Breaking away

I didn't plan it. It just happened.

We were deep in Thetford Forest, somewhere on the Rebellion Way, halfway through the first day of a three-day ride around Norfolk. Sandy trails, dappled light through the trees, no phones, no laptops, no emails. Just two people on bikes and a long stretch of forest road ahead.

My friend is a senior leader in financial services. Sharp, experienced, and used to being the one with the answers. We'd been riding for a couple of hours when we drifted into a proper conversation about his business. Where it was going. What he actually wanted. The decisions he'd been putting off.

And then, with a grin, he turned to me and said: "Are you stealth coaching me?"

What gets in the way of good thinking

I've been coaching senior leaders for years. I know what a good coaching conversation looks like. I also know what gets in the way of one.

Diary slots that have been in the calendar for three weeks. The slightly formal energy of a meeting room. Online sessions where someone's connection drops at the moment they're about to say something important. The version of yourself you put on before you walk through the door.

All of it adds friction. And friction, however subtle, changes the quality of what's possible.

What happened on that ride with Gareth was different. We were side-by-side, not face-to-face. Moving, not static. The conversation had room to breathe in a way that a scheduled coaching session rarely does. There was no pressure to arrive with an agenda or leave with an action plan. He was just thinking. Properly, freely.

And I got to thinking too – he's clearly getting a lot out of this. What if I could create that for others?

Where Breakaway began

That ride in Norfolk is where the idea started to take shape.

Not cycling as a metaphor for professional life – though it is that too, and if you've spent any time with my Lessons from the Peloton series, you'll know I find plenty of leadership insight on two wheels. But something more direct than metaphor. Cycling as the actual delivery mechanism. The environment that makes the coaching work better.

There's a growing body of research on the benefits of coaching and therapeutic conversation in nature. Walking alongside someone, rather than sitting opposite them, shifts the dynamic in ways that are hard to articulate but easy to feel. Add movement, fresh air, and the natural rhythm of riding, and something opens up that a meeting room simply can't replicate.

I've spent the last few months building this properly. Researching the evidence. Thinking through how it would work in practice. Talking to both keen cyclists and senior professionals about whether this was something they'd actually want.

The answer, consistently, was yes.

What Breakaway is

Breakaway is professional coaching, delivered on a bike.

It's for senior professionals who love their riding and are navigating something significant. A career decision that keeps getting deferred. A leadership challenge that's harder to talk about than it looks from the outside. A transition – personal or professional – that needs more than a few hours of reflection in the margins of a busy week.

One-to-one. Outdoors. In the kind of environment where real thinking happens.

It isn't about cycling performance. It isn't about fitness. It's about using the bike and the open road to create the conditions for a different kind of conversation. The kind where you arrive as yourself, not as your job title.

If you've ever felt that the coaching or reflection you needed wasn't quite happening in the room you were sitting in – this might be why.

If you ride, and you're carrying something significant

The leaders I work with are good at their jobs. Often brilliant at them. But the very thing that makes them effective – the ability to keep moving, to hold things together, to be the steady presence others rely on – can make it genuinely hard to find the space to think about their own direction.

Breakaway is designed for exactly that. Not a workshop. Not a webinar. Not another thing to fit into an already packed schedule. A ride, with someone in your corner, in an environment that does some of the work for you.

If that sounds like something you've been waiting for, I'd love to talk.

You can find out more at here or just get in touch. No agenda required.