High Excitement

As part of my marathon training Friday is 'long run' day. When I reveal to the running stalwarts in my sphere of friends that all my training is done on the treadmill I wait for the standard recoil and looks of horror. But, there are many benefits of training indoors, especially during the winter when a controlled environment provides a great comparison week on week as to my progression. More importantly, though, I find the 'give' on the treadmill to be kinder to my Achilles. Lymphoedema aside, my damaged Achilles is the biggest threat to my marathon goal and I will do whatever is necessary to give myself the best chance of success. If this means banging out up to 3 hours of a long run on the treadmill then so be it. In a bizarre way I actually relish this challenge and use my time productively. I don't listen to music or watch the bank of TV screens, I just run and I think. This is my time for me and usually my mind takes me on an enthralling journey. Juggling work, home life, and both running and cycling training means there is not much spare time in my life and running has become marvelously therapeutic.

This Friday, my mind quickly settled on the exciting plans for 2012 beyond the marathon. Hardly surprising as the previous night I attended the HotChillee Ride Captain and Sponsors dinner. Let me explain a little about HotChillee. They are the organisation behind the phenomenally successful London to Paris (L2P) and Alpine Challenge events. In 2010 I rode L2P and was completely overwhelmed by the experience. Their strap line is "Professional Events for Amateurs" and they are not wrong. Over the years I've taken part in a lot of mass participation events; large scale triathlons ranging from National and World championships, big city marathons in both New York and London and have even competed at the supremely slickly organised Hawaii Ironman. Yet none of these compared to my HotChillee experience. Wow. So impressed was I that I immediately signed up for the inaugural Alpine Challenge that year and returned to L2P in 2011. Many, many others do the same; it's interesting to reflect why? Having ridden between London and Paris once, what's the lure of doing it again? And again. And again. Yet many do. Year after year. The magic is in the whole experience, the camaraderie, that it is just a wonderful three days on your bike. HotChillee are the people that make this happen.

I was hooked, and felt impelled to get more involved. On the road during the events each group of riders is mentored, encouraged and if need be, controlled, by an army of Ride Captains. David (the Bull) and Will, assigned to my group, were an integral part of my enjoyment and inspired me to push to new levels. The Ride Captains are the front line of HotChillee, the ambassadors of the brand and they are brilliant people. Imagine my delight therefore when recently I was accepted on to the Ride Captain Development Squad. I was bursting with pride. This means that I get the chance to become a part of the HotChillee family, to learn the skills needed to be a fully-fledged Ride Captain (RC) and at some stage in the future I hope to guide, assist and support fellow athletes on their own personal journey of attainment. If I can convey just a fraction of the pleasure I have had, we all will be winners.

The duties of a RC start months before the event itself, with organised training rides starting in January, the first of which is tomorrow. So, this evening, as I prepare all my kit, I feel excited, but also mildly apprehensive. Tomorrow, I begin to learn my trade, and to get to know fellow L2P 2012 participants, be they familiar faces from previous years or new-comers.  Only time will tell, but I hope to strike up new friendships and play a part in the achievement of others – this time it’s all about them!

Just Giving

A year ago, faced with the prospect of Lymphoedema for the rest of my life, with no cure and a stark absence of treatments, it felt that my whole world was changing. I was scared and felt abandoned by the medical profession. My GP tried his best but he knew less about my condition than  I did! Trawling the internet for the most part just added to my woes, revealing shocking images of grotesquely swollen limbs. However, my internet quest did bring up one gem, the Lymphoedema Support Network (LSN). Here was an organisation committed to helping people just like me and I seized on the chance to find out as much as I could, signed up for membership and with it gained access to a massive array of  information booklets, DVDs, a telephone helpline and self-help resources. In the last year, pushing their remit forward, the LSN has also instigated a major drive in the area of GP education, laying down important foundations for earlier diagnosis and better support.

Lymphoedema that occurs post-cancer is an area of medicine that has generated some research interest but in the main it's woefully under funded. This makes even more remarkable the service that the LSN provide. As part of my '2012 resolution of giving' my first task therefore is to try and raise some money for the LSN.

