Melissa Bruce – Growing up, I was not the kid racer with doting helicopter parents. I was the kid that was destined to grow up a ‘failure’. Seventeen years in a home rife with extreme domestic violence and neglect, followed six months later by a head-on with a drunk driver in 2005. But the fascinating thing about life is it can go two ways. I can fight for a better present and future, or I can choose to be a victim and live in misery.
After the drunk-driver incident, the steps towards a better life were hard, and often more crawl than walk. However, there’s one thing that has always stuck with me. My love of riding.
Skipping all the gory details of the extensive recovery to get me to even walk again, skip to 2013 and waiting on the start line of the Finke Desert Race. It’s my first ever race, and the odds are against me, as are a lot of opinions. For a male dominated sport, the bitchy attitudes sure stand out sometimes.
I promptly take the infamous Finishers Spike home and swiftly move on to a lot more racing. Chasing events all over the East Coast and Central Australia for the next three years, before getting a little idea that perhaps I could finish the Bronze class in Romaniacs. No girl from Australia had ever done this, and the boys who had competed there had lots of scary stories to tell.
So in July last year I rocked up to Red Bull Romaniacs by myself and, after one fearsome but rideable prologue and four exhausting eight-hour days on the bike, I achieved my unthinkable. But from the moment I hit the finish line, I was already planning the next race.
I organised for my bike to stay in Germany for a couple of months until the next big extreme enduro, the Red Bull Sea to Sky. This is held in Turkey, a country where sadly there is a lot of civil and political unrest. However, against much unsolicited advice, I made the 30-hour trek back to Turkey last October to see what their rocks were like.
It was absolutely brutal. The prologue at Sea to Sky was an even more technical obstacle course than Romaniacs, laid out on a sand track on the beach, in the rain. I remember looking at this downhill tyre wall just thinking to myself, “These guys are absolutely insane”. But, like anything, it’s one step at a time, and two days of racing and one drowned bike later, I’d managed to stay ahead of more than half the field, finishing Silver class.
So many highs, followed by a pretty big low. In my late teens, I had been diagnosed with PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). Over the years, I have learned to manage it largely medication-free, but in December a combination of the financial stress to fund everything, the relentless tough training and a few bad experiences with unnecessary negative criticism from other riders left me struggling with day to day life. I fell apart mentally, unfortunately having to go back on medication for about a month to start feeling like myself again.
Yet one of the most amazing things about racing extreme enduro are the experiences I can draw from when life throws a sharp curve; many rocky creekbeds, a nasty switchback hillclimb, a slippery log jump. My mind constantly goes back to those difficult race days and I remind myself, if I got through that, I can get through this.
Up until I gave my precious 2009 Ducati 1198 her marching orders three weeks ago so I could afford to do it all again this year, I really wasn’t certain I wanted to put myself through all that stress again.
Last year I raced Bronze, this year I’ll be racing Silver at Romaniacs. A much, much harder class. But from the moment I booked my flights and arranged this year’s bike, a 2017 Husqvarna TE300, I’ve started seeing glimpses again of the part of me that really loves these events.
Training has been going well, and while financial sponsorship is still out of the equation, I remain grateful to generous small Australian companies like Force Accessories, Clake, QLD Offroad Tyres, ZeroMX, MPE Suspension and Infinit Nutrition who go out of their way to send the best gear overseas with me.
I look forward to keeping you updated on my race page, where you can join me for another year full of amazing highs and (hopefully) not too many lows.
