How it started, how it’s going

It’s almost exactly 26 weeks, to the hour, that my right triceps muscle was gripped by a sudden and very painful clenching pain. That was the start of my attack of brachial neuritis, which has dominated a lot of my thoughts, emotions and actions this year. Since getting back on the bike at the start of June my mood has naturally lifted tremendously in some respects, no doubt boosted by my best friends serotonin, dopamine and various endorphins. I’ve come a very long way since January.

Today I went back to my physiotherapist to discover officially that my left supraspinatus  is firing again. I knew this already as my left arm has become a bit more mobile. My performance figures on my bike are still miles off where they were in December and way off my best, but they have leapt forward since the start of June. So whilst I’ve a long road ahead still, the trajectory is accelerating. Good news.

Sadly I won’t be going on a cycling trip this year, at least I don’t think I will be. With my rate of improvement, I’m pretty confident that I would have been good enough on the bike to ride confidently and enjoyably around the Cevennes and surrounding areas in early September as had been planned. Given my double-vaccinated status it would not have taken much to get into France, and I’m reasonably confident the requirement to quarantine on my return would have been lifted by the time we were due to go.

But of course pandemics are awfully complicated things to navigate around. Much as I wanted to go, and would have been capable of going, it turned out not to be possible as my existing riding partner decided to drop out. Unfortunately it was a bit too late in the day to find another willing and sane soul to take his place, so it was best all round to cancel and plan for next year.  More on that next time I hope as preliminary plans can begin to firm up, once a few other local difficulties are out of the way.

This time of year is always always a bit tough to get through. The dead zone between the end of the Tour, and the start of the Football season. It was a mark of how far the Manx missile had come in a couple of short weeks that I was disappointed that he didn’t win on the Champs-Elysee. But then again, back in January I said to myself I didn’t care if I never rode a bike again, just make this pain stop. Hindsight and all that. To be fair, Cav surpassed all of our pre-Tour expectations, certainly proved us all wrong, so who would bet against him coming back and winning the Yellow jersey and the record on stage 1 in Denmark next June?

Foresight on the other hand, is much harder to get right. I had both my vaccines in my leg, I took a few soundings about whether it was the right thing to do, would it affect my brachial neuritis or set off other autoimmune conditions? In the end I decided that as well as being the right thing for my health, it was also the right thing in terms of my obligation to society.

The anti-vaxxers spout a load of guff about it affecting your DNA and so on, in the same way that 5G was spreading the virus back in 2020. That’s easily de-bunked with a bit of research and intelligence. But I also had to factor in the risks to my health, and the probability of another attack. But sometimes we all need to take a step back and make a decision that is just the right thing to do in the broadest sense, put aside our self-interest, our stupid principles and our narcissism. I struggle to understand why any sane person would not get vaccinated unless there were genuine medical reasons not to. 

Meanwhile the chief concern is trying to stay one step ahead of the Covid virus, whilst managing to get out and improve my fitness. I was unfortunate to be infected with Covid in March 2020, before variants had been invented. It was decidedly unpleasant, and (autoimmune conditions aside) I was then in very good cardiovascular health, was pretty fit at the time and had good defences against it. Although of course I’m not slim. But there is the risk of Long Covid, a real illness one of my wife’s family is unfortunate to now have, and none of know how it can affect us. It most definitely is not the flu, and with a pool of the unvaccinated, there is a strong chance of more vicious variants evolving.

I’m looking at our first game at home at the end of August and wondering if it will be safe to go. Fortunately it looks like only the double-vaccinated will be allowed in. As London Transport has also made the sensible decision to continue to enforce mask-wearing on the tube, travel to the ground can be safer as well. It’s still concerning that some idiots will blithely refuse to wear them on some kind of misguided point of principle, but hopefully a good dose of tutting will do for them. 

Anyway, if we are to believe the Government, all the numbers are trending down, and those sunlit uplands are well within reach. In this crazy world you never know what may happen next.

