I finally got to ride the Chalke and Cheese Audax last weekend. Well the weekend before, but who’s counting? Martyn and I had first thought about doing it in 2018, but for some reason we couldn’t make it, so the weekend after we set out to ride the route as an informal DIY. But we got a bit lost in the early evening and ended up slogging around near Mere in the gloom. We both did well over distance but it was not the real deal.
2019 passed us by, I can’t remember why, maybe weather or football-attendance related or maybe it was the beginnings of the bout of whooping cough, but in 2020 we both entered again. Infamously I had two punctures within the first 20km, and given as I’d had 3 the weekend before I rightly bailed suspecting a wheel problem. Which there was. Martyn however gamely pedalled on and completed it on his own. He’s been doing a lot of that recently, I’m not convinced he knows why he keeps going with the 200km rides?
As for 2021, I think we were all a bit locked down at the time weren’t we?
So it was a relief, and also a joy, to trundle around the delightful route, puncture at 80km notwithstanding and finally complete the thing. It is a lovely route though, and was very well-attended, despite the first four hours on icy lanes in sub-zero temperatures. As for this year’s puncture, luckily the mud, cold and lack of reading glasses obscured the fully-cracked rim - the whole braking surface interrupted by a twisted crack. I’m sure there’s a metaphor in there somewhere. A miracle I didn’t get more punctures or worse.
I’ve just been to the physiotherapist this morning, checking in to see how much recovery still continues on the brachial neuritis. Good news, my grip strength is now “normal”, which as everyone knows is a statistical average, and given it was around 50% of normal nine months ago is great to hear. Recovery is continuing in almost all my muscles, even down to the lower forearms. Still not fully there, but it’s still progressing.
There is however, bad news, the recovery around one muscle, the left infraspinatus, has stalled, with no progress in the last three months. This muscle is a key one in rotating the shoulder and giving it stability. It has also caused impingement in the joint, meaning as other muscles continue to grow stronger, the imbalance will potentially get worse. I’m going for some repeat nerve conduction studies to see if this is nerve damage, and if so how bad, or if it’s something else.
But. It’s a big but, because it’s almost exactly a year since this illness, condition, whatever, struck. It was a strike too, a sudden, nasty, vicious and painful whack to my system. I recently looked back at a WhatsApp thread, I was trying to find an address. But I came across the exchange of messages I’d had during the first week, and on my part they had become the virtual equivalent of monosyllabic. I was clearly less than my normal garrulous state. I remembered how frightening it had been to suddenly lose function, to be overwhelmed by unusual and unexpectedly severe pain, not knowing what it was or where it was going. Or going to end.
I hope it never comes back. I hope none of you ever get this. But, and this is the but, I consider myself very fortunate to have made as much of a recovery as I have. Even if I made no more progress at all, I could live with it. Barring putting on pullover fleeces, and reaching for things on high shelves, (no jokes about short people please) I can do just about everything I need to, and the cycling seems to be OK. I mean, 200km, done very slowly I’ll grant you, but I never thought I’d get back to that, puncture or no puncture.
This year I have three simple aims. First, stay alive. Second, stay healthy. Third, enjoy myself as much as possible. That’s it.
I do have other plans, some of which involve bikes, bikes with friends in France, bikes in Devon, other places. Also, learning how to have a real laugh, telling a story, or at least the research for one. And learning to listen better, no not the empathic caring about others stuff, actually getting hearing aids that don’t give me an allergic reaction.
One of the sayings I like to trot out on a regular basis is this. Most of the things we ever worry about don’t turn out to be as bad as we first fear. So why focus on the worry, when you could focus on better things?
I don’t really know how this shoulder thing is going to end, but I do know this. There have been a lot of people rooting for me in the last twelve months, and a lot of people who have supported me in ways big and small, and in ways they didn’t have to. I’m very grateful and thankful to everyone that has helped speed me on the path to recovery. Even those who let me down have help, in a funny kind of way. That’s my focus, the people who help, not the worry and the people who don’t. Really.
We can all recover. We may be changed, hurt, impaired, damaged, but, and this is the big but, recovery is always possible.
