Handcycle arrived!

  At last my handcycle has been delivered. I bought with the compensation money I received from being run over whilst training almost two years ago. I have never tried one out before but I have noticed other athletes becoming fitter and faster wheelchair athletes by using a handcycle for cross training and I wanted to get in on the action. It arrived with a couple of bits missing so it was stranded in my front room for a few days before I could use it. On the morning the wheelchair manufacturers sent the missing bits I was lucky the weather seemed calm and sunny. Knowing it would still be bitter I wrapped up well and headed out on my new toy to do my longest training route that I do at home in my race chair, It's 19 miles but quite hilly.
  I had heard that handcycling was easier than wheelchair racing and faster than wheelchair racing so I wasn't expecting the hard time I was about to have. Firstly I hadn't put the pedals in the correct position (not even sure if they are called pedals if you turn them with your hands?) I was having to do a mini ab crunch to reach the pedals when they were at the furthest distance from me. I had also forgotten about how gears work, in my defence it is 15 years since I have been cycling, I forgot that the big cogs on the wheel do the opposite of the cogs at the pedal end, doh! So I cycled miles in a gear that I was struggling to turn and only noticed when I was almost home! I didn't have any sports gloves and elected not to wear my normal gloves which was a bit of a silly choice, my hands were numb before I had covered 2 miles.
  When I had reached the turn around point I was way behind the time I would have done in my race chair, I was completely knackered and the heavens opened. Part freezing rain and part hailstones, it hurt. In a hand cycle you are laid on your back so it is impossible to keep your face and eyes out of the hail, I tried shielding my face with one arm and pedalling with my other arm but I was too wobbly with steering one handed. At the same time as being pelted in the eyes with mini blocks of ice the roads had become wet and the front wheel was spraying me with water as well as cars spraying me as they overtook me. I was completely sodden,  freezing and fed up. I considered stopping and phoning for help but then thought by the time anyone had got to me to pick me up I could have been home. I soldiered on, hating it but getting on with it nevertheless. For some reason I didn't think to stop and get my emergency rations or my thermal hat out of my bumbag!
Once home I really struggled to get my legs out of the cycle and then get to my door. I struggled to get my key safe number in because my hands were completely numb. Then my dad opened my front door,  he had turned up to do some jobs for me when I had been out and had let himself in, I've never been so chuffed to see his ugly mug. He dragged me into the house and then went to collect my cycle. By the time he got back in I had stripped down to my boxers to get out of the wet clothes and was sat in front of the fire which was on full blast. He wrapped me up in towels and put the kettle on. It was a good 10min before I could talk properly and over an hour before I stopped shivering!  A true baptism of ice! It hasn't put me off though, I shall just check the weather forecast more closely in future and be properly prepared before setting off. 

