Well That Wasn't The Plan!

It's now a year since my world record attempt and things have started to settle down again so it seems a good time to write about the experience, the build-up and the aftermath! Today I am going to blog about the build-up to the challenge and the reasons around the sudden date change and over the next 20 days I will type up my diary from the challenge itself a day at a time.

Originally the plan had been to set off in early August and finish on the 7th September - the day of the Rio Paralympic Opening Ceremony. This had been the plan for well over a year and I'd made as much progress as possible with organising the challenge but I'd been hindered in that by my former club. My former coach, JA, had told me in early 2015, that the club would give me their full backing and provide all the spares I would need for the challenge. I was told the same thing by the club president, DW, who added I should "Do what you need to do to make your dream happen". I asked if I could have Camilla, a former club committee member as my project manager and again was told to do what I needed to do to make it happen. There had been a bit of a fall out at the club over the previous weeks but I wasn't sure what the details were as I wasn't part of the 'in crowd' so I never really got given any updates of the day to day things at the club. I had spoken to DW at the 2015 Great Manchester Run and offered to travel to London to act as a mediator in a meeting to try and sort things out between the warring parties. I was told everything was ok and not to worry so I left it at that. Anyway, two weeks after I had been given the go ahead to have Camilla involved I received a phone call from DW telling me it had been decided that I now couldn't have her involved and it was down to me to tell her. I really didn't appreciate that, I'd asked permission, was given the permission but then had it removed and been told I was the one that had to deliver the bad news. Camilla is an absolute powerhouse when it comes to organising things, she’d planned to drive for the full trip and do all the cooking so it was a big blow being told I now couldn't have her on board.

I was then summoned down to London to one of the Charity's Trustee's meetings so "we can discuss how the charity and trustees can help you". Great, we seemed to be getting somewhere - or so I thought! The first meeting was cancelled because JA and DW couldn't make it. Two months later I was asked to attend the next meeting, JA and DW weren't present again so it made the point of cancelling the first meeting a tad questionable. I went into the meeting expecting it to be about how they could help me so I was in a great mood and really excited about making this challenge a success and raising lots of money for the charity which was set up to support the club. As we entered the building where the meeting was to take place the owner of the building, charity Trustee and one of the biggest sponsors of the club Paul Clark gave me a funny look and pulled the chairman of the trustees out of the room to "have a quick word". It was obvious at the time the quick word was about me but I later learned he was checking if I was safe to talk to or if I was on "Team Camilla". This is a man who runs a multi-million pound business not a 13 year old girl in the playground.

Once everyone arrived we sat through the most boring hour imaginable listening to an insurance expert chatting about all the ins and outs of the club’s cover. When the insurance man left the room Paul stood up and announced he would have to go too as he didn't want to miss a football match on the TV. I'm not easily offended but I did think what a cheeky bastard, giving me a summons to go down and talk through my plans with them, a round trip of 11 hours driving and he didn't even have the decency to listen to what I had to say. When I did get to speak to the remaining Trustees I was really shocked by their attitude towards me. I was planning on pushing my wheelchair 900 miles to raise money for their charity but from the response I got you'd have thought I was planning on shitting on their car bonnets. They started by having a go at me about inviting Camilla to be involved, when I pointed out that I’d been told this was ok by both JA and DW they seemed a bit shocked. I even offered to show them all the exact text conversation if they wanted to see it. They then moaned about the lack of time left to organise things - they would have had absolutely nothing to organise if they left me alone with the team I had put together. It was their choice to make me sack Camilla, it was their choice to make me wait to go and see them and I had been putting plans in place for 18months. After we passed that discussion I was then attacked by one trustee in particular, Brian he was nasty and aggressive:

"We'd like a doctor's note to say you are fit enough to take this on"

"What if you fail and people want their money back"

"Is it legal?"

"What if you fail? It'll make the club look bad"

"If you get ill and injured it'll look bad on us"

"If you don't finish it could harm JA and DW's reputation."

"What if you spend more than you make in donations."

“How flexible is the 28 days? Can you keep going if you fall behind?”

“Is your body and your health up to this?”

“What makes you think you can do this when you haven’t done anything like it before?”

On and on and on he went basically telling me I was shit and wouldn't make the finish line in 28 days. It was awful, I knew I had a couple of allies in the room but both were too timid to stick up for me so I took a massive bashing! I think they had misunderstood the situation. I wasn't there to ask their permission to follow my dreams - who are they to tell me which challenges I can and can't do? I was there to tell them that I was doing it, I was doing it at the time I had been planning on for 18 months and I was going to complete it in the time I wanted to. The things I was there to ask from the charity was if they wanted the sponsorship I raised or not? and if they did were they going to help organise the event? The meeting ended with me on the verge of tears and with one of the trustees, Tania, saying she would think about helping to organise it and she would give me a call in a couple of days once she had decided if she could help or not. Myself and one of the junior athlete's mums who was also there to talk about fundraising were asked to leave the room whilst the trustees spoke about something confidential and she could not believe how they had spoken to me and how rude they had been.

The next day I drove home from London, tired and angry. Angry at the fact I was trying to do something positive to help the charity out but I'd been left in no uncertain terms that they didn't think I was capable and they were less than interested in helping make the journey any easier for me. Obviously they didn't have any problem with taking the sponsorship money. Once home I put together a group of people to help organise things for me, thinking that when Tania got in touch I could impress her with what had already been done. I had completely the opposite reaction from these people, I asked a few people if they would help - they all agreed but more impressively I had a lot of people come to me asking me if they could help. I gave out jobs to people and we cracked on with it. I started getting radio interviews where, despite the way the trustees treated me, I sang the praises of the charity. Tania who was supposed to phone in a few days took a few weeks to get back to me but she did say she wanted to be involved with the challenge.

