This Trauma Survivor Found Her Home on a Bike and Now Promotes Diabetes and Mental Health Awareness
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Name: Becky Furuta
Age: 44
Hometown: Ridgeway, Colorado
Occupation: Co-owner and sports vision specialist at Avenue Vision, LLC, and athlete at Team Novo Nordisk
Time Cycling: I have been riding since I was a kid, and racing for about 18 years.
Reason for Cycling: I tell people that I am solar-powered. I love being outside, on my bike, engaging with nature. More importantly, I get to show people that their challenges can also be their strengths. I have lived with type 1 diabetes for almost two decades, and it motivates me to stay disciplined and work hard. I hope that when people see me and my teammates living with the condition, they think, “What can I do to live a better, healthier life?”
I began riding my bike when I was about 14 years old. My mother had been morbidly obese her entire life, and suffered a serious health crisis when I was in my teens. Ultimately, the cost of keeping her alive bankrupted my family. My father lost his business, our house, and his life savings almost overnight.
We ended up living in a run-down, roadside motel near a truck stop on Colorado’s Western Slope. Six of us were crammed into a single tiny room, everyone dealing with the crisis on their own. The beds didn’t even have box springs—they were thin mattresses on metal frames. The walls were so thin you could hear everything happening in the other rooms of the motel.
I had to get out of there, so one morning, I hopped on an old mountain bike my dad had given me for Christmas when I was in fourth grade. It was like I could fly. Suddenly, nothing else mattered. I was free.
Growing up, I didn’t have a lot of stability. My father wasn’t home much, and when he was, he had a violent temper. We were all scared of him. My mother was often too unwell to care for me and my sisters. Sometimes, the only food in the house was rotting or expired. Other times, there wasn’t laundry soap or shampoo.
I started staying wherever I could, just so I would have food, clean clothes, and soap to wash my hands. Moving around so much meant that I didn’t learn to drive a car until I was 27. Instead, I rode my bike everywhere. I fell in love with turning the pedals over dusty dirt roads and over clean stretches of tarmac. It felt like home. It still does.
My training plan was wherever I needed to go, and my gym was the whole of the earth.
Despite having an unstable childhood, I persisted and made my way to college in 1996, because I wanted a better life for myself. While at the University of Colorado, I met a guy named Walt. Walt loved bikes and convinced me to join the intramural cycling team and learn to race. After college, I joined a Boulder-based elite team.
Then, in October 2007, I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, an autoimmune condition. I knew it was manageable, but I didn’t understand how much of a grind the condition can be. I quickly learned, though, that it requires multiple testing of blood levels and shots.
Diabetes changed my life, but it also taught me how to really show up for myself. From the second I was diagnosed, I had to take care of myself in a way I never had to before. My body had survived a lot. I now needed to actually tend to it, monitor it, and help it along. Ironically, type 1 diabetes made me healthier, more motivated, and disciplined. When I was diagnosed, I already knew about setbacks and how to overcome them.
People with type 1 diabetes can’t produce their own insulin, so we must take regular injections to control blood sugar. But exercise can also lead to precipitous, even deadly, low blood glucose. It’s a balancing act that can be really challenging.
Shortly after receiving my diabetes diagnosis, I reached out to Team Type 1, as they had several athletes also racing with diabetes. Instead of giving me advice on what to do, the team sent me a ticket to training camp that year in Tucson, Arizona. I seized the opportunity.
In 2011, Team Type 1 became Team Novo Nordisk, as Novo Nordisk assumed the sponsorship and became the world’s first all-diabetes professional cycling team. (Team Type 1 now exists as a non-profit that provides scholarship funds to division 1 college athletes.) Under the terms with Novo Nordisk, all of the riders need to be living with type 1 diabetes—to show the world what might be possible for those living with the condition.
I’ve had the opportunity to ride and race my bike all over the earth. As an ambassador with Team Novo Nordisk, I get to share my story and talk about how the team is changing the way people think about type 1 diabetes, and hopefully inspire others to chase their own dreams.
I have shared my story at the United Nations, European Parliament, and to countless audiences all over the globe. The 14-year-old kid who pointed her bike in a hopeful direction, away from a cheap motel, never could have imagined all the places she would see from the seat of a bicycle.
I feel lucky. That moment when I got off the plane for my first training camp in 2010 with the team, I remember feeling entirely overwhelmed. I thought, “I don’t belong here.” The CEO of Team Novo Nordisk, Phil Southerland, reminded me that my struggle isn’t my own—it also belongs to all the people watching me and being inspired by what I do. Phil knows that struggling isn’t failure. It’s just part of the road we ride.
