Eureka!

As luck would have it somebody wanted to sell a superb racing hand cycle and last Sunday Russ and I went to check it out. The Chaeli Campaign bought it to be used in our rehab programme (post Argus - Juan is amped!) and on Tuesday the worthy steed arrived at my door. The moment of truth had arrived!

I stole the short pillow off Chaeli's bed to make the canvas seat more comfortable, once again donned the headgear and gloves and took my first circular sweep of the arms as Firefly (yup - I've named the bright yellow frame that will be my constant companion over the next few weeks!) rolled onto Hampstead Way - ready for my first training ride through Bergvliet. What a feeling! Being in charge of my own mobility on a wheeled object (after so many angst-filled months of hoping that my knee would recover in time) and having the wind whip my face felt astoundingly good. It also made me realise what an awesome device hand cycles are - as this is precisely how people who can't use their legs must feel when they compete using these amazing cycles. And somehow I just felt that my doing the Argus on a hand cycle had become so much more meaningful - it just felt RIGHT.

Russ followed me (afraid I was going to be squashed like a toad in the road - I am only six inches off the tarmac!) and it was not a speedy journey. What looks like the straight and narrow does actually have a sloping uphill gradient and learning to control two sets of gears on each handle, break on one handle, steer with hands, turn corners and control direction as well as power the bike with your hands, is quite a mindblowing thing on the first attempt! But it was magic! Russ convinced me that 5km was enough for my 1st trip, and I eased back into our driveway, excited that I could do it. The Argus is ON and I am IN!

No "first" is ever free of war wounds. We had not adjusted the height of the handles and my thunder thighs had got in the way when I had to turn corners. I discovered that in my eagerness to complete the course I had powered my way through the pain of the handles cutting a groove into my thigh and an impressive purple/blue bruise had already started emerging. I even smiled at that. And then the anxiety set in as I asked myself: "How the heck am I going to get up from this very low seat - with the handles in the way - with my crock knees that cannot bend and cannot absorb the pressure of getting up?"

My head spun with so many options that I rendered myself totally useless and could not think of a single sensible thing to do. In desperation I flung my body sideways off the seat onto the ground and then tried to lift my left knee over the handles. And there I sat. I turned onto my hands and knees, and as my stiff and injured right knee does not bend, the only way I can get up off hands and knees is pushing off with my hands and keeping my legs straight and out to the side - bum in the air - like a giraffe at a watering hole. At this stage Russ and I are hysterical with laughter and Russ is desperately sorry that he does not have a video recorder handy. Will the spectators on Boyes Drive and Chappies be frightened by this spectacle if I need to dismount Firefly in order to walk up the hill? Clearly I need to find a more dignified exit strategy ...

Finding The Way

My euphoria regarding the bending right knee was short-lived, with a good dose of reality forcing me to accept that there is no way that my knee gingerly going through a 360 at full stretch is ever going to translate into being able to pedal with force for 109km in 8 weeks' time. The sad reality = my crocked knee could prevent me from competing in the Argus Cycle Tour on 14 March.

The good news is that I LOVE crisis and the challenge has now merely changed shape. The lesson I have taken from this? DON'T try to use what doesn't work - harness what DOES work. My hands and arms are amazing - and lifting Chaeli for 15 years has made me as strong as an ox - soooo ... I will now be competing on a HAND CYCLE. Please feel free to forward the contact details of any good shrinks. My friends reckon I need one. Badly.

Nothing ... then a sign

Nothing, no action, gymless for a good (or is it a bad?) 6 weeks. Christmas holidays were fabulous: I ate drank and was definitely merry, read 4 books in 7 days and never gave a thought to my big challenge. My legs reverted to jelly and I undid all the good work and focus that happened with 6 weeks of being grilled by the biokineticist. Today I kicked my own butt back into the gym!

14 January 2010: A new day, a new year, and EXACTLY 2 months to go before I have to do my thing on a bike for 109km! Nervous tension awoke me at 5am and I dragged my festive season-supplemented body out of bed, donned my slimming black track pants and headed for Virgin Active (wondering if my membership had been revoked due to poor attendance!). 20 minutes on the cross trainer, 5 minutes on that torture machine for your arms (my mind had started heading in the direction of possibly needing to look at hand-cycling the Argus?!) and then I headed upstairs for the adductor muscle machine - my favourite. I wondered why the other early morning fitness fanatics were giving me such strange looks, and then I saw myself in the mirror in front of the adductor machine. Oh, the horror ...

I am definitely not your movie star look-alike who cries copious on-screen tears and still has clear eyes and manages to look frail, fragile and whimsically beautiful. In the same vein, when I exercise I do not gain a ruddy, healthy tinge, I go beacon red and puff up and out with extreme exertion. And there was the proof of my labour staring back at me: my face looked like a nuclear reactor waiting to wreak havoc and chaos on the world. It was WAY beyond a glow ...

So, I smiled winningly at the concerned faces I saw staring back at me from the rowing machines and started adding to my radiance by doing 100 reps to remind my adductors who was in charge. As a last-moment act of defiance before I left the gym I ambled across to the cycling machine that has defeated me for the past months, with limited rotation in my right knee preventing me from getting both legs to do a full 360 on the pedals. Effectively, I have not yet been able to cycle (despite many sessions of noodling in the pool with simulated water cycling). Lo and behold, with the seat on 7, full extension of my left leg and gritted teeth, for the FIRST time I managed to get my right leg to do a 360!

I mince my way through five minutes of gingerly executed cycling movements, with mounting excitement! I WILL be able to ride a bicycle on 14 March! Now I need to do something about putting sufficient miles on my legs (not to mention toughening up my nether region - sore after 5 minutes of stress and strain in the saddle)! Oh the joy! Oh the possibilities! Oh the fear!