Every time I come to Jamaica the same thing happens. I get to the end of my trip only to find myself on the BA website, trying to push my flight back.
Unfortunately, this time it’s only to extend over the weekend. With hospital appointments beckoning, I don’t have much choice other than to fly home on Monday. As I read the news of storms hitting the UK, my body shakes at the thought of returning to the cold.
It’s been so nice to live pain free for the last four weeks as I am just getting back into some level of fitness with a good three-hour daily routine.
I’m not going to lie, the bike stuff has been extremely difficult. I am not really bike-fit yet, so every session has my heart rate hovering above zone three for the full duration of the session. In other words, it doesn’t drop under 150 and mostly sits around 160-180bpm. It’s like riding a time-trial every day, and while I love time-trialling, it can be quite demanding.
Just leaving the house to ride through Kingston each day has been a journey into the unknown. It is an experience that is part survival, part exhilarating that leaves you thinking “did that just happen”. Each time I reach the house I pretty much fall off my bike in a pool of sweat.
Last week I spoke about how I was so dehydrated that I was contemplating drinking the rain water out of pot holes. Maybe this was tempting fate. I was going well on one of my mountain rides up behind Kingston, just as the sun was setting.
Looking down at my Garmin computer to see how much I had left in me, I looked up just as my front wheel went into a huge pot hole. I instantly thought “oh no, here we go, I am going down”.
The good thing was I was going slowly as I was climbing rather than descending. The bad part was I was on a bend.
Now this wouldn’t be great for most people but when you are paralysed on one side it becomes almost impossible to unclip out the pedals.
So as I hit the ground on my good side my only thought was how I was going to get off the road. As I lay there in the middle of the road waiting to be run me over, I frantically tried to get my leg unclipped so I could move off the road.
Thankfully, I was lucky as the first car to turn the corner was going slowly. Before I knew it I had three Jamaicans lifting me off the road and wanting to put me in their car.
When I insisted that I had to get back on my bike and reach the top of the hill, I think it’s safe to say they thought I was mad. Some half paralysed white dude with blood running down his leg and a broken seat post was getting back on his bike.
As I rode off up the hill I had that conversation in my head that it wasn’t about being tough or trying to prove something. It was simply the same persistence to never give up after every surgery that got me back on the bike and riding to the top.
It seems strange, but if I had got in the car I would have felt the tumour was winning. I am well aware this probably isn’t the healthiest mindset, to believe that I’m in the middle of a constant competition between living life and the tumour, but it feels like my reality. I have lost lots of time in hospital and I am determined not to let the tumour or paralysis keep me down when I am not in there.
So I climbed back on, made it to the top and watched the sun set over Kingston. It was beautiful, even if it made the descent a little more interesting in the dark.
It’s back to the UK then, and I am determined to keep up the momentum. Assuming all goes well at the hospital, the plan is to head out to Spain to chase the sun and get more big miles under my belt before I sign up to a similar ride to the one I completed in the Alps prior to surgery in 2018.
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