In 2018, after a friend told me how transformative exercise could be for mental health, I became involved with Go4Graham, a grassroots movement of athletes who use sport to erode the stigma around discussing mental health, improve mental wellness, and work to start mental health conversations in the community. Go4Graham further helps raise funds for the University of Colorado depression center and provides no-cost therapy for those who need it.
Cycling carried me through the trauma of my youth, so it was a mission to which I could relate.
Representing Go4Graham became more personal for me after I experienced a major depressive episode in 2019. One morning, I had been driving to the office, and I pulled my car up to the side of a cliff. I was fighting the urge to just go over the side of that mountain. I knew right then that I needed help.
I spent months thereafter working my way back to better mental health. Having my teammates from Go4Graham around me was an important part of that process. After being diagnosed with PTSD, it was nice to have a space where I could speak freely about what I was experiencing without feeling any shame. I suddenly understood how hard it can be to wrestle your way into the light when you’ve been standing in darkness for so long. I learned that the childhood trauma of my past had caught up to me and was affecting me in the present. And, more importantly, I learned I needed to process the trauma to heal.
When I was just 4 years old, I stopped eating. I don’t know if I actually wanted to die or if I was just trying to disappear, but I lost so much weight that the doctors thought I had meningitis. They did a spinal tap to try and figure out why I was wasting away. No one imagined that a child so young could have the will to simply starve.
But today, I have coping mechanisms and ways to re-frame my thinking. And I want to share that with others who are going through mental health struggles.
When I was born, I came out with my fists clenched and a mohawk. I was made for the fight life gave me. Still, child abuse wore me down. It made me afraid of everything. When every day is traumatic, your triggers become the whole world and everything in it.
As a result of PTSD, I’ve had nightmares my entire life. It’s hard for me to fall asleep, too. I have huge chunks of my life I cannot remember, and things I refuse to think about. I lived with danger for so long that my brain is always alert for what might be harmful. It’s impossible for me to relax. But, that’s probably why I became an athlete—because often, the only way to stop the noise in my head is to push my body to its limit. In that space, things are quiet.
In a race, I only have room to think about what is happening in the moment—where I need to position myself and how I can move up in the pack and where I want to be when we hit the base of the first climb. All the other thoughts disappear.
Cycling, diabetes, mental health—they give me a sense of purpose in what I do. When the race gets hard and when everything hurts, I know I have bigger reasons to keep pushing and not quit, and that motivates me on the days when I am tired or frustrated.
Cycling still feels like that first moment when I jumped off the motel curb on my bike, and flew away on two wheels. I feel free.
These tips have helped make my cycling journey a success:
1. Invest in quality gear
Get comfortable. Buy the expensive kit. Dial in the bike fit. Get the shoes that feel good and have solid power transfer. Why? Because you can’t train effectively when you have saddle sores or your knees hurt or your shoes are squishing your toes.
2. Fuel for your rides
Your body needs fuel, no matter what you weigh or how much weight you think you need to lose. Get in a good meal three or four hours before your ride or race, so that it’s fully digested and you have the energy you need.
3. Build your power
Want to be better at hills? Ride seated in a harder gear than you normally would for part of your ride. It will definitely improve your power when you climb.
4. Enjoy the process
Often, we get really goal-oriented as athletes and we focus on the endpoint or a single big objective, but we forget that most of our time is spent training for that goal. Time is spent putting in the work and riding miles and kilometers and hanging out with friends on the group ride and stopping at coffee shops and looking at sunrises and sunsets. That’s the good stuff, right there.
5. Don’t be afraid to adjust your training
I have a training plan, but my life is busy. I have two teenagers and a business, I travel extensively, and I have commitments to my sponsors. Sometimes, that means scrapping the plan and doing what I am able to do with the time I have available. I’ve learned that it’s important to give yourself some grace when you can’t check every box. Some movement is better than none, and more is better than less.
Becky’s Must-Have Gear
→ Santic Jacket: A lightweight, packable rain jacket is a must-have for me when I travel to races. Weather can shift quickly, and my Santic rain jacket takes up no space in my bag, but works in wet conditions or as a bit of wind protection if needed.
→ Crankbrothers Speedier Tire Lever: Crankbrothers speedier tire lever takes things up a notch by giving you solid leverage and a comfortable grip. I buy them in bulk because everyone is always taking mine.
→ Lezyne Road Drive Pump: This is great if you travel. I fly my bike all over the world, and I can’t be bothered to search out CO2 cartridges every time I land. Instead, this pump can fit in my pocket and will get the job done easily should I flat on a foreign road.
→ Hiplock Z-Lok Security Ties: I often want to pop into the local coffee shop while riding in a new place, but I still want to lock my bike. These are lightweight and portable, and keep your bike safe with a reinforced steel core.
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