 |
|
 |
Shrewsbury to Preston – 91 miles
Wednesday 10 June 2009
Jason Gill, the disabled hand cyclist and a member of Be Number 1’s LEJOG project, has retired from the event after rain and unexpected headwinds combined to conspire against him.
The ex-RAF and ex-TA 39-year-old, who has been confined to a wheelchair since falling 50 feet while rock-climbing in Gibraltar in 1997, took the only sensible option yesterday afternoon, having covered about 250 miles of the route from Land’s End to John O’Groats. Still, it has been a laudable effort by the Chester-based athlete, who was suffering from blistered hands, sore elbow joints and windburn.
“I had a good night’s sleep last night and feel much better for it, but I definitely made the correct decision,” said Gill today. “The first day in particular was very hilly – in fact, the 7,000 feet I climbed on Sunday is almost as high as Ben Nevis and Mount Snowdon put together!
“But it wasn’t the hills in isolation that were so much the problem. I trained hard in that respect and knew pretty much what to expect. It was really the combination of the rain, which caused my hands to blister, and a headwind that did for me. Until Friday, they were forecasting a tailwind, which is more the norm in those parts. But instead of cycling with a south-westerly behind me, I was riding into a north wind almost the whole time.
“It is a draining experience trying to keep your speed up in an unremitting headwind. I even went down to lower wheels – the 20-inch wheels that the bike came with rather than 27-inch carbon-fibre racing wheels – so that I would be three or so inches nearer the ground. I thought maybe the wind would be less of a factor that way, but it didn’t make a great deal of difference.
“I was surprised at how drained I was mentally and I think that was partly because of the frustration I felt after all the training I had done. Put that together with the wind, the rain and the hills, and I think the whole combination just got to my mind.
“Basically a worse two days than Sunday and Monday I can’t imagine. I could possibly have carried on yesterday, knowing that today would have been a short, flat day. But I would have fallen further and further behind the rest of the Be Number 1 cycling team. And I also made sure that they didn’t wait around for me, because that would have put their ride in jeopardy.
“But the way I feel today, I definitely made the right decision to stop, because I think I would have done serious damage to myself otherwise. My elbow joints, which were really overworked, are bruised and my hands are badly blistered because of the rain. As far as my windburn is concerned, I feel like my face has been slashed 100 times. When I was 17 or 18 years old, I rode 100 miles with Chris Boardman. I was sore after that, but nowhere near this bad!
“Do I have any regrets? No, I suppose I don’t. I would obviously like to have completed the course and I really think I could have finished it if it hadn’t been for the headwind in particular, which was debilitating. And it would have been great to beat the existing LEJOG record for a hand cyclist, which currently stands at 17 days. But that’s life. I gave it my best shot and it didn’t quite work out.”
Back on the road, meanwhile, the cycling team (minus Pippa Wilson, who reluctantly withdrew from the event following her injury yesterday) arrived in Preston this evening after a 91-mile journey from Shrewsbury, though not before Toby Sykes had experienced one of his more eventful days in the saddle.
“About 20 miles north of Shrewsbury, I had the option of either knocking a double Olympic gold medallist off her bike or crashing into a hedge,” Sykes explained. “I don’t think Sarah Webb would have been too impressed if I had chosen the former option, and so the hedge it was. If that was not enough, I then suffered my first ever puncture on a bike before later colliding with some road works in Preston. And it was only by the skin of my teeth that I avoided falling into a massive great hole in the road.”
Lennon and McCartney referred to “four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire” in the Beatles’ A Day in the Life, but just the one hole in Preston, Lancashire was almost enough to leave Sykes....well, in a bit of a hole, actually. Happily, he survived to fight another day.
<< BACK
|
|