The next few months consisted of what I am now 99% sure was a two-pronged attempt to get me not to start my challenge. On one front I had Tania stalling at every opportunity, I lost count of the number of times a phone call finished with "I'll call you on Thursday at 6PM with an answer.". When she actually meant "I'll call you a week on Thursday at 10PM without an answer.". The rest of the team that we assembled were waiting on information that only somebody from the club or charity could give us. Marketing and media people couldn't do what they needed to do without links for sponsorship, kit couldn't be ordered without the logos, text giving numbers were needed, lots and lots of 5 minute jobs needed to be done by Tania or someone at the club/charity to allow the rest of the team to get on with the real work.

 At the same time, I had JA's friend Sue constantly sniping at everything I did and taking every opportunity she could find to knock my confidence. I ran the club's Facebook page and had taken the likes from 700 when I took over to 1900 in just a few months but nothing I did was good enough for her. I was constantly getting snotty texts, phone calls and emails asking why this or that hadn't been posted, the reason was always the same either I was not told about it or I was at work and couldn't just drop everything and put a post on Facebook right at that second. She would also be constantly mentioning how unfit I was and how far I was behind where I should be. All of the ‘In-crowd’ completely stopped supporting the Facebook page around the same time, obviously on team orders. One of the worst times was during a family meal I’d been sent four texts, three emails and had three phone calls telling me to post something on the club's Facebook immediately. Even after I’d explained I was in a restaurant for an important family anniversary they wouldn’t wait for an hour and I ended up sat in my car in the car park composing a post not about the club but about an athlete who has a paid PR person running his own Facebook athlete page dedicated to his achievements; which is never updated. I’m sure this was all aimed at making me feel unwanted and to knock my confidence for the challenge.

In March I wasn't invited to the Lisbon Half Marathon, a race JA has close ties with and a race I had been invited to 7 times in a row. It became obvious that it was no coincidence that I wasn't invited when slower athletes from my club appeared on photos at the race and then they, the coaches, some volunteer cyclists and Sue travelled south after the race for warm weather training. Warm weather training after the Lisbon race had actually been something I suggested the previous year as a good pre track season boost for the club. I’d spoken to Sue on four occasions the week before she went to Portugal, I had spoken to several of the athletes involved too and not one of them mentioned the fact they were going. Who doesn't mention the fact they are going abroad to do a race and then go warm weather training in the next few days when you are talking to somebody about racing and training? Definitely team orders again. I was upset and hurt by it, JA was supposed to be my coach – I hadn’t had any training programme from her since she found her new favourites 18 months earlier but she was still supposed to be looking out for me. The athletes involved were supposed to be my team mates, more than that, they were supposed to be my friends.

Even after all of this I was still aiming to do my challenge and raise money for this charity, looking back I should have taken the hint and jumped ship but I didn’t. Like a goofy Labrador I just kept trying harder and harder to please them.

Eventually Tania decided to travel north to meet with myself and Carly, the lady I had coordinating the volunteers up here. I paid for afternoon tea at a nice local country café for everyone and the meeting started ok but ended with Carly and Tania having a slanging match over the table. It was both highly embarrassing and extremely entertaining. The snobbish, southern, rich tory girl versus the common as muck, northern, skint, Jeremy Corbyn groupie. One with a disabled daughter, the other with an incurable lung disease. Both trying to play ‘Top Trumps’ with how difficult their lives were. I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry. This was my dream and I had two gobshites going at it in a fancy café with everyone looking. Even my dad, who is the master at saying the wrong thing at the wrong time in the wrong place was sat there shocked into silence. The meeting/verbal MMA match resulted in Carly pulling out of the organising group, which caused more delays whilst I got everything back from her and replied to emails she’d been ignoring. Thankfully my dad and a good friend Elouise stepped up and took on more work organising.

All of this fannying around had got us to June. 11 weeks to go and not much sorted for the trip, I’d been inspired by some friends who had run an ultramarathon the day before to try a long push. I did 30 hilly miles in Rossendale, in very hot conditions with no food or water with me. Doing this training session was key to giving me the confidence to deal with what was to happen next. I had never pushed more than a marathon before that day and I had never pushed more than 22 miles in Rossendale with it being so hilly. I seemed to cope with the mileage really well, so well that I felt fine to go out that night on a date. It wasn’t our first date but I was still on best behaviour – I’d been single for nine years at that point and although it was early days I was smitten. Whilst on the date my phone rang in my pocket, I felt bad that I hadn’t switched it off like I normally would on a date. I went to take my phone out of my pocket and switch it off but I accidentally answered the call. I noticed it was Tania and as calls from her were like hens’ teeth I decided to excuse myself and take a quick call.

Tania had phoned to tell me the three sponsors she had managed to find so far were pulling out because somebody else was going to do the challenge before me. That somebody else happened to be Justin, a lad I considered to be my best friend at the club. Oddly he is the chairman of the club and he had planned on stealing my challenge to raise money for his own charity – not the one connected to the club he was chairman of! Tania went on to accuse me of stealing Justin’s idea and trying to do it in secret! What a ridiculous thing to say when I’d been asking the charity and the club for help for well over 18months. She then suggested I did a different challenge at a different time. I honestly wanted to stick my fist through a door but I was sat in front of my date trying to be all respectable. I didn't even swear - bloody miracle! I ended the conversation by saying I was very disappointed in Justin, JA, DW and the club in general and that the phone call had confirmed that they had been undermining everything I had been planning. I told her I would have to consider my future at the club but in reality I had already decided enough was enough. I just about managed to hold it together for the rest of the date but my mind was working overtime.

Everybody at the club knew what I was planning and they had all known for well over a year so there is no chance people hadn’t mentioned it to the chairman! Also, I suspect Tania was helping Justin by giving him my route and logistics – I don’t believe he had suddenly organised this challenge at this time just out of the blue. He was aiming to scupper my plans.

