Blogging and tweeting seem a bit like stretching - I’m full of good intentions to do it, but somehow they get pushed down the priority queue and then weeks go by without them happening. It’s nearly 100 days to go until the start of the Paralympics (actually Monday 21st May marks that point) and a few weeks ago I was lucky to be part of a ‘100 days to go’ until the Olympics event at the law firm Freshfields - they’ve done all the legal work for the Games, what a job! Talk about a great buzz. London is going to feel amazing by the time the event comes around.

So with only 100(ish) days left, I’ve had my head down in training - and when not training, mainly eating, sleeping or collapsing in a heap on the sofa in my local Starbucks (which is opposite the gym - the manager thinks I live in the lift and just pop out every now and again for a hot drink). I did go bike-less for a whole 48 hours - which felt like forever not to ride - and got scared in a sea kayak instead. It’s been too long since I took to the waves so the whitecaps running between the Isle of Skye and the mainland were testing for my weeble factor. I secretly hoped Andy would offer to tow me back around the exposed bit of coast into the head wind on the way home, but when we’d finished he just said “I knew you wanted towing, but it was better you did it yourself - you had to find your super-powers”. He was right - I know I’ll have to find them more and more in the next 100 days.

I’ll be in the lab to be tested soon - pricked with needles, lactate levels in my blood measured, power outputs, oxygen efficiency (VO2) etc. My interesting fact of the week is that apparently race horses go through the same process. They are set to run on a giant treadmill in the lab and have the same fitness tests done on them as we humans. Amazing the lengths we’ll go to in pursuit of medals or simply to try and be the best that we can.

My inspiration of the week has come from Chris Jones. He has been putting my first ever handbike to amazing use. In April he did two major events; an off-road marathon across Dartmoor, where he cycled 27.5 miles to raise over four thousand pounds for the Royal British Legion, and he became the first person in the UK to enter a full downhill mountain bike race on a hand cranked bike! He’s enjoyed it so much that he’s spent the last 5 months starting up a company to design and build off-road hand-cranked bikes. LynxBikes plan to have very reasonably priced off-road handbikes ready later this year. Brilliant!

Meanwhile, there’s a block of racing coming up…Rome World Cup (25-27th May), Swiss European Handbike Circuit race (2-3rd June) and Segovia World Cup (15-17th June), then an open day to ride the Brands Hatch Paralympic race circuit on the 19th June. Kissing goodbye to the coffee shop sofa… 

First European race of the season. A few hundred handcyclists. A long straight, crepe-flat French road, punctuated only by roundabouts. I felt nervous. I, like every other woman on the start line, wanted a winter of training to show dividends, wanted to win. The start gun shot through the chilly air and we exploded from the start line. It was a fast start. A very fast start. The women’s race starts seem to get faster. Why can’t we ease into it like most other road races?

It was a fiery pace, but I made it onto the back of the lead bunch. Phew.
But the attack came sooner than I expected. Focused on the wheels in front of me, I suddenly realised the front of the bunch was slipping away - the Swiss girls, faster than ever, edging away into the lead. I cranked harder, propelling faster forwards in an attempt to close the gap, the others close on my tail.

I dreamt that a few nights before that I won the race. 

But in one race, a dream can manifest, or be overwritten by reality.

As they slipped away, I realised I wouldn’t win. I would have to fight hard for second place in my class. In the end I got third H2 woman, sandwiched between the two Italian women in the sprint finish.

Disappointed? Of course. Downhearted? Only a little. All I can do is learn and move on. I learnt a lot about tactics. I learnt that I’m not strong enough yet. I’ll need to train and try harder than ever, so that next time, my dream can manifest and I’ll be riding with the ‘Swift Swiss’. Respect to Ursuala Schwaller and Sandra Graf - the ate us up!
My team mate Rachel Morris had a mechanical so unfortunately we couldn’t help each other. Next time….

I have good intentions to write a blog at least every week, but then I suddenly realise that nearly a month has gone by. Training seems to suck time away. Three hours training a day always takes at least six - getting dressed and organised, washed and de-organised, fixing the bike, eating right, recovering etc. And bang, the day has disappeared again.

I’ve had a difficult run with the training lately, with three colds in six weeks - its seems to have been hard to shift them. Overtraining? Possibly a bit, but more likely the damp lingering winter in the UK that seems to have had bugs thriving. Each time I’ve caught a flight back from a training camp I seem to have been sniffling almost as soon as the plane touches down and then sapped of all my energy for the next ten days.

