Cycling is a tough sport, but it is even harder when you have a condition that can leave you with fatigue, struggling to eat, gaining weight, losing hair, and suffering from abdominal pain.
Cory Greenberg is one of the few professional riders who have an inflammatory bowel disease. The 35-year-old from California, who turned pro with Human Powered Health this season, has ulcerative colitis, an inflammation of the colon and rectum.
While he now has it under control through medication and diet, it almost put an end to his dreams of racing for a living before he’d even got his career off the ground.
“I was given the ultimatum of ‘we either need to remove your colon, or we’re going to start you on this medication and, if it works, hopefully, we can get you hopefully into remission,’” Greenberg told CyclingTips. “That was a big eye-opening experience. To know that there’s two options before you is life-changing and it completely alters your process of how you’re going through life, how you see the world, and how you’re going to achieve the things you want to in life.
“Without a colon, everything you’ve kind of dreamed of doing is no longer possible. So, I had this wake-up call where I really need to figure out what this condition is and what’s going on. And the only thing I knew was how to be a cyclist.”
View this post on Instagram
Greenberg was 21 when he first started suffering symptoms of ulcerative colitis. At the time, he had been racing for years without any issues, but he noticed that something was wrong as he was preparing to start a mountain bike event.
During a pre-race trip to the toilet, he noticed he had passed some blood. After speaking with his father, he paid a visit to the doctor where he eventually got a diagnosis after undergoing a colonoscopy.
Initially, Greenberg was embarrassed by the condition and what he might need to do to keep it under control, so he buried his head in the sand.
“What happens by the bathroom door is typically taboo. Even though we all know what goes on, we put a door there for a reason,” he said. “When you’re 21 years old, and someone tells you that you have got to use an enema or a suppository I can’t think of too many other things that are more embarrassing than that. Then you put it in a team environment. You have to go to training camps and races, and you have to take these things… So, I really didn’t put too much effort into understanding what was going on.”
Greenberg was able to muddle on for around 18 months and he would take the medication, but it wasn’t enough without some serious changes to his diet. He needed to change what he ate to give himself a chance, but he didn’t want to look much further into what he had because it was awkward and embarrassing.
Without altering his diet, Greenberg continued to suffer increasingly regular flare-ups and his energy levels began to plummet. It came to a head when his mother found him sleeping on the bathroom floor.
“There was a turning point in the off-season. I can remember feeling very tired all the time and really lethargic. The blood became more active when I used the restroom, and then that’s when the pain of the colon started to become more prevalent,” Greenberg said. “It just kept growing and growing to the point where I was curled up in a ball and laying on the couch thinking ‘how do I even go to school?’ How do I like function anymore, let alone ride my bike? Then it became persistent, and I was always on the toilet.
“It’s not even using the restroom anymore. The inflammation inside your colon that blood and mucus and all this stuff is just taking over. It got to a point where life became non-existent and my existence was sleeping on the bathroom floor because I couldn’t leave the restroom. That became the turning point and my mom found me sleeping on the floor one night in the restroom. She was like ‘we’re taking you to the hospital.’”
Greenberg was fortunate that his diagnosis came when it did. If it had happened a decade or so earlier, doctors would have certainly removed his colon and he wouldn’t have been able to continue riding.
View this post on Instagram
Moving forward
Greenberg has turned a major corner since he was hospitalized and he’s now been in remission for 10 years. That has been in part due to better treatment being available, as well as an increasing focus on what he eats.
Everyone with ulcerative colitis is different and there is no one size fits all diet to keep the inflammation at bay. Through trial and error, Greenberg now has a far better idea of what foods will cause him trouble and which ones are safe to eat.
It’s a never-ending process and issues such as eczema will still happen, but he’s in a far better place than he was a decade ago.
“This last 10 years since coming out of the hospital and living with this condition has been this battle of like, really looking at my diet, really looking at lifestyle choices, stress and having to balance this, and there have been highs and lows,” he said. “But it’s also learning over time, what works and sometimes what does work doesn’t end up working down the line, and you have to kind of re-evaluate what’s going on.”
Being on the Human Powered Health team, with its focus on health, has been a big benefit and he’s working with team sponsor Thorne on managing his condition.
Since being in the hospital, Greenberg has learned to be far more open about his condition. It has been a liberating experience for him, and he has found many more people who have been going through something similar. Some of those he has spoken to have been doing what he did early on and trying to just cope with it.
He started blogging about his journey with ulcerative colitis, particularly during the coronavirus pandemic. The lack of racing during that period led him to contemplate leaving the sport, but he decided to continue racing and promote awareness of ulcerative colitis and fellow bowel inflammation condition Crohn’s.
With this in mind, he set up the Ride for IBD event as a way to raise awareness and inspire those with the two conditions. It’s an event that has inspired him, too.
“I wanted to create a ride for the global IBD community that would benefit the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation, and also create this visibility and create this community. That was like non-existent,” Greenberg explained. “We had the first iteration of the ride, and there was probably like 600 people on it, and it was a good success. Zwift had done a bit of PR prior and had shared my story online and one of the other stories was a Brit named Sam Gray, who was recently diagnosed with Crohn’s disease.
“He ended up becoming hospitalized and he was basically dying of sepsis in the hospital, and he read my story on because there’s not a lot of info out there and so he ended up finding my story online and read my journey and I felt super inspired by that.”
View this post on Instagram
Through his advocacy, Greenberg has also been speaking with companies about trying to get better access to medication to treat IBDs in the U.S. and at a far more accessible price. He’s also hoping to change the perception of bowel conditions and remove the embarrassment around them.
“The condition doesn’t have to define you and you can define the path you want to take. That’s what I really want to get through,” he said.
Amidst all of this, he’s also competing in his first season as a professional rider after signing up with Human Powered Health over the winter. He made his debut with the team at the Saudi Tour and he’s hoping to become a key rider for the team. He also has some of his own big ambitions.
“My main focus would be US national championships. Yeah, going there to try to win the race. That’s a big goal of mine. We’re also looking at a few gravel events, so unbound is a big goal. And then maybe looking towards gravel worlds. In a personal sense, I want to be a reliable individual on the bike that can go can be called up into any scenario and be there to help the team.
“I want to be that individual that can help really dictate the success of the event for the team. I think that that’s where my abilities lie, as being someone who could work the front, but also give given the opportunity can maybe go for a breakaway and try to gain success. It’s a learning experience.”
0 Commentaires