I got home at just gone midnight after the date and there was no way I was going to sleep, I started planning my next move. I was awake all night doing sums to see what options I had the funds for. I text my good friend Ed the next morning once I had a skeleton of a plan. Ed is very switched on and knows me well enough to tell me to shut the fuck up if I am talking bollocks. He was angry about what the club had done to me but he was working. I went to see him that evening and we discussed everything I had planned, he agreed with me and came up with some cracking ideas to help make it happen. That’s it we were off, I was going to Lands End in 6 days time. I could have cried when he said he was going to drive the first two weeks of the trip with me. He was telling his bosses that he was taking the time off work. I didn’t yet have a vehicle to drive but I planned on getting a tow bar fitted to my car and buying a caravan if I needed to. There was so much to organise and not enough time to do it. I hadn’t done the training I had planned and there was no time to do it. I didn’t have the spares I needed, no volunteers, nowhere to stay each night, no food or supplements …. etc etc.

The next day I let a very small group of people know what was happening and that it needed to be kept secret. I wanted to set off and do the first 5 days in secret in case Justin decided to try and chase me down. I knew I could trust these people 100% all of them helped to get things ready. I chose a new charity to support, The 53 Foundation, who help disabled people get active. Dave and Amy from The 53 Foundation were really keen on the challenge and gave off such positive vibes – a welcome change from months and months of negativity from the original charity/club. I phoned Camilla and apologised for the way I had treated her, I asked her to be involved and she jumped at the chance and her advice was going to be valuable to me. Elouise took joint control of organising the group with myself, she was to take the reins fully when I was on my way and I have no idea if the challenge would have happened without her. My dad and sister worked hard helping me with the route, ordering spares, trying to get sponsors and logistics. Other friends worked on gathering PR and media contacts ready to go, campsite details and lots of other things that needed to be done. With 4 days to go my dad turned up at my house to say he’d been offered a motorhome as sponsorship, I could have kissed him. Then I realised he hadn’t told them we now needed it in 4 days not in 10 weeks and he hadn’t told them we needed a six berth to get the right number of beds. I’m not brilliant at asking for things but I phoned the motorhome company and explained what had happened and they seemed to like the idea of backing the underdog. We had a nervous wait whilst they tried to move things around to give me what I needed but in the end Marquis Leisure did us proud. We also got MyProtein on board, bags of supplements and kit for myself and my support riders. Talking of support riders my friend Nick had decided to take unpaid leave from work also for the first two weeks which was a massive boost for me.

With a couple of sleeps to go my house looked like a bombsite, there was spares, kit, food, medical supplies, clothes and more stored in my tiny bungalow but the team had done it. We were ready to go and collect the motorhome. The morning before I was due to start the challenge Ed, Nick, Dad and I drove to Preston to pick up the Motorhome. The guys at Marquis showed us all how everything worked but there was a lot to take in! It was nice to see Ed and Nick seemed to click, they hadn’t met before and are very different people. Once we drove back to my house we packed the camper full of the supplies. It took a long time to get everything in, the original plan was to take a car too but with the time change some of our support drivers could no longer make it. Cramming a month’s worth of supplies, spares and kit plus 3 wheelchairs and a bike into a motorhome was tough but we managed it in the end!

As Ed, Nick, my dog Bonnie and I set off on the journey south the nerves really kicked in. I was about to set off and push a wheelchair the length of the UK, without the training or the preparation I needed or the volunteers, cyclists, massage therapists, meals and campsites I planned to have along the route. I was in a Motorhome with two of the best mates a bloke could ask for who had both took unpaid leave to help me chase my dream. I was so nervous that I would let down Ed, Nick and the other people who had helped get me on my way. I just kept reading a quote over and over again on my phone “It’s better to try and fail than fail to try and wonder what if”. I didn’t tell the lads how nervous I was, we just kept chatting and driving and driving and driving... When we got to Summerset I assumed we were nearly there! How wrong was I? The West Country goes on and on and on, I was starting to realise just how far this challenge was going to be. It took around 8 hours to get there. We arrived at the campsite after it had closed so we just parked up in the dark and got some kip ready for the big day in the morning.

2016 - The Challenge of a Lifetime

So after my injury late in 2015 I have been put back by quite a chunk, I missed out on a trip to Dubai for the marathon there and I am now up against it to get fit for the +Virgin Money London Marathon. Hopefully I can get myself in shape for London, it is usually the biggest challenge of the year for me. All that will change this year when London is going to be a total walk in the park compared to the challenge I have set for myself later in the year..
 Starting on 11th August I'm going to attempt to be the first person in history to push from Lands End to John O'Groats in a manual wheelchair. I am also aiming to do this faster than it has been done in an electric wheelchair. The current record for an electric wheelchair is 30 days. My target is to knock two days off that record using arm power alone. Well, I say my target, it is actually +Guinness World Records target, even though this challenge hasn't been done before they have said they will only award me the world record if I do it in under 29 days. I seems a bit harsh when the Electric Wheelchair world record is 30 days but hey ho! 28 days it is! To do that I will need to push around 33 miles per day without a rest day for four weeks. To put that into perspective I have only completed two marathons in my life and even if you include my pre marathon warm up that would only be around 27 to 28 miles on marathon day..... and then I have 4 or 5 days off after the race. What have I gotten myself in to here?? haha!

Lands End to John O'Groats in a Wheelchair, I must be mad!

