Cycling legend Rebecca Rusch is known for a lot of things: her four Leadville Trail 100 MTB wins, her Unbound victory, and her seven total world champion titles across multiple sports such as biking and skiing. Some may even know Rusch for her Emmy win for her cycling-focused documentary, Blood Road. But few have known the trials Rusch has gone through to overcome a concussion-turned-life-altering-brain-injury the past few years.
"For the last couple of years, I’ve been silently weathering a dark and tumultuous storm, suffering the invisible injury of a mild concussion from a bike crash that broke my helmet and my spirit," the so-called Queen of Pain shares. "At the time of my crash, I had little knowledge about concussion recovery other than “rest, stay off screens and you’ll be fine in a couple of weeks.”
Hoping to shine a light on concussion care, Rusch has unveiled a four-part podcast series detailing her journey of overcoming the aftermath of a traumatic brain injury (TBI) sustained from a self-described “violent” bike crash during a multi-day solo mountain bike adventure in Arizona in November 2021.
Rusch was riding at speed on the Coconino Trail in Arizona when her handlebars clipped a protruding rock on the trail, launching her from her bike into a ravine 10 feet below the trail. Rusch suffered rib and brain injuries.
Her ribs have healed, but her brain has not - yet.
Rusch says that she's still having headaches and has only recently emerged from years of daily head pain, lethargy, lack of motivation, depression, anxiety and poor sleep.
The podcast series, Brain Storm, is hosted in conjunction with fitness and health author and former teammate of Rusch’s Selene Yeager, Feisty Media and Momentous. Each episode follows Rusch’s journey back to health and brings in experts and resources on TBIs.
“My goal is to share what I’ve learned about concussion care, provide resources, and use my story to help people recover [from TBIs] more quickly,” Rusch says. “My slow journey back to health displayed the lack of quality, informed brain injury care. The good news is that brain injury is treatable and there are skilled experts in this field.”
Even today, nearly three years after the bike crash that induced Rusch’s TBI, she says she is not fully back to health in a way that allows her to pursue her typical athletic adventures.
Episode one of Brain Storm features an interview with Dr. Christopher Vaughan, Psy.D., who presented on “Rest and the Treatment of Concussion” at the 12th Annual Sports Neuropsychology Society Symposium earlier in 2024.
In the episode, Vaughan discusses how concussion protocol has evolved over the past decade, what today’s protocols are and why and how to identify a TBI based on our knowledge of them today, among other TBI-related topics.
The first episode of Brain Storm was released on September 2 on the Feisty Media Women’s Performance Podcast feed, and the following three episodes will be released one at a time on Monday, September 9, 16 and 23.
The podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts, among other podcast feeds.
