It took a forced break for Leadville 100 winner Melisa Rollins to confront an issue she’d never dealt with properly.
I was less than a week away from the most important race of my life: Cape Epic, alongside world champion Kate Courtney. We were training together, pre-riding the route, and looking forward to an amazing eight-day stage race.
And then I made a horrible, fateful decision that would change my life: I went grocery shopping.
On the way back from the store, a bump in the road knocked my grocery bag off my shoulder, and I took a spill off my scooter. My elbow was broken. Shattered, really.
I had traveled across the world for one of the biggest racing opportunities of my career, and suddenly it was gone. My race was over. The start of my 2026 season was ruined.
Although I had absolutely no idea of it at the time, my racing career may have just been saved. To explain why, we have to go back in time a bit.
Out of the Cape Epic before it began. Photo: Rollins
In the months leading up to Cape Epic, I had started developing a weird shin splint-like pain in my right leg. It had actually been coming and going for about five months, but I had always managed to get it under control … or at least I’d convinced myself that I had. Then, about a week before I left for South Africa, it came back. During my final training camp in Tucson, it got really bad.
During this camp in Tucson, by complete chance, a physical therapist named Will Barclay was in town working with the Project Echelon team as a soigneur. He agreed to give me a massage, and afterward I tried to explain what had been bothering me. Will grabbed my foot and started shaking it around in the air. Keep in mind, this man knew essentially nothing about me. He knew I liked riding bikes. He didn’t know I was about to fly to South Africa to race Cape Epic with a world champion. He didn’t know I was a previous winner of the Leadville 100. To him, I was just some cyclist with a weird shin problem.
“Melisa, this isn’t a shin splint.”
This post is for paying subscribers only
Subscribe now
Already have an account? Sign in
Did we do a good job with this story?
👍Yep
👎Nope