Our training!

Click here to watch our training video! 

Over the past couple of months, we have been taking out the GoPro on our training rides - by good fortune, the weather has generally been kind to us (sadly I neglected to bring it out the day that there was hailstones the size of large grapes). Here is a nice montage of some of our rides - we think it almost makes training look enjoyable!

Chilterns MS Centre

 

As one of the charities that we are raising money for, I thought I’d share a bit more information about the Chiltern MS Centre, which my Mum attends. 

When chatting to Mum about the centre there were two things that struck me – firstly, and not unexpectedly, the sense of community there.

MS is an idiosyncratic condition, affecting everyone differently; the centre is a place to share experiences.  There are a range of services available, including a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, which enables users to breathe high pressure oxygen into your system.  This is a done as group activity and there is always friendly chatting about how people are getting on and tips about recent discoveries, such an accessible shop or a comfy make of knee support. 

Central components of that community are the team of friendly physios who have a range of expertise and are a key source of keeping those who attend the centre tapped into the fundraising and other activities taking place.

The second less obvious thing, but in many ways more important, is that it is a place where it is OK to be disabled.

Mum has had MS for around 10 years.  During this time, amongst other things, she has qualified as a psychoanalyst and like many other disabled people has a busy working life.  In fulfilling her day job, there are any number of things that Mum has to consider that her more able bodied contemporaries take for granted; getting from the car to any given appointment being both the most obvious and most time consuming.  These things cause considerable pressure, but in her determination to live her life as she chooses, these are complications which to a large extent Mum makes invisible to those around her.

At the MS centre, there is no pressure to hide the wiring.  Surrounded by others with similar constraints there is no expectation that life flows smoothly.   Being in an environment in which it’s OK to acknowledge that provides important respite.

The centre has recently moved from a portacabin to a new plot.  Of course this new more solid building brings all sorts of opportunities, but also costs with that.  Impressively, there is a hydrotherapy pool on site which is a valuable facility for those with MS and potentially for other users.   As a psychoanalyst, Mum is working with counsellors to make use of the new space to set up some counselling, for both patients and carers.  Using trainee councils, once up and running this should be a cost neutral service, but like other elements it requires investment.

The Man Who Cycled the World

It wasn’t long after we decided to cycle the length of Africa that I was in Waterstone’s looking through some books and noticed a front cover showing a man on a bike. I smugly picked it up, imagining some relatively easy challenge and promptly had my bubble burst, by reading about Mark Beaumont, who at 24 set off to cycle 18,000 miles around the world in 195 days. Suddenly, our heroic and Herculean 7,500 mile challenge seemed rather trivial (although I will maintain our road conditions will be much worse…).

Last night, Lizzie and I were lucky enough to go along to a talk he was giving in London and he said some things that made me feel a whole lot better about the ride:

·         The hard bit is before you set off – once you are on your bike, the challenge is simple. You just get on it, peddle the right number of hours each day, and you will get there. There are not lots of complicated decisions to make. This resonated with me, because at the moment there seem like a thousand and one decisions to make and I look forward to the impending simplicity once we arrive in Cairo! [Note: this is not the same as it being easy!]

·         Don’t focus on the challenge or the destination as this will be mentally exhausting – enjoy the journey. I found this out cycling from John O’Groats to Land’s End and it is something I want to ensure I do from Cairo to Cape Town. I don’t want to think about Cape Town until the day before I arrive there. When I wake up each day, I want to immerse myself in that day’s challenge and discovery.

·         It is natural not to feel elated or celebrate at the finish  line – again, a learning from John O’Groats to Land’s End. When we arrived, we were exhausted and relieved we had been able to conquer the challenge. Feelings of elation and celebration do not kick in until the days, weeks, months and years that follow. So when I get to Cape Town, have a sip of champagne, and promptly fall asleep, this will be acceptable behaviour in front of my parents who will have flown all the way to Cape Town to see us finish (just setting expectations…)

·         And the one that worried me: Mark said “It is natural when you finish these challenges to think about the next, bigger and better challenge.” I dread to think what that might look like as this will take SOME beating…although I don’t intend to make any rash Steve Redgrave-type comments when I finish.

Stats

Some time ago my parents gave me an atlas – one of those really big hard back ones that you can’t hold but have to lay out on the floor and crawl around to properly inspect the countries on the other side of the page.  Whilst google maps in the palm of one’s hand may make us feel like the world is at our finger tips, shrinking and enlarging beneath them, there feels to be a greater sense of discovery in making my elbows sore, tracing our route through the pages and marvelling at the unknown names of exciting places that we will pass along the way. 

So where will we be going? 

-          During the ride, we will pass through 10 countries – Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Botswana, Namibia, South Africa.

-          The total distance is 11,718 km – that is roughly 7,500 miles.

-          Distances each day will range from 80 km on rough terrain to more than 180 km on the best paved roads – that will average out at about 80 miles per day.

-          Total days in the (blazing) saddle will be 94, but there will also be some rest days along the way.

We leave in January – with our flights now booked, we start the ride on the 11^th. 

I’ve also recently found out that there will be 50 of us in total – 33 men and 17 women, ranging from 18-70 years old.

Human Pin Cushion

One of the downsides of visiting Africa is the enormous number of diseases that can get you – as we’re passing through pretty much every strata of Africa, we need to protect against pretty much every disease I’ve ever heard of, except Japanese Encephalitis (I’d be surprised if I could get that outside of Japan…) and Smallpox.

The reason the latter is of no concern is that it is the first disease to have ever been wiped out from the whole planet, and I found out why the other day. Up to the 18^th Century, doctors used to try and protect children from smallpox by cutting them, inserting a dried smallpox scar from a previous victim and hoping that would mildly infect them and they would develop immunity. The downside with this is you could also die. In 1796, a rural English doctor began investigating an old wives’ tale that if you had cowpox, a non-fatal disease, you could not catch smallpox. His research involved grabbing a farmhand, cutting them open and pouring in puss from another victim’s cowpox pustule. The farmhand, as expected, developed cowpox and subsequently recovered. At which point, the doctor, Edward Jenner, tried to infect him with smallpox in the method stated before. However, the boy did not fall ill and thus, vaccinations were born - so named after the Latin ‘vacca’, meaning cow.

So, it was armed (no pun intended) with this bit of knowledge, that I have valiantly been striding between various doctor’s surgeries and travel clinics to get all my vaccinations, safe in the knowledge that at least I won’t be cut open, and I definitely won’t develop the disease and die. So far, I’ve had tetanus, diphtheria, polio, Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B and the first of three rabies. So only meningitis, typhoid, cholera and two more rabies to go. Just think of the poor farmhand who made this all possible…

How I Feel At The Moment

I'm not even going to get started on my current trial of the anti-malaria drug, Lariam - which can make some people hallucinate so I'm trying before I fly to Africa. A couple of funky dreams so far, but nothing worse!