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!!

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!