So how am I going to do this? Not wanting to depart too much from what I know, but also wanting to make it a challenge worthy of my friends & families support, I have signed up to run the Brighton Marathon on April 15th.

It will be 10 years since I last competed over the marathon distance. Since then I've endured a chronic Achilles tendonitis injury that stopped me running for 2 years and pushed me into cycling, not to mention having to deal with Lymphoedema. In recent years I've dabbled with a minor run element in my weekly program but nothing like the distance I need to build up to give due respect to the marathon distance. But that's part of the challenge.

Coach Helen and I sat down some months ago when this idea was first hatched to see if it was a realistic goal. Being sensible my damaged Achilles was never going to allow me to run repeatedly day after day and the high mileage approach I adopted ten years ago was a definite no-go. We devised a plan comprising of only 3 runs a week, training on alternate days of Monday, Wednesday & Friday, with a limit of around 40-45 miles per week. With my mind also on other challenges to come post marathon, we’ve combined these runs with my more usual bike training and it’s intriguing to see whether this ‘less is more’ approach will work.

Gradually I've been getting the necessary miles under my belt and now feel that I'll be there on race day.  For sure it will not be like my last race in April 2002; then I was in the championship race at the London Marathon and ran a respectable 2:52. I competed for myself, for personal gain.  This time it’s about completing not competing; how fast I run is mostly irrelevant although my hard-wired competitive streak has set a target of sub-3:30. This time it's about pushing to the limit for a far worthier cause and sincerely hope that you too will join me on this journey. I resolve to push out the bounds and run 26.2 miles, will you visit my charity page www.justgiving.com/JulietteClark and sponsor me?

Time to give

Reading my last blog entry that was all the way back in April 2011 is a timely reminder of how life moves on. What then felt like a cataclysmic event in my life has now faded into a distant memory. Any readers that don't know me personally may have worried about the outcome, whether I recovered from my knee injury, whether I won the unequal struggle against Lymphoedema. The absence of posts in the last eight months suggest one of two things; either it all went horribly wrong and I couldn't bring myself to write about it, or life returned to normal and day to day tasks took over. Thankfully it was the latter and the past months have been a rewarding learning experience and the future looks bright.

A quick review of what has passed in this period from the perspective of an athlete; I did manage my 'test ' sessions and committed to the HotChillee organised London to Paris bike ride in June. Rich came over from Brisbane and, apart from an issue with his bike frame that was damaged in transit (thanks Sigma Sport http://www.sigmasport.co.uk/ for building a brand new bike in a matter of days) we had the most fantastic time. Ok, I wasn't as fit and prepared as I wanted to be but I still rode my heart out, competed hard with my group 2 co-riders and shed a few tears of relief and joy when we rode in grand procession down the Champs-Élysées to finish under the Tour Eiffel. Rich, Kath, Vicki and I had an excellent evening of celebration. Round one: Juliette 1, Lymphoedema nil. Well it wasn't quite nil to Lymphoedema, as my leg was swollen after three days and 520k in the saddle but it was manageable and was a small price to pay for the elation of the achievement.

This was my highlight of 2011 and was a damascene milestone in helping me conquer the fears that my life was going to change for the worse; in truth little has changed. I'm still an athlete (erstwhile), I train between 10 and 15 hours a week and have some really exciting goals for 2012 (more about these later). I have my health and my happiness. Lymphoedema is a nuisance but it hasn't prevented me from doing things; we had a week in the sun in the summer and we flew long-haul to New York in November, both of which I thought if not impossible then implausible this time last year. I manage my condition; it does not rule me. Some days are good, some are not so, but I've learnt what I need to do, and the rising swell of panic, uncertainty, frustration, helplessness are all part of the past. I truly hope that other Lymphoedema sufferers reading this will take heart from my experiences and believe that life can, does and will go on pretty much as normal.

So what now? Well I freely admit that the past twelve months have been a lot about me; about dealing with Lymphoedema, more than once I caught myself lamenting that "I didn't want this to happen to me". But it did and, hey, really it's not that bad.  Having spent this time in an egocentric state I firmly believe now that it's time to redress the balance. 2012 is therefore my year of giving back. Check back in a couple of weeks for more details and to join me on a new journey.