“When you’re racing, you’re unbelievably alive. It's you, the wilderness, your navigation and your motorbike. It's terrifying, but soul-igniting,” competitive motorcycle rider, Vanessa Ruck tells me, over a black americano in a London coffee shop.
“I remember a moment on the peak of a dune where I just stopped for a moment. There was nothing but dunes in every direction and, with that heat, it was also terrifying. But I was like, ‘I'm doing this, it's me and the terrain.’ I had this overwhelming fear, but also aliveness.”
Vanessa Ruck is one of the best-known female motorcycle racers in the sport, even being the first woman to enter and finish some of the world's most gruelling races. She shares her journey through social media as The Girl on a Bike, and now gives motivational talks to schools and businesses.
The first time I meet Vanessa is in a busy square in central London. She’s easy to spot, standing out against the grey crowds of tourists in a sunny yellow beanie, which she’s pulled over a blanket of beachy blonde hair.
The next time we chat is via video call from her home in South Wales and, in both settings, Vanessa is almost radioactively positive. She is animated and genuinely excited when she discusses the rallies she’s competed in, and particularly her work with school children, but serious yet open when she shares some of the darker moments of her journey.
You’d be forgiven for presuming Vanessa had been a life-long motorbike fanatic but, in fact, she only began riding after a road collision on her pushbike in 2014. The accident left her with life-changing injuries and years of ongoing physical and mental challenges.
“It was a very normal Tuesday,” Vanessa says, explaining that she was cycling back from the office where she worked in marketing, just as she did every day. “I got about a mile down the road and a car coming the other way didn't stop.”
Vanessa collided with the car and was knocked into the road. She was picked up in an ambulance and discharged later that evening with bruising, but she had actually sustained significant damage to her shoulder and hip. Over the next seven years, Vanessa would undergo two shoulder and five hip surgeries, plus significant physiotherapy and rehabilitation. Vanessa described the mental toll of her recovery as a “rollercoaster”.
“It's like being in a black tunnel. I didn't realise the world could go so dark,” she says. “When you've been through some horrific surgery and you've been told that on the other side, you're going to improve, maybe you'll be able to walk, and then you realise you have to have more surgery - that tunnel is suddenly two miles longer, and it goes round a corner.”
Vanessa now uses a combination of physio, mindfulness and painkillers to live with her pain, and said she's been told she has “about 95% certainty of more hip surgery.”
Having had an adventurous childhood and spending most of her twenties enjoying adrenaline-fuelled sports, Vanessa missed the active side of her lifestyle following her accident.
The idea for a motorbike first came about because constantly moving her feet to operate the pedals in her car was hurting her hip. On a motorbike, however, riders lean their weight to steer, meaning their arms and legs remain relatively stable.
“It made me realise I could have a bit of adrenaline, a bit of adventure without needing to be physically fit and able,” she tells me.
So, after an anniversary test ride in 2015, Vanessa and her husband, Alex, invested in a pair of Harley-Davidsons; a motorbike she describes as “essentially a sofa with an engine.”
“The first proper adventure we went on was six miles from the house. That's all I could handle, riding-wise. We went to this little campsite and had a steak on a barbecue.
"For pre-accident Vanessa it would have been the lamest Friday night, but for where I was in my recovery, it was the most uplifting and incredible experience possible,” she says, smiling. “I was alive, I was outside of my room, I wasn't looking at that same annoying bit of paint on the bedroom ceiling. That night was an awakening of a new sense of gratitude.”
I venture that transitioning into motorbiking still seems an usual choice considering her accident took place on a pushbike. Vanessa nods.
“The first time, fiftieth time, two hundredth time I got on that motorbike, it scared the life out of me. But I knew every time it was going to get easier,” she says, “It's nine years on, and when a car comes from that same peripheral direction, it takes me back [to the accident], but I grew up with horses - when you fall off a horse, you have to get back on.”
It was in 2016, during recovery from her third hip surgery, that Vanessa decided she wanted to try off-road biking. She bought herself a dirt bike, even though it would be five months before she was even well enough to sit on it.
“It sat there as a reminder, as motivation [to get better],” she tells me.
Off-road biking, as Vanessa quickly discovered, was nothing like the comparatively comfortable experience of a Harley-Davidson - but it seemed she had a knack for it and Vanessa worked hard to build up her skill. It was during a day course in Spain that she impressed the instructor so much he convinced her to sign up for the Valleys Xtreme race in South Wales. After passing a practice session, she found herself in the competition.