 Why?
Well there are several reasons why I want to do something out of the ordinary. The first is a personal one. I sustained my injury in 2007 whilst competing in Finland in the World Ultra Multi Events Championships. I had been entered in the Double Decathlon, 20 events over two days, every Olympic athletics event plus the 200m hurdles. I had been looking forward to taking part and I was in the shape of my life, my main two events the 400m hurdles and 400m had been going great. I had been smashing PB's all season and the rest of the club had been performing well too. At the time I competed for Blackburn Harriers, we had some amazing juniors coming through in the field events and that meant I was getting some top class tips on my weak events. Particularly  from Sophie Hitchon  on the throws (she was about to become British record holder in the hammer) and Holly Bleasdale's first coach for Pole Vault (a few years later she was to smash the British record). Everything was going great on the prep for Finland. Everything except peoples faith in my ability to complete the double decathlon, I was literally getting people telling me not to do it on a daily bases. I had absolutely no doubt that I could do 20 events in 2 days. I just wanted to get on with it and prove everybody wrong!
 It didn't quite happen how I had planned! My first event was the 100m where I broke my personal best, I hadn't run a PB in the 100m for over 8 years so this just confirmed to me that I was going to smash the next 19 events. The second event was the Long Jump, my first jump was poor so I adjusted my run up and my second jump equalled my PB, again it was an old PB so I was over the moon to equal it. Now this is where I went wrong, my plan for the jumps and throws was to retire early if I had an early attempt I was happy with and conserve energy for later in the competition. I made a choice that changed my life by deciding to stray from the battle plan and take my third jump to try and break my PB outright. When I took off for the third time my right foot was in slightly the wrong position and I left my leg behind. I suffered numerous injuries - I broke my pelvis, snapped muscles, damaged major blood vessels, damaged nerves and tore muscles. The pain was horrendous, nobody helped me up, I had do some stange manoeuvres to get onto my feet. Once on my feet in had to shuffle off into the stand, using steps of about 1 inch whilst in massive pain. In a way I am glad it happened in the second event, to me that means it wasn't the double decathlon that caused the injury - I would do 4 or 5 events at league meets for my club so 100m and long jump were not excessive.
When I got home I had a lot of people saying "I told you so" sometimes it was masked but mainly it was delivered in a blunt way. Since that time I have never been in a position in which I can prove to the doubters and to myself that my body is capable of doing extraordinary things. That might sound arrogant but it's not that I believe I am one of a special few that are capable of doing extraordinary things. I believe everyone on the planet can do extraordinary things - if they work hard and it means enough to them they can do something amazing. I turn 33 in July, I feel now is the time to do my 'Amazing thing'. I want something to be proud of, something to prove I wasn't being silly when I travelled to Finland to take on those 20 events and lets be honest, a double decathlon is child's play in comparison to pushing a wheelchair 900 miles.

At an event shortly before the World Ultra Multi Events Championships in Finland.

    The second and more important reason for taking on this challenge is to raise money for charity. I have been overwhelmed since taking up wheelchair athletics by the kindness most people show towards me. Right at the start of my venture into wheelchair athletics a local journalist introduced me to Candice Heys and Garry Wilkinson who had been part of a team of runners that took part in the Everest Marathon to raise money to help disabled people take part in sport. They helped me a great deal at the start by providing me with training kit and paying my gym fees. At the time I was struggling with the benefits system as I had never claimed before my injury and none of my family had ever claimed before either. It took 10months to get my benefits sorted so without the support of the Everest gang I would not have been able to start training.
The village that my dad lived in a few years ago raised the money to buy my first custom built wheelchair. The village of East Runton in Norfolk did so much to help me and I only knew a handful of the residents. They had cake sales, a village bizarre, sponsored walks and lots more. Without the generosity of complete strangers I would have had to struggle on with a second hand, worn out old chair that kept breaking, it was so badly fitted it was slicing into my love handles during every training session - attractive!

My first custom built race chair, largely paid for by the villagers of East Runton

More recently I have been having lots of help and support from the Weir Archer Academy, an athletics club and charity that was set up by David Weir and his long term coach Jenny Archer as part of their effort towards the 2012 legacy that we heard about in every news bulletin during 2012. They wanted to help people of all levels of ability get involved with wheelchair athletics. Jenny is my coach now too and David is always there if I need any help and advice. To have two sporting legends in my corner is a real confidence boost. WAA has helped me out so much since I joined, I've managed to compete all over Europe, I'm sure the number of race invites I get has increased because I am part of WAA.
I have been brought up to believe if you accept help when you need it you should be prepared to give help when you are in a position to do so. Although I am not rich by any stretch of the imagination I am physically and mentally strong enough to take LEJOG on and raise lots of money. It is important to me to raise money for a charity that will go towards disabled people taking part in sport and leading a healthy lifestyle. I'm not sure where I would be without doing sport but I am sure it wouldn't be as good a place as I am in now which brings me on to the third reason for taking on this challenge.
    This reason is the hardest one for me to talk about. I have struggled with depression from being a teenager, 90% of the time it was kept under control with my running and social life. It wasn't something I recognised as depression until after my injury, looking back it definitely was. I want to raise awareness of depression in sportsmen and to encourage people to talk openly about mental health issues. If you have flu you talk about it with everyone from family to complete strangers. Wouldn't it be great if people opened up and spoke about depression before they got to the stage when they are leaning over the edge of a bridge contemplating jumping?
 After my injury I went on a huge downward spiral. At the same time my only real relationship ended and I struggled to cope - in fact I didn't really cope, I was a mess and I messed up. I started hanging around with a group of..... erm.... cockwombles. Complete and utter oxygen thieves. I was going out Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays with this group of idiots. They were all drug users - mainly bubble which was popular at the time. I ended up nearly 3 stone overweight, I had never had a weight problem before but the drinking and sitting in a wheelchair all day everyday soon took its toll. This bunch of halfwits were pretending to be my mates when in reality, each time we went out, they were taking money out of my bank account without me knowing and using my bank card to buy drugs online. In a way and yes, I know this sounds odd; I have a lot to thank them for. Without them stealing over £1500 off me I would probably still be going out with them. I may even be an addict myself by now if they hadn't stolen from me. I may have even continued on the downward spiral of depression until it was me hanging over the bridge contemplating jumping.

Me looking awful with some of my 'friends'.

