learned from the MS150
Updated: Aug 12
As a therapist, I'm always paying attention to patterns, how people grow, how they connect, how they respond when something gets hard. Recently I rode the MS150, a 150-mile charity bike ride that raises money for research and care for people living with multiple sclerosis.
I joined mostly to support a good cause and push myself physically. But I came away from it thinking about a lot of the same things I think about in the therapy room: community, discomfort, being outside, and what it actually means to set a goal worth chasing.
The Value of Community
Riding in the MS150 isn't really a solo thing, even if you're technically alone on your own bike. Early morning volunteers handing out water. Riders offering encouragement on a hard stretch. Sharing a tent with hundreds of strangers for the weekend.
In the months leading up to the event, I kept running into the same faces on weekend training rides. What started as just a shared commitment to show up slowly turned into something else, a space where people actually talked, not just rode next to each other. Hours in the saddle will do that. We covered everything from playlists to the harder stuff, the things that had actually brought some of us to cycling in the first place. None of it felt curated. It was spontaneous, disarmingly honest.
I see a lot of disconnection in my work, even in people who are constantly "connected" through their phones. Real community isn't just proximity or shared interest, it takes time and repetition and people actually showing up when it would be easier not to. The training rides gave me that, without anyone trying to manufacture it. Week after week, riding beside the same people, the conversations just got deeper on their own. Nothing about it was forced. It built through small, boring, repeated moments, not one big breakthrough, and that's usually the kind of connection that actually holds.
Getting Out of Your Comfort Zone
150 miles isn't easy, whether you've been cycling for years or just started. Training for it meant months of physical discomfort and a lot of staying present through uncertainty I didn't always want to be present for. That discomfort was uncomfortable, but it was also clarifying. Growth rarely happens in comfort, on a bike or in a session.
One thing that stuck with me is that self-care doesn't always look like rest. Sometimes it does, sometimes you genuinely need to slow down and give yourself room. But other times it looks like showing up for something hard anyway, pushing through the part where you want to quit, and finding out what's actually possible. I don't want to romanticize struggle for its own sake. But growth and healing do sometimes come out of effort and discomfort.
There were a few training rides I'd heard about ahead of time, routes known for brutal climbs or long stretches with nothing on them. Heading into those, I usually felt some mix of dread and self-doubt, the same territory a lot of people land in right before they try something that actually stretches them. On the other side of those rides, though, was something I recognized too: a kind of quiet pride, not just in finishing, but in having stayed with something hard and come out the other side more capable than I walked in. Confidence isn't really a precondition for doing hard things. It shows up after, as a byproduct of having done them.
We grow when we go past what's familiar, whether that's riding further than we thought we could, or saying something out loud in a session that's never been said out loud before. The discomfort isn't a sign something's wrong. It's usually a sign something real is happening.
The Healing Power of the Outdoors
One of the things I knew I'd love about training for this was just being outside, open fields, winding roads, long quiet stretches away from Houston.
Nature has this way of putting things in scale, reminding you how small you are and, somehow, at the same time, how connected to everything you actually are.
Those training rides turned into a kind of moving meditation without my really trying to make them one, just breath, wind, whatever was directly in front of me. In therapy we talk a lot about mindfulness, and being outside does something for that state that's hard to manufacture indoors, it pulls attention away from the noise in your head without you having to work very hard at it.
Setting and Pursuing Meaningful Goals
I've come to think a goal is only really worth pursuing if it lines up with what you actually value, not just whether it's impressive or hard.
The MS150 wasn't just a ride, it was tied to something bigger than me, and that mattered more than I expected. It made the early mornings and long training rides feel worth it in a way a purely performance-based goal never quite manages to.
In therapy, a lot of what I help people do is get clearer on what they're actually aiming for and why. Goals tied to real values tend to be the ones that survive contact with the hard part. They give you something to come back to when it gets uncomfortable, which it almost always does eventually.
Final Thoughts
The MS150 was more than a ride. It was an example of how growth unfolds in real time. Whether we're building new habits or working through emotional challenges, the process often looks the same: small steps and a willingness to keep going even when it's hard.
These lessons stay with me, on and off the bike, and they continue to shape the way I show up for my clients, my community, and myself.
-Catherine Comiskey, LCSW
