Confessions of an adrenaline junkie

Two years ago, Victoria Pendleton suffered a serious crisis. She had returned from a failed attempt to conquer Everest, and her marriage was falling apart. After the highs and lows of her career as a double Olympian, she wasn’t in pain: “I just felt numb.” Slumping into a depression that left her suicidal at one point, she moved back in with her mother. “It was the most frustrating experience of my life as I thought, as an Olympic champion, I should be able to beat it. I couldn’t identify one specific thing – it was just too many things at the same time, and it overflowed.” But then she started to take stock. After a lifetime of not fitting in (too sporty for the girls at school, often the lone woman in the male world of cycling, disinclined to have children), she decided she needed to stop trying to please other people, and start making herself happy. That meant breaking the shackles of expectation, and indulging her daredevil nature and love of adventure. She got some new tattoos, took up surfing, and bought a powerful motorbike. “It’s not the socially acceptable behaviour of a female of my demographic,” she told Helen Rumbelow in The Times. “I speak to my female friends: they’re, like, ‘Why would you want to do that?’ I think, ‘If I were a man, you wouldn’t ask that question.’ The men that seek that out – people don’t wonder whether it’s a positive or negative drive. I have to keep doing things that scare me. I want to feel the adrenaline, to feel alive, to feel like I used to feel when I was on the start line ready to go, nervous and buzzed with energy. I enjoy standing on the edge, thinking, ‘Oh, I’m going to jump, I’m going to jump.’ And jumping.”