Luckily the experience of being a cash cow for down and outs gave me the kick up the backside that I needed to try and sort my life out. I looked awful but I had been ignoring my fat body and bad skin. I decided to go to the track and do a few laps in my NHS wheelchair. It took me over 3 minutes to do a lap which really upset me but I went back each week. I fell out of my chair lots of times but I kept getting back in, kept going back for more and kept improving physically. Interestingly my depression eased too. I've now got to a point at which when I am training and racing my depression is in its box and causes me no problems whatsoever, the problem occurs when I am injured or ill and I can't take part in exercise. I think it is important for sportsmen to talk about depression to help make people more aware of what is going on. Great strides have been taken in the last few years to remove the stigma from mental illness but we still have a long way to go. From time to time on the build up to my LEJOG attempt I will mention my depression on this blog - not for sympathy but because I want people, especially sportsmen, to understand suffering with depression doesn't make you weak it's just part of life and it can be treated. You can't attempt to push a wheelchair 900miles and be weak!

This is me 9 months after I decided a change was needed. Still overweight but much happier.

   Another reason for me attempting LEJOG is just simply that I love Great Britain and I want to see as much of it as possible!

Planning this epic challenge is going to take lots of organising and I am looking for people to help with that, I already have a small team on board but if you can help out with admin please get in touch ASAP using this email address Ant400mh@Hotmail.co.uk . There is a lot of admin to do from now until the start, if you can donate one afternoon's worth of work between now and August or a couple of hours a week between now and August it will be massively appreciated.


Please visit the 'Pledge Help for LEJOG' page to see the other help I need and for a list of equipment I need to source. This page will evolve soon to include a 'rota' for people to see which days during the challenge I will be closest to where you live and what help I need everyday of the challenge.

We also have a 'Meet the Team' page on it's way and each and every person that helps will get a mention there. Companies that want to  sponsor the challenge or offer help in anyway will get coverage and a link to their company website on the 'Sponsors' page which will be launched soon.

Please keep checking back for all the latest news on my training and preparation for my challenge. Please spread the word too, the more people that know about the challenge the bigger the success it will be!

Thanks
Ant

Let's do this!!

Review of 2015 - Massive Highs and Bottomless Lows.

Well 2015 was a funny old year!