Its not good for the head to be laid up unable to train well and not meeting targets. At least not in the year you aim to compete in the Paralympics for the first time, and in your own country. A bit like being injured, you want with all your heart to be able to perform, but it just isn’t happening.
So after getting down about this, “That’s it, I’ve blown it. I must have chronic fatigue. I’ll never be able to ride fast again. My dream is slipping away….” kind of thoughts, I’ve gone back in my memory bank to the very early days of me being paralysed. When sleeping was bliss and waking was a nightmare. I used to force myself to get up in a morning, put on a brave face, force a positive mind and face the world.

My motto then was ‘Fake it ‘til you make it”. I pretended I was happy, putting on my brave face… until one day, I realised I wasn’t pretending anymore. Our mind is malleable. What we tell it, it will start to believe.

So the last weeks, I’ve been going through the motions of training, doing my sessions, failing to meet my targets but putting on a brave face (well, most of the time. I only cried at my coach once…). “Be patient” I’ve told myself. “It will come good. Just fake it ‘til you make it.”
And today, I made it. I hit my ‘gold session’ targets for the first time in a month.
Phew.

Karen Darke Video Blog 1st Feb 2012 from Karen Darke on Vimeo.

Untitled from Karen Darke on Vimeo.

Back from Lanzarote and disappointed to have missed the Berghaus Athlete Camp in Austria - a great chance to learn about the product plans for the next year, and for athletes and designers to share feedback and ideas. It’s been a busy weekend with my three nephews, mixed in with some painful stretching. Stretching after exercise. It’s so vital, yet so easy to skip, and I’ve been baaaaddd. My masseur suggested I stretch more last year, so I did, for a week or two, until the habit fizzled out. It’s only when I reach crisis point (which involves waking up with muscle pain and this morning not being able to get out of bed because my shoulder was so tight) that I’m reminded the hard way, how important it is to stretch. Andy massaged my shoulder enough that I could get up and dressed, and then I dedicated an hour to stretching.

Like any form of repeated exercise, handbiking takes its toll on the muscles and tendons. There is a ring of tightness, from the hands, through the inner forearms, the biceps, the shoulder fronts and into the pec muscles of the chest. I need to stretch those muscles out, and strengthen the antagonist muscles (the outer forearms, the triceps, the rotator cuff muscles of the shoulder and the rhomboids). It helped to get a great stretching lesson from a German fitness instructor in Lanzarote before returning home. It was a hard hour - harder than handbiking for four hours - as when you have the balance of a weeble like me, its hard to keep a good posture and stretch out well. Its not fun, in fact its quite painful, but I’m aiming to do this at least every 2 days through to London (and maybe forever!) and hoping I’ll reap the benefits. Hopefully it will help my shoulders survive all the training of 2012!

It’s not often you come across 80+ handcyclists in one place. Not sure the car drivers know what to make of it, like a bunch of aliens on the road, flags flapping in the wind (and they’re proper flapping as its seriously windy here in Lanzarote) The Berlin marathon is the only other place I’ve seen so many handbikes at the same time. Seems to be a German thing.

Have had a few good chaingang rides out with the German ‘Otto Bock’ team, strung out in a long line, drafting from the wind, trying my hardest not to get dropped. When you go out riding with a bunch of men with arms like Popeye, the easy rides aren’t so easy anymore…

Fantastic job by Team Sopur for organising all this though, including the Playa Blanca races at the weekend, http://www.vueltaplayablanca.com/ Only a few crashes on the dodgy bend, but luckily no serious injuries. Good turn out and race results for the Brits too. A great win by Chris Madden in the mens H2 race (it was disputed, but he did win!!), and a great ride from Brian Alldis in the mens H3 race too. I managed a win for the women too…

After a block of training, its good to find out if progress has been made. So, this week has been one of resting and testing, with the British Cycling physiologist in Manchester, and then with the Scottish Institute of Sport team in Inverness.

First was the lactate and VO2 test, a brutally painful experience, ramping up the power on the bike every 4 minutes until my arm muscles turn to jelly and my chest felt tight to rip. Meanwhile, blood is siphoned from the ear and tested for lactic acid, and the air breathed in and out is monitored to show oxygen uptake. Ouch. A few days of driving and back-ache later (how come it seems to hurt more when I stop training) I was back in Inverness for the ‘muscle-lab test’. In the gym, on the bench press, measuring my power with some gadgetry that I’m happy someone else is operating; it looks kind of delicate with wires tied to weights bar.

