POP UP THE COUNTRY: 04/05/18

What and why?

This blog is an account of my sponsored virtual bike ride from Land's End to John O'Groats, taking a slightly scenic route so that I stop at some interesting places. I will be covering a total distance of 1,636 km, or 1,022.5 miles if you prefer.

It might sound odd doing it as a virtual ride, but I wouldn't be able to do the 'real life' version as I had a spinal cord injury - cauda equina syndrome - in September 2016, and again in October 2016. I have been left with permanent damage, I am a powered wheelchair user, and can only use specialised bikes. I also have chronic severe brittle asthma, insulin controlled steroid induced diabetes, Cushing's Syndrome, and liver disease, which mean that I have to be careful when exercising, and can only do so in a safe and supervised environment.

Until January 2018 there were no facilities outside of the hospital environment for those with spinal cord injuries in the north of England to use a gym with specially adapted equipment. Then POP-UP GYM opened.

Set up by Drew Graham, an athlete who had a spinal cord injury when training in the USA, Pop-Up Gym has three MotoMed bikes, two of which also have Function Electrical Stimulation programming available so that those even those with total paralysis can pedal an exercise bike by the power of their own muscles. The gym also has two standing frames, one of which can be used as a kind of elliptical trainer as well. There is a VitaGlide trainer, a VibroGym and a wheelchair-adapted multigym. The gym employs three personal trainers, a neuro rehab physiotherapist, and a couple of ancillary staff, but they are also reliant on volunteers.

Gym users can either pay as they go or sign up to become members, but as both a business and a charity the gym needs a regular income in order to keep going and keep providing the excellent facilities they do, facilities that are only available to the public in a handful of places around the UK, and nowhere else in the north of England, possibly nowhere north of the West Midlands.

My aim for this ride is to raise some much needed funds for POP-UP GYM, and I welcome all the support I can get. I have broken the ride down into twenty-two legs, stopping at interesting places along the way. I'll be writing the blog as though I am doing the ride 'in the real world', showing you pictures of where I'm going and what I see, and perhaps writing about some of the folk I meet along the way. I will be doing the ride on the gym's MotoMed bikes and attending two to three times a week, so I estimate I should complete it in about eight weeks.

Please sponsor me if you think my efforts are worth it and the cause is worthy.

5 April 2018

Almost

It's the night before the beginning of my virtual adventure and I have to say that I'm really quite nervous, although I'm not entirely sure why as the first leg of my ride is a 'mere' 66km and I did 70km on Wednesday during my last training session. I think it's because from tomorrow it starts to matter.

Don't get me wrong, I am looking forward to it and I'm excited about it, but I have a strange nervousness too ... Perhaps in part because I don't only want to make a success of the ride (and the blog), but I also want to reach or exceed my fundraising target. It matters to me, it really does, and I think I'm only just realising how much it matters to me.

Pop Up Gym opened in January. I saw an item about it on the local news a week later, and two days after that I went for my introductory session. It has already changed my life, and I am certain that it is going to change it a lot more as the months progress and I achieve whatever spinal rehabilitation potential I have. But raising the money means more to me than just my own progress. I see others there with injuries at other levels of the spinal cord, and several who have had strokes. There's a young lad who's only ten who pedals his socks off on the FES function on the bikes and clearly enjoys what he's doing, and I see the pleasure on his father's face when he sees his son cycling again. Folk of all ages, all backgrounds, all conditions, all come together in this small specialist gym on the edge of an industrial estate on the banks of the Tyne in Gateshead to rehabilitate themselves. Many of us would never meet or mix if it weren't for Pop-Up Gym, but we enjoy each other's company, and I know that I have found unexpected relief in meeting others with similar conditions or different conditions with similar effects on our bodies. But while it is some kind of neurological damage that has brought us together and united us, it isn't what we dwell on, what we spend most of our time talking about. Of course those things come up in conversation, but we are about living and looking to the future. We are about maximising our potentials, and now we have a place to strive for those goals. Pop-Up Gym is more than just a place to exercise; it is a community of positivity. There is no other facility like it within 200 miles or more, and that's why it is so important, and why reaching or exceeding my fundraising target is so important to me. That is why I am nervous about beginning my ride tomorrow.

Please, if you can, sponsor me for this 1,636km/1,022.5 mile MotoMed bike ride. Even 50 pence makes a difference and will help so many people with spinal cord injuries and neurological conditions. My Just Giving page can be found here.

I guess I'd better be thinking about getting some rest, but I'll see you all tomorrow at the First and Last House in England at Land's End. Kick off is at 11am.

What and why?

5 April 2018

Almost

Lairg Lodge to Strathnaver Museum, Bettyhill