 I started out well with that 5min PB in the London Marathon and then went on to prepare for the Great Manchester 10K. It's a race I love because it is the closest to home that I have ever raced and I've always found it a shame that it doesn't attract a bigger field. 2015 was different a few coincidences made it the biggest wheelchair field the race had ever had, there were new athletes involved, people who would normally be at the Swiss champs were there and a couple of racers came out of retirement. All that meant that there was no way I was going to defend my 3rd place from 2014 so it was all about the time for me.
  As soon as the gun went there was the mad charge that seems to happen in every race although it is heightened at Manchester as there are two start lines that are on opposite sides of the road and the athletes cannot see each other. We set off harder because we don't want to be left behind by the athletes on the other side of the road. After about 80m the two groups come together on a gentle bend, there was a clash of chairs at this point in 2014 and with the extra athletes involved in 2015 it was no different. I took a big hit from Mark Telford (the guy I argued with mid race during the London Marathon) I think I swore at him but didn't think much of it at the time and just got on with my race. The first 1km or so is downhill so we get some decent speed going, the lead two were off and gone in the distance but they were David Weir and Simon Lawson who are a cut above the rest of the athletes in the UK. I would have expected the likes of Patrick Monahan, John Smith, Nathan Maguire and Stuart Bloor to be ahead of the likes of myself and Callum Hall but they weren't! When the mad dash at the start had settled we had got involved in a huge group with a few of the other athletes that don't normally race at Manchester, the group was a bit ragged at first but myself and Callum soon got them in order and working together. We were both laughing to ourselves, both knowing that really we weren't the most experienced or the fastest in that group - we were just the gobby ones that took control. We didn't half shift, most people doing their bit at the front of the field, John was a bit lazy and did virtually nothing but in the end he was out sprinted by somebody we could have dropped earlier in the race if he'd of helped us out - swift justice!
  Whilst heading towards Old Trafford we could still see Dave and Simon ahead so we knew we were going well. Just after Old Trafford there are some corners on the course and I realised that without putting any effort in I was hitting the front of the pack just because my cornering was better. I decided that when we got to the worst corner on the race I would hit it hard and try and break up the pack as I knew most of them could outsprint me and that would leave me outside the top ten. So, I sprinted into the corner, didn't break and then worked out of the corner. I had a quick look over my shoulder and I had dropped the whole pack by 20m or more, everybody in that pack had a faster 10km PB than me so I fully expected most if not all of them to catch me. I was just over halfway in the race, I knew I couldn't keep a group of faster athletes behind me whilst they were working together. I didn't make a break for home, I simply kept myself moving at a decent speed so the pack would need to work to get back to me. I hoped that as they were chasing me down the weaker members of the pack would drop off the back and once the leaders in the pack caught me I would be fresh enough to up the pace again and open up the gap between us and the weaker athletes. It worked! Exactly what I wanted to happen did so! I was a bit gutted that one of the athletes dropped was Callum who I get on great with, he was having a great push none the less. Another was Stuart who I had only ever beaten at Half and Marathon up until that point. Unfortunately, with about 2km or less to go, as the course started to climb a small gap opened up in the group of six I was racing in and it was me getting dropped. I kept working hard hoping that somebody else may be dropped and that I may get to pick them off but the five remaining lads kept strong and finished well. When I crossed the line I couldn't believe the time I had produced 24:04! Well over 2min Knocked off my 10km PB! Yes, it wasn't the 3rd place I got in 2014 but 8th in a fast time feels better to me. The post race analysis consisted mainly of people asking what had happened at the start between me and Mark Telford, apparently it looked like we were both going to come out of our chairs. Two people asked if it was round 2 of the London Marathon ranting. It wasn't, Mark had been rammed into me  by an inexperienced athlete when the two starts merged. There was no malice in it at all and we had a good chat about the accident and about London. He is actually a sound guy. We both apologised for shouting in London and shook hands.
  After manchester I set my sights fully on the Swiss Marathon Champs, My club the Weir Archer Academy sponsored myself, Martyna Snopek and Justin Levene's travel and board. It felt great to be representing the club abroad I wanted to produce something that people would be proud of. I trained really hard for the event and felt in the best shape I have ever been in. The trip started with a long drive down to London to sleep on Martyna's sofa the night before we flew from Luton airport. On the morning we were flying we headed over to the airport and parked up, I didn't have a disabled parking bay so had to park miles from the airport and push my race chair in its flight box, two wheel bags and a suitcase across a gravel carpark and then catch the bus to the airport. I didn't half get some funny looks! Once inside the airport we tried to check in and because we were flying with EasyJet the inevitable happened - we were dealt with by idiots! When booking the tickets we had let them know we were flying with wheelchairs and sports chairs, they were given the dimensions and weights of the chairs and my travel box. I had over estimated the weight of my box and told them 36kg, on the day it weighed 32kg but they wouldn't let me check it in as it was over 30kg! They let me book tickets stating I would be travelling with a 36kg box telling me there would be no problem and they would put a note on the system... but a box 4kg lighter was "too heavy"! I explained that there should be a note on their system from when we booked and the manager who had been called over said she could see the note but the box was still over 30kg so it didn't matter. Well over an hour of arguing ended with somebody else higher up the hierarchy letting me check in. It did sour the start of the trip, being made to wait at the side of the queue whilst passengers stared at us and EasyJet staff pointed at, talked about us and asked ridiculous questions like "does it have an engine?". Once checked in we literally had minutes to get to the gate and sort ourselves out. The flight was ok, I had Martyna hanging off my arm as she is petrified of flying! I don't like flying either so I couldn't do anything other than completely blank her! We must of looked like a really odd pair, her clamped onto my arm and me with head phones on watching a film an not even looking at her. What makes it even stranger is that Martyna is doing a masters in Avionics! She knows how safe planes are and knows exactly how they work yet she is petrified, haha!
  Once landed in Switzerland the problems continued, EasyJet had left Justin's race chair behind so whilst he was sorting out what was going on we stacked all 6 wheels, Martyna's race chair and all 3 suitcases on my travel box and I wheeled it through the airport whilst Martyna went to find the race organisers who were supposed to be picking us up. There was no sign of them. They eventually got there an hour and a half after we had made it through arrivals. Once checked into the hotel that was lovely we headed down into the town to try and find some cheaper food, the food in the hotel was very expensive but even the Aldi store in the town was a bit pricey. Whilst going through the town Martyna noticed my wheelchair looked odd, we stopped to look and it had been completely battered during the EasyJet flight all the wheels were buckled and the frame twisted. On our way back to the hotel up a very steep hill both of my castors broke so I had to pull a wheelie whilst carrying my shopping. Justin and Martyna just abandoned me, it must have taken me a good half hour to get up the hill. When I was about 1 minute away from the top Martyna wheeled back to me to offer to take my shopping bag, it took everything I had not to blow up at them both - there is noway on earth I would ever leave a friend to struggle like that.... actually I wouldn't even leave a stranger to struggle. Never mind, they live in the south so I guess thats normal!
 On race day we were bussed down to the start in the next town, it was raining heavily and very cold so we got ready in a large marquee, when we went out to warm up they were already lining us up in speed order with all the cyclists taking part in the various races. I managed to get about 400m warm up done then I had to take my place in the startling line up. We were sat getting cold for quite a while although the rain had stopped. Once it was time for us to start I was flying, I was drafting both the Great Marcel Hug who is a multiple World Champion and a Dutch Paralympian. I felt fine, my heart rate was within my target zone, I even climbed a small hill with the pair. Then at about the 7mile mark I couldn't exhale properly my chest went very tight and my breathing was very shallow, it came from nowhere. Justin was about 200m behind me at this point and I was in 3rd place which came with prize money which was much needed at the time. As soon as it happened I lost touch with my illustrious company but I hoped I could hide it from Justin and not give him the boost of seeing I was struggling. I carried on pushing, with the prettiest technique I could manage, whilst gasping for air. It wasn't working though, Justin soon caught me and passed me - I couldn't even hang on to him on a downhill section where normally I could hang on to anyone. I kept working for another 7 miles or so but by this point I was starting to fall asleep, it must have been lack of oxygen getting to my brain, whatever was causing it - I was scared to death. I had been struggling to breath and getting pains in my chest for 40min or so, I was starting to be lapped by the cyclists in their various races and as they were coming past at incredible speeds it started to get dangerous. If it was a case of just me limping on and finishing in a jogger's time I probably would have attempted it and who knows what would have happened. I was putting other people at risk by wandering all over the road so I pulled out, the first time I have ever pulled out of a race like that and I was devastated. I felt like I had let Jenny, Dave and everybody else at the academy down. I had wasted their money in getting me there.
  It turned out I had had an asthma attack in the race, probably brought on by the lack of warm up and the cold mountain air. I had childhood asthma but hadn't had an attack since the age of 15, I had't used an inhaler since 17 and didn't even own one. I thought I had grown out of it, I had a severe cat allergy as a child too but I have two pet cats now and they have never caused a problem in the 9 years  I have had them. My dad developed asthma in his late 20's so I guess thats where it has come from. It didn't take long once home to get the diagnosis, get an inhaler and try pushing again. The inhaler helped with the asthma but there was a bigger problem for me - the feeling of letting everybody down and the wasting of months of training brought my depression back with a huge bang. It completely bitch slapped me and I really struggled to motivate myself to do anything at all for weeks on end. I shied away from friends and family, I didn't get much training done, neglected my garden (which means a lot to me) and didn't look after myself properly. I've suffered from depression for a long time but normally it is kept under control and only rears its head in winter. To get hit in the summer so hard was really nasty.
It was a few months before I plucked up the courage to race again, I avoided the track at all costs over the summer, I came back on the Tyne Tunnel 2K - the fastest wheelchair race in the world. Haha! Only I could have months off then decide the fastest race in the world followed by the Great North Run less than 48 hours later was a good idea! I think the Tyne Tunnel 2k race is amazing and didn't want to miss it. I drove up to Newcastle and checked in to The Hilton and found out I was sharing with Mark Telford - luckily we had chatted after the Great Manchester Run and sorted things out. The Tyne Tunnel 2k takes place on the Friday evening and runs 1 kilometre downhill into the tunnel where we reach speeds of 45mph then we have a gruelling push uphill kilometre to climb out of the tunnel. I got to the hotel early and the nerves started to build as I was waiting for the time to pass before heading to the tunnel. For some silly reason I decided to swap my push rims for some newly covered ones I had with me. Newly covered rims have nice tread on them but them haven't built up a sticky layer of cluster to help with grip. As soon as the gun went I was stuck behind a slow starter but when he got going I couldn't keep with him because my gloves wouldn't stick to the rims. It took me a long time to get up to speed but as you can see in the video I was flying by the time I got to the bottom and overtook lots of faster athletes. Climbing wasn't good, my gloves slipped, you can hear them slipping in the video and I lost a lot of places. Getting beaten by my mate Jamie Carter was hard to take but he pushed really well and I didn't so he deserved it! I'll get him back next time I race it!