Review of 2014

Well 2014 wasn't quite what I planned or expected.
  It started off with the problems that would dominate my year, punctures in training and welds breaking in races. Training came to an abrupt halt when I suffered three punctures in 10 days and I had no money left to replace the tyres, luckily I wasn't out of action for too long as a couple of mates stepped in to replace the tyres for me. I trained hard early in the year preparing for the London Marathon.
  On the build up to the marathon I was forced to take part in the worst race I have been involved with in 25 years of athletics. The Silverstone Half Marathon, it's on the Silverstone race track and it is organised by the team behind the London Marathon,  well, I say organised when I actually mean it is 'put on' by them because you really can't call it organised. The first thing that winds me up is that athletes who haven't done a marathon before are forced to take part in this race to prove they can do a half marathon in under an hour and a half. This is ridiculous for athletes like myself who have gone under the hour mark for the half marathon on numerous occasions and have never once taken an hour and a half to cover the distance. In an age when results are easily accessible from any laptop, phone or tablet why are we forced to perform especially for these organisers? Could it be for the rather large entrance fee they charge us? So, already anoyed at being there, the day just got worse and worse. The experienced athletes all warmed up in driving rain and bitterly cold wind whilst the people who had turned up expecting to do well in a half marathon without much training went straight to the start line.  This meant that when the experienced athletes were called to the line there was no space left and because the organisers hadn't bothered to do a starting grid for us (standard practice for wheelchair races) we had paralympians on the third row back whilst obese people in their first ever race in the centre of the front row. I ended up behind some scaffolding, aimed diagonally across the start line so as there was no way for me to get behind the full front and second row. We were then sat on the start line in the awful weather listening to bloody speeches and interviews, brilliant! When they finally got round to setting us off they gave us a 30 second start on the runners, into the wind, uphill. These are the same organisers that pull people out of the London Marathon because it's dangerous for runners and the odd chair to be on the road at the same time. Obviously it must be perfectly safe for hundreds of runners and dozens of chairs to be on a race track at the same time because the runners soon caught most of the field on the first incline. The problems went on and on, tight twisty course causing crashes, crossing gravel traps, marshals strolling along the course with wheelybins, etc, etc. Nightmare!  I can guarantee I will not take part in that race again until there is a change in management.
  My least favourite race ever was followed by my favourite race of the year, the Lisbon Half Marathon.  The March edition of this race is held on a lightning quick, pancake flat course. It still has the amazing management team from the October edition who I have become friends with over the last few years and who I look forward to visiting twice a year. Unfortunately one of the British athletes smashed into me and sent me crashing into the fence mid race which dropped me from the peloton, I did produce a PB in the race and had a great time celebrating with Mr Weir and Shelly Woods fella Chris. We watched Chris's team Manchester United get humiliated on TV in the bar and we were pretty merry by the time we had our evening meal. Grown men playing with paper aeroplanes at the dinner table - classy or what?
  The next big race in my year was the London Marathon, unfortunately it is not as well organised as you would expect from one of the biggest races in the world. They contradict themselves with their silly rules and they really do not look after the wheelchair athletes that are not involved at the front of the race. That said, the people of London create a real buzz around the race and during the weekend the excitement builds. The race itself is a great experience even if the weekend is poorly organised.  The first 10km of the race are very quick, I beat my 10km PB! Once the crowds start to build it is an amazing atmosphere,  it was a little sad to know that none of the thousands and thousands of people out on the streets were there to cheer for me but I soaked in the atmosphere none the less! Dad had gone straight to the finish to watch as he had put his back out carrying everybody's wheelchairs onto the bus when the marathon staff did a disappearing act right when they were needed. I could of done with a friendly voice when I had run out of steam on the embankment.  The whole race I had been doing sums in my head to see if I could break the magic 2 hours mark. I finished in 1:59:51 so 9 seconds under! Way too close for comfort but I later found out my chair had cracked at the 17 mile mark! I had noticed it was making funny noises but didn't know why at the time. 
  Just two weeks later I opened my track season, the season was blighted by my chair cracking. I managed a PB in my first 1500m of the year even with my wheel rubbing on the frame every time I was on a bend. It is so annoying when your chair lets you down rather than your fitness level. During the track season I managed to PB at every distance on the track from 100m to 10km. I really enjoyed seeing the younger athletes at my club and others improve quickly this year, the times people are producing now are far better than when I first started racing just a few years ago... I cut my season short in late July as all the chair breakages started to get me down, I had missed several large chunks of training whilst waiting for it to be fixed. I decided to cut my losses on the track and start building milage ready for the autumn road races.
  My chair broke another three times on the build up to the Great North Run but I managed to keep training in the gym thanks to my sponsorship from Alpha, unfortunately the chair also broke in the race which meant I dropped back from the great position I had got myself into. I managed to nurse my chair home slightly faster than the previous year but I was totally pissed off with how things had gone. In the Lisbon race my missed training and low confidence showed in the result, I performed quite badly. Detailed descriptions of both races are found elsewhere on my blog.
  The year ended with a huge hammer blow, the icing on the cake for an unlucky year, my sponsors dropped me with no notice and that has left me with nowhere to store and use my rollers and nowhere to do my weights sessions. I am also missing the sports massages which I find vital to recovery. Losing out on this deal has also been tough because of the social side of training, I got on great with my sponsors and was starting to build friendships with the other gym users. It's bitterly disappointing that they decided to drop me without discussing the issues they assumed had happened, I'm sure if they had have spoken to me they wouldn't have dropped me. It did hit me hard at the time and I had to take time out to sort myself out but now I am back in action, I've managed to squeeze my rollers into my four room bungalow so I can train when it snows. It's not great but it's a start. Onwards and upwards!