Karen Darke | Athlete | Speaker | Author

When you lose something for a while, it makes you appreciate it all the more. After the weeks laid up in bed back in April (with a small pressure sore) the freedom of being back on the bike has spurred me on for hours ‘in the saddle’ (well, the handbike seat if more like a comfy recliner than the knifeblade of most bike saddles).

Miles of pedaling quiet Highland lanes got traded for flatter Spanish ones back in June, for a World Cup Paracycling event, my first in a long time international race. Fast and intimidating, I was lucky to get third (which doesn’t sound so impressive when you know there were only 7 in the race), and an invite from British Cycling to the World Paracycling Championships in Quebec, mid-August.

So suddenly training has got more painful, with Gordon Gillespie (Handbike Scotland, www.handbikescotland.co.uk ) offering to pace me at least once a week…still trying to catch him on the hills, but all good stuff for the races ahead.

The pacing, combined with the new bike currently winging its way to me from Albion Mobility (www.albionmobility.co.uk ) near Stirling, should hopefully improve my speed and maybe, if training and luck work their magic, get me a decent place at the finish line. Albion Mobility are the first Scottish retailer for handbikes (at last we don’t have to travel hundreds of miles to southern England!) and I owe them a huge thank you for their help getting me set up in time for the Worlds.

In between all this, I had my eyes opened in the bright lights and smoggy skies of Shanghai, reminding me how lucky we are in the ‘West’ when it comes to wheels.

I met two young men who’d been tied to a bed in an orphanage for 20 years, just because they have disabilities, and another young man who’d been sold for sex since his birth, to age 17, because he has Spinabifida and was unwanted.  It seems that disability is misunderstood, or at worst, and unwanted embarrassment in Chinese society.

The Home Sweet Home charity (www.homesweethome.org.cn ) rescues people with disabilities from orphanages and the streets, gives them a home, and a job. Any profits from the products they sell is re-invested to support the work of the charity. A fantastic social enterprise. Realising how lucky I am when it comes to wheels has me thinking about how to help places like Home Sweet Home where people with disabilities aren’t so fortunate. Email me if you have any ideas?....