I always knew the Great North Run was going to be difficult for me with no real training for it, it's not my favourite course on the best of years. I had swapped back to my old rims, I had a decent warm up and waited on the start line for the gun to go. I had a storming start, next to Callum Hall and just off the lead pack. The first 2 and a bit miles are mainly downhill but even on the slight climbs I was holding my own. Then when we got to the long dragging climb that takes you past Gateshead Stadium I lost the big group I was in. I am just too heavy with my legs to stick with the other lads. I tried and tried to close the gap but they were working in a group and I was in no-man's land. I had patches working with each of the three lead women but all three of them were stronger than me on the climbs and I was faster on the decent so it was more like bunny hopping than actually pushing together! I finished fairly strongly to say I pushed most of the race alone and for the first time ever I enjoyed the GNR. My time was less than a minute behind where I had been in 2014 and with about half the training I was happy with that. The best thing about the GNR is that after the race they ship us back to the hotel and we all get a meal in the Hilton laid on for us. Myself and Martyna made full use of it, She had what looked like half a cow as a stake and I had swordfish. All with lots of post race analysis.
  The next target on my radar was the October edition of the Lisbon Half Marathon, a race that I love to support as I consider the organisers friends now. I trained really hard for this race after the confidence boost that the GNR had give me. My friend John Lloyd who owns a race organising company called Cannonball Events was due to travel with me and take part in the running event. I was looking forward to this so much, John's been really good to me and put on a few races that I could take part in when other local organisers don't want the hassle of a wheelchair athlete. I had lots to do in the lead up to the race and hadn't had time to pack until the night before the flight. It was my own fault, I should have said no to people asking me to do things for them but I didn't , I just kept saying yes. I packed my kit, broke down my race chair and stored it safely in its travel box. Then went to get my passport from the safe place it has been kept in for years... it wasn't there. I spent a few hours looking for it and couldn't find it. I phoned my mum for help at about 11PM, I was due to set off at 6:30AM to the airport. We spent another 5 hours looking, we looked everywhere, we emptied each room then put everything back. We even checked in each dvd case. Nothing. I think my cleaner might have binned it with some junk mail. So, at 6:30AM after about 40min sleep I drove John to the airport on his own. I had the same feelings that I had let people down again and it took a good few weeks to get over it.
 The year ended with me just getting back on track when another disaster happened. I had been trying to decide if I was in shape to do the Dubai Marathon in January, at first it was a no but two key sessions had swayed my mind. During my 3rd good session in a row I decided I was going to go for it in Dubai, I knew I would finish in the prize money and I have always wanted to visit Dubai. My school mate lives out there and I had received an invite from the organisers so it seemed perfect. My session went so well I decided to add an extra rep, whilst on the 3rd lap of my extra rep I was took out by a runner. He had been running in lane 2 for the previous hour and as I had been at the track for over an hour and a half he had seen me using lane 1 plenty of times. Going down the home straight, just as my front wheel drew level with him he changed lanes as if to run on to the infield. As my front wheel was already along side him when he changed directions there was nowhere for me to go and no time to do anything to avoid hitting him. My back right wheel ran over him, this sent me up on two wheels. I was tipping sideways, I put my left hand out to save myself but my arm ended up twisted behind my back. My shoulder had bee dislocated. Luckily there were a group of runners near the incident and they helped me up, it was also lucky they witnessed the accident as the runner involved wasn't a very nice person. He didn't apologise or even ask if I was ok, instead he just said "I didn't hear you!". What type of excuse is that? You wouldn't cross a road using sound alone, so why cross a track  without looking? Since the accident I have had a bit of a lynching from his club mates, abuse on Facebook, letters to my sponsors, the sports centre I train at and to my club. All from people that didn't actually see it happen. This is the club that I used to represent, I have seen them turn on people before and it isn't pretty. It would have upset me if the other runners that helped me up hadn't witnessed it and said it was his fault, I even had strangers contact me after to see if I was ok.

My poorly shoulder :(

  When you have a serious injury to your shoulder as a wheelchair user you are basically a prisoner on your sofa, you can't use a wheelchair to get around, crawling is much harder and even with some use of the legs like me you can't use crutches. Being immobile over xmas and pissed off that you can't race in a race you've had your eye on for over a year isn't good. Comfort eating and copious amounts of alcohol ensued! Read the next blog to find out the result.