I feel a bit nervous now waiting for the results. What if I haven’t improved? What if the months of training haven’t had any affect? I tell myself that’s impossible. At least I hope it is. But one of the SIS guys told me that it took Chris Hoy 10 years just to increase a weight he was working on in the gym by a really small increment. No wonder I’ve been stuck on the same bench press weight for a few months now. Any ideas on how to progress it welcome…

Back to cold Highland weather now, three layers of clothing for every ride, even three pairs of gloves today! Joy… (but the white powder mountains look stunning).

Been doing quite a lot of writing again lately, and remembered how much I love it. Its the perfect antidote to a hard day training, and forces me to sit still and rest physically even if not mentally. Andy has put my first book ‘If You Fall’ into e-book format, and I’m finally getting there with my second book ‘Dizzy Fingers’ which has been sat on my computer for four years now! Thanks Andy for encouraging me, and thanks to help from a patient friend, Rob, whose been sitting editing with me, and giving me the confidence that it might be worth publishing! I’ve also started work on a third that will be all about the journey to the Paralympics. I’m enjoying writing that one most just now, but maybe because its so current.

I’ll be giving a talk in Sheffield on Monday 23rd January, also called ‘If You Fall’, to help raise funds for a community defibrilator in Sheffield. Come along at 7.30pm to St John’s Ambulance HQ (St John House, 5 Broadfield Close, Sheffield, S8 OXN). Entry £10.

Meanwhile, there’s training to get on with. I didn’t manage my session today - just couldn’t make the powers I should have. Trying not to be too down-hearted about it. Probably just a bit tired, and it was also the first super-high heart rate session of the season, so I think its fairly typical not to make it. As Homer Simpson says, ‘If you haven’t failed, you haven’t tried hard enough”. Will try again tomorrow…

The snow fell thick and fast as we sped down the A9, south through the whitening Cairngorms. A few days of travelling around the country later - not least to see the Queen at a Buckingham Palace evening for adventurers and explorers (had a good chat with the dynamic Prince Edward!) - we’ve landed in the calm, breathless winter of Mallorca, a perfect bike training venue. The news says its 165mph winds back home on Cairngorm. Phew, it really was a great time to escape.

John Hampshire (my coach from www.fit-for-purpose.co.uk) is here with me, encouraging me to pedal faster through sweaty interval sessions. Its good to have company when out riding - I spend too many hours alone riding the handbike - and John cranking beside me on his Trice trike is keeping me ‘on it’ instead of drifting into daydreams. Its weird having someone riding at the same height as me to chat to!
The roads are quiet at the moment, no gangs of German cyclists like there are in March (and no overweight men in white lycra); just the pro teams. We’ve had a few waves from Bradley Wiggins now - Team Sky are staying just around the bay so their morning rides seem to coincide with us setting out.

Yesterday was a mountain ride. A great ride through fields of sheep with their bells jangling like mountain goats, up through the forests where locals gathered for Sunday BBQ’s in the picnic areas, and finally into the rocky outcrops up top. The Traumantana Mountains are really stunning. I was excited to find myself at the top 20 minutes faster than last year (over 2.5 hours), so all this training must be paying off.

Snow on the mountains this morning: my fingers numb as the cold penetrates the gloves, heavy breathing fogging my glasses as I work hard to climb the hills, big puffy pants to stop my legs freezing, that extra bit of energy it takes to stay warm leaving me more tired than ever after training. Ah, longing now for the easier days of summer.

Had a hard training week with my coach from Fit for Purpose - who has generously been donated a very fast and cool leg-pedalled trike to ride with me by ICE (Inspired Cycle Engineering). Since then, have wrapped up in a filming project these last few weeks, to help promote the work of the Back-Up Trust in the run up to the Paralympics, London 2012. Its involved photographers and film-making people nestled in heather at the side of the roads, as I’ve biked around the Highland countryside. Whizzing along at high speed, the cameraman hung out the boot of the car, and I cycled as close behind as I dared without splatting myself on the bumper - only a few near misses.

Back-Up is a charity that helps transform lives after spinal cord injury, and the charity we’re aiming to raise £1million for by skiing to the South Pole in 2013. Back-Up helped me re-discover what was possible with a spinal cord injury, soon after I broke my back, through one of the courses that they offer, learning to sit-ski. It involved 14 of us in wheelchairs weebling around Alpine slopes, spending more time in and on the snow than gliding over it, having a lot of fun despite the bruises. The experience, breathing in the cold mountain air and learning a new skill, was a glimmer of light in what was otherwise quite a dark time, and I’m keen to support the life-transforming work that the charity do (which goes far beyond ski courses!). If you’d like to help, there’s a Just Giving link on the South Pole page of my site, or at www.poleofpossibility.com

Thanks, and happy early winter!