I’VE been taking inspiration this week from one of the world’s greatest-ever survival stories, a man who fought for his life in Antartica over 100 years ago.

The first week post radiation was actually something I was looking forward to. Little did I know it was going to be the toughest yet. My symptoms have peaked, leaving me struggling to do anything. Ulcers in my mouth are causing me severe pain, I have shingles on my face and am suffering from extreme fatigue. It hasn’t been the most fun week of my life.

The bike at the end of my bike is covered in dust and there is no sign of me climbing onto it. But my friend Noel Baxter, the former Olympic skiing star, is here. I’m lying on the bed watching him ride it. As I struggle to keep my eyes open and hear the noise of the bike getting louder I can’t fight anymore and my eyes close.

Seeing Noel on my bike gave me two feelings. One: I can’t wait to get back on it and two: I feel so week - how am I going to start training again?

Those who have been following this column would perhaps know how I can find inspiration from various different places. This week it has come from learning about the story of Sir Douglas Mawson. You would be forgiven if you have never heard of him.

My good friend and GB Paralympic cycling team-mate Steve Bate first put me on to him. And the more I have found out about him, the more I can see that Sir Douglas had a will to live like nothing I have ever read about.

Compared to him I have the luxury of so many things, but he would never give up and neither will I. This is my survival story and sometimes I feel like I’m just holding on. Not a week goes past now without me asking myself ‘what would Douglas Mawson do?’

The story goes like this: a three man team of Mawson, Xavier Mertz, and Belgrave Ninnis a British solider, set off across the East Antarctica plateau. Five weeks into the expedition, Ninnis falls down a crevasse with all their main gear and food.

A drop of 150ft, not only was there no chance of their colleague surviving, there was no chance of retrieving their supplies. They were 300 miles from base.

The remaining members of the team now only had 10 days supply of food. This was a major problem as they were at least a month away from safety.

As they began to run out of food they had no choice other than to start eating the dogs. The liver, the most nutritious part of the animal, became their main source of food. But there was just one problem; unbeknown to them it was also extremely poisonous to humans. Both men start to become unwell.

Their skin starts falling off, and Mertz - an Olympic athlete - suffers the worse. He is deteriorating fastest - it’s clear he is not going make it. Mawson doesn’t leave him but Mertz is in a confused state by now. He bites off his own finger and passes away through the night.

This leaves Mawson with over 100 miles on his own to get back to the base. Much like the journey I am on now, he had to find an inner strength to keep going.

Mawson conceded the hopelessness of his chances in a 1913 diary entry, only praying that if he could find somewhere to store his diary someone would find them one day and learn from them.

His hair falling out, boils all over his face, and skin falling off, he decides to take off his shoes to find that his soles of his feet had detached from his body. So the flesh is completely exposed. He just straps them back on and gets back on his feet to keep going. And I am complaining from my bed about my ulcers ....

Just when you think it can’t get worse he then falls into a crevasse himself. He’s hanging from a rope on his sledge that is stuck in the snow, just hanging there thinking ‘that’s it, I am going to die here’. But from somewhere deep inside he manages to pull himself and just as he reaches the top he slipped and fell back down. As I sit looking at my bike I think what he said and think of him hanging there, it makes getting on a bike pretty easy really.

The exertion of crawling out of the snow having caused him to pass out, he wakes up hours later covered in snow. He is still 80 miles from the hut, and knows there is possibly no one left in it. But he keeps going. At one point he made his own crampons from some wood and the nails ended up going into his feet. But still he kept going.

Just when he is getting closer to base, he sees the relief ship leaving shore. He missed it by five hours and now faces a year in Antarctica in the hut until the ship can return for him. I wonder how he would deal with radiation and the after-effects? What would he tell me if he was alive today? What do you do if the soles of your feet fall off? As Steve Bate and I say, you strap them on and keep going.