Phew! Glad 2015 is over. It sounds odd to wish away a year where you produced huge PB's but I can say 100% 2016 will be better for me!

Resurrecting The Blog With A Report On London Marathon 2015

So... there are many reasons that I did not keep the blog up to speed last year but, as you will see in a a few posts time, I have a huge challenge in 2016 and I will make a big effort to blog at least once a week from now onwards! 2016 is going to be an exciting but tough year for me and it will be nice to share that journey with you all on this blog.

Back to 2015, I stopped posting on the day of the London Marathon and I can't remember why as I had a great race. I think a bit of a run down on the race would be a good place to start so here goes:

  London Marathon is a great event but it is the people of London that make it the best race in the world not the organisers, as I said back in April we had a hard time of it at the race briefing with officials being over zealous with the gaffer tape and over protective of the race numbers. If only they were so efficient on race day morning, for the second year running all staff disappeared when it came to getting all the athletes on the bus. It's standard practice at other races, like the Great Run series, for the staff to help us on the bus one at a time and then wheel the day chair off to put in a van. At London as soon as this job needs doing the staff disappear and there is no van for the day chairs so we have to wheel onto the bus and then transfer onto a seat and then my dad carries all the chairs to the back of the bus. My dad has two fractured vertebrae so the fact that the paid staff all vanish really angers me. Anyhow, my sister, Ugly and her boyfriend arrived just in time to catch the bus to the start with the athletes - it was great to see her there as she had never seen me in a proper race before.

Myself and the old man, Nigel Gotts, just before I start my warm up. 

Myself with Ugly and her boyfriend.

    Once at the start and unloaded we are finally reunited with our race chairs that had been took off us at the race brief. We spend time pumping tyres and checking all the bolts etc are tight and then we have to say goodbye to family and get out on the road to warm up. The warm up area is a stretch of road around 300m long. This year the race was doubling up as the World Championship Marathon so the field was much bigger than normal with 77 wheelchair athletes and quite a few amputee runners and blind runners. I'm not sure having everyone warm up on the same stretch of road was the wisest plan but fortunately there were no crashes.
  On the start line you could see there were some really nervous faces, including mine! I will probably never get to compete in a world championship race again and although I knew full well that I wouldn't be anywhere near the leaders I still wanted to do something that I could be proud of. The organisers weren't helping the nerves by playing the sound of a heartbeat as we sat on the start line! I quite like to be nervous before a race as it seems to help my performance so I quite liked it! Once the gun went there was an epic sprint, I found myself just a fraction behind the leading group but I couldn't quite get on the back and draft them so I soon tired and got overtook by a few friends including Callum Hall who tried to let me draft him but he soon dropped me. About a mile in to the race I was starting to feel better and caught a nice group which included my club mates Justin Levene and John Smith. I drafted them for a short while to allow my arms to recover before I did my stint at the front of the group. Only that didn't happen - we got to a corner and Justin slowed right down to 4mph to take it! Haha! I rammed him good'n'proper! not on purpose but because I had no idea anyone would break for such an easy corner. The group splintered into individuals and pairs at this point which is a real shame. Somewhere in the next 3 miles I passed Callum again but I completely missed him, I only found out I had beaten him when I finished. I felt bad because he had let me draft - I would always do the same for him but this time I didn't offer because I just didn't see him.
  My dad, our Ugly and her fella were at the 10km mark and seeing them gave me a real boost, I love that part of the course because there are lots of bands playing and large crowds around the Cutty Sark. I got in a bit of a battle with Mark Telford at this point and after a few miles of him drafting me I let my frustration overflow and told him to "Do some bloody Work". Each time I told him to do some work I felt that he was going to the front and slowing the pace so I would take over again. We ended up having a bit of a barney mid race. oops. I pushed with Shelly Woods for quite a while but she crashed at the point we have to mount the curb and not long after she ended up with a puncture and pulled out. I Saw my family again at around this point which was another huge boost as I was starting to hurt.

A great photo taken by Shane Delport during the London Marathon, check out his other work on Facebook using the link on the links page. 

  The rest of the race was a solo push which was incredibly tough mentally but I kept on giving it everything I could. I was trying to do sums in my head about my finishing time but the fatigue made it difficult. I really hate the last 2 miles at London, even though the crowds are huge I just can't seem to lift my game along the embankment. I missed my family at this point but they saw me, I did hear the Weir Archer crew all shout me on as I turned  on to Birdcage Walk. it was only at this point I realised I was on for a huge PB. I went from 1:59:51 to 1:54:59 so very nearly 5 min faster! I was pretty chuffed to finish inside the top 30 in a World Championship event, even more chuffed when I got a bit of prize money for finishing high up in the British rankings. It wasn't much but it's nice to get a bit of recognition.

My race stats for London Marathon 2015.

After the post race analysis with all the athletes, friends and family we were bussed back to the hotel, myself and my dad got showered and changed and headed out to get a pint and a giant pancake! I'd earned it! I really enjoyed the pint and giant pancake but started to feel rough very quickly so we headed back to the hotel.

Post race pint and pancake!

I had a nap at the hotel and woke up to find my arms had stuck to the bedsheets, I had taken a very thin layer of skin off my bicep area on both arms and thought nothing of it. It's fairly normal to lose a bit of skin on the arms in wheelchair athletics and these wounds hadn't even bled. When I woke up after my nap just a few hours after the race there was a thick green puss coming from the wounds, it turns out it was a nasty infection i had picked up from my tyres rubbing on the wounds during the race. I had to spend two weeks on antibiotics and have my dressings changed everyday for 10 days at my local Health Centre. This is probably why I felt so rough after just one pint. That said, I wouldn't mind feeling like that after every marathon as long as I whacked out a 5 min PB each time!

My smelly wound!