Of almost equal concern is the return of claret socks to our home kit. Just thinking about it boils my blood, everyone knows they should be white. Quite apart from tradition, we always play better when our kit has white socks. Last year our magical away kit, all stealth black, conferred super powers on the players and propelled us into Europe. So do not downplay how important these things are. Our home strip also has a little less blue in the sleeves than I’d normally consider acceptable, but as this is the year of concentrating on what is important, I’m prepared to do an Elsa.

Anyway, this shirt is supposed to be an homage to one that the club is calling retro, it’s a sign of how old I am that I consider it the recent past. Still, Paulo and all that. Just don’t mention the retro socks OK?

Lots to look back on, and lots to look forward to. It feels like a real turning point.

Renaissance man

 Comebacks, don’t you love them? 

As ever Mark Cavendish does it again. Of course this man is my cycling hero, not least for the reverence he treats the Tour de France. I remember standing at the top of the Col de Peyresourde in 2013 and being interviewed by a French journalist about our attitude to Team Sky (as was) and their dominance of the Tour that year. He was almost taken aback by our disdain for their metronomic approach, and surprised that I expressed the more romantic appeal of Cav, with his swashbuckling sprinting, and his struggles over the mountains to make the time cut. Go back to my posts in July 2013 for more.

But it is some comeback, even for him. Although I’d love to be 36 again, it’s not a young age for a professional cyclist. Those of you who have never ridden back-to back 100-mile days will find it hard to appreciate just how difficult that is, physically at least. But then Cavendish has been written off so many times over the years, and has proved his mental resilience is second to none. In the last five years he’s endured a broken scapula, the ravages of the Epstein-Barr virus, as well as missing the time cut of a mountain stage and being excluded from the Tour in 2018. His non-selection for the last two years has been accompanied by mental struggles as he fought his way back from the brink of retirement for another shot at the big time.

He was only selected this years because the other two sprinters on his team were injured. But that drive and will to succeed don’t go away do they? He may be more mellow, have a broader life perspective and all that, but the outpouring of emotion we saw as he crossed the finish line on Tuesday was vintage. Authenticity runs deep, and the relief, joy, euphoria and appreciation of what he’d done, came flooding out. He’s generous too, to his team-mates who worked so hard for him, but also to those who believed in him through the dark days. It’s so important that. In life there are people who will jump on your bandwagon when things are good or easy for them, but as soon as other plans take their fancy, well, they drop you like a stone don’t they? Often more than once if you let them.

Not content with winning a 31st stage, Mark Cavendish surprised no one by going and doing it again today in Chateauroux, a place he’s won twice before. I snapped this image from the TV footage, more measured celebrations amongst the team than on Tuesday, (they could hardly have been less!) but no less joyful.

My son gave me a wonderfully thoughtful present for Father’s Day, a quality silver pendant of a Green Man. It’s an ancient symbol whose origins date from before there was even any stupid notion of England, never mind a semi-constituted country intent on patting itself on the back every time it won an easy football match. I love football, or more specifically, I love West Ham, but winning a last-16 match is not yet an achievement.

Anyway, the symbol, if you haven’t already guessed, is about re-birth. I’ve always loved it and we have one on the gable end of our house, but now I have one around my neck too. Even the chain is hypo-allergenic. 

If you read the link above you can find examples all over the World, illustrating yet again the commonality of our experience and how universal these things are. Again. I bet even Daniel Camroux knew what it meant, in 17th century Occitan (now referred to as France). See how meaningless your labels are?

 I’m over the worst on my brachial neuritis as I said in my last post. But my arms are still only about 50% of what they were before it struck. But, I am re-born, a concept the Christians stole from the pagans, and they probably stole it from someone else. It all got co-opted into churches and now small silver pendants, bursting with with meaning. Because meaning, purpose and love are far more enduring than nations, tribes and petty tyrants. 

Truth is, none of us are outsiders. None of us are elites, or the downtrodden. We can trust, believe, follow the science or not, it’s a matter of choice in the end. We are not Boomers, or Generation X or Millennials or whatever other labels we allow clever marketing folk to pin on us. We are born, grow old, then die. We can do this together, or alone, another matter of choice. But sometimes, on the road to the Arrivee, we are given opportunities to be joyful, loving and even to be re-born. What’s your choice?