“20 metres in front of me on the start line is a thigh-high plastic drainage pipe that you've got to get over on a motorbike. There’re hundreds of people watching in the audience. I cried in my helmet,” she says. However, Vanessa needn’t have worried. “I absolutely nailed it, got to the rock garden [section], bossed it, and started overtaking people. Off the back of that I was like, ‘Ah, I like racing!’”
Since then, Vanessa had ridden or competed in 28 countries, including Bolivia, Iceland, Ukraine, Colombia and New Zealand. She was the first female to enter and finish the Tunisia Desert Challenge, which she describes as “brutal,” but the experience gave her a positive realisation.
“Up until that point, the hardest thing I'd ever done was get through the accident. [After the Tunisia Desert Challenge], the hardest thing I'd ever done was my choice. That was really empowering,” she says.
Vanessa’s most recent event was another Desert Challenge, this time in Morocco, which took place in peak temperatures of up to 52 degrees and pushed Vanessa to her limits.
“I genuinely felt like I was riding for my life. It was so hot that I knew that if I stopped, crashed or had an issue, that was going to be the end,” she says. “The emotion on the finish line was just insane. I didn't know whether to scream or cry.”
Of course, racing takes a physical toll on Vanessa, who lives with chronic pain. She is open about her reliance on painkillers to compete in rallies, something which has led others to question whether she should be racing at all.
For Vanessa, the answer is clear: “I've only got one life, and my mental health would be far worse than the physical pain if I didn’t race. My mental health would be even worse if I just sat in a duvet - and my hip would still hurt.”
In fact, she has found competitive motorcycling transformative.
“When I’m riding, I don't have capacity to focus on my pain or any of that stuff. You are purely in survival mode. When I get off the bike, it normally hits me like a freight train, I won't deny that. But when I'm on that bike, in the moment, I'm in survival mode, I'm complete. That's why I find it so addictive, it's escapism in a positive way,” she tells me.
To document her extraordinary journey, Vanessa began posting on social media as The Girl on a Bike and now has a popular YouTube channel and 134k Instagram followers. While Vanessa stresses that her experience on social media has been overwhelmingly positive, I ask whether it had been more difficult to be taken seriously as a woman in motorbiking.
“You have to work a lot harder to be credible. You get judged book-by-the-cover very quickly. As a female rider, I really hope that every time anybody looks at what I do, male or female, they can go, 'Well if she could do it, so can I,'” she tells me, holding eye contact under long lashes which, particularly at the beginning of her social media journey, attracted negative comments.
“I went through a period where I got quite a lot of criticism for wearing mascara. Having long eyelashes doesn't affect my ability to ride a motorbike,” she says, almost amused. “Now people can't turn around and say, ‘Take the mascara off, love’ because they're like, ‘Holy sh*t, she can ride.’”
In 2020, Vanessa decided to go full time with The Girl on a Bike, but then lockdown hit. No stranger to adapting to difficult circumstances, Vanessa reached out to motorcycle groups about guest-speaking opportunities. She delivered more than 50 virtual talks sharing her story, which she said was initially “really tough”, but also helped her to heal.
“It made me realise that I've gone through hell and if me sharing my story and reliving that emotion helps just one person each time, it somehow makes what I've gone through feel worthwhile,” says Vanessa.
Post-lockdown, these talks led to what Vanessa says brings her the most joy; speaking in schools. She delivers the talks for free and says that last year she spoke to 10,000 students and is aiming to make it 12,000 for 2023.
“I get so many messages and comments from people saying thank you, you inspired me, I saw you doing this, now I'm doing that. It’s like an energy spiral. My energy gives them energy, and then they tell me about it and it gives me energy back,” she says.
I ask how she manages to continue to push forward with so much positivity, considering what she’s been through - and still has to face.
“I have all the same impostor syndrome, struggles of pain and doubting myself as everyone else,” she says. “Even in those really bad moments, there are things you can be grateful for. Whether it's the feeling of the soft sheets on your feet, a nice piece of mango, calling a friend or your favourite country music. There's always something to focus on that can put a tiny smile on your face. And a couple of tiny smiles? It massively changes your day.”
You can find out more about Vanessa on her website including how to support her free school talks and event sponsorship. You can follow The Girl on a Bike on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and TikTok.
