Cycling!,  Multiple Sclerosis

Cycling: A Change of Adventure

It is time to accept it. Those grand cycling adventures, in the form that I have been experiencing them for the past few years, are gone. Cycling is not over, though. No way. It is too important to me. I just need to change the adventure that I experience through it.

A Short History

Cycling is massive for me perhaps because my history of bikes and Multiple Sclerosis are strangely intertwined. I actually only started riding a racing bike in 2012 at the tender age of thirty-seven and it was a crash on one of the early rides that led, in a roundabout way, to diagnosis. It was already there but what were suspected side-effects from the crash turned out to be MS taking advantage of the stress the accident caused to come out to say ‘hello’. Trembling, dizziness and light-headedness were apparent and led to a set of tests for various conditions that led to that initial diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis. Scary but after hearing that Motor Neurone disease and stroke had also been in scope it was, oddly, a relief.

Acts of Resistance

My first act upon hearing that preliminary diagnosis was to go out and ride a bike for a long distance which actually wasn’t that long but felt it at the time. The rides quickly got longer and started to get higher. The germ of the idea of using a cycling adventure as a kind of act of resistance took form.

It was when mountains started to play a part in the adventure that things started to feel special. I will always love Mont Ventoux and have done for a long time since the first time I set eyes on it in 2008. Then just looking up that iconicly bare summit. Cycling up it did not come until 2016. My first mountain and an insanely difficult one for a beginner. Such an achievement.

The Feeling

I can’t really describe it very easily, how it felt at the summit of Ventoux. There was a similar elation after finishing Liege-Bastogne-Liege the next year. Then it came again and again. After summiting various other mountains or completing Grand Fondos. Got addictive. The feeling when you look down at the clouds and realise that you have just cycled up that under your own power. Embracing your friends, covered in mud and sweat and realising what you have just put yourself through for one-hundred-and-fifty kilometers. The completion of a real adventure. Nothing can match it. Indescribable.

What to call that moment at the adventure’s end? I just call it ‘The Feeling’. Sorry, a bit pompous but it does for me. It is not just the achievement of a goal or target. It is an achievement in spite of yourself, in spite of all that nature can throw at you. A tingling in your heart, the ach in the legs, your pulsing mind. Something more than spectacular and it is all yours. The end of the adventure and an act of resistance.

Changing the Adventure

A hard thing to write, to say, to admit is that those adventures in the old form are now gone. MS was always going to win that battle and it will eventually win the war. It has weakened the feeling in my legs, the coordination, so that aching I felt is no longer there. Just numbness. The muscles, though, are still in good shape. So I will try to see this as a tactical retreat for now. The mountains will still be there but with an E-Bike and that is fine. I will still keep working with my physio so perhaps it will be possible with a standard racing bike? Here’s hoping. I can still do long rides in Holland and enjoy them. With lots of pauses and quite slowly but still pretty long. Also fine. Less to talk about but.. nice to do. Which is the main point. An adventure that is not far from home.

Of course, it is not quite the same. I will honestly miss the feeling of adventure as it was. The climbing will still be there but not quite under my own power. But I am glad to have had those feelings that touched my heart. No-one is ever going to take them away from me or the memories of how I managed to achieve them. Not ever.

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