Karen Darke

It is almost thirty years since I was paralysed. In the beginning, unique experiences came daily. Even hourly. Recently they came less, in part due to the rut I channelled myself into, racing handbikes and focusing on Paralympic competition and medals. Today I found the elation of novelty once more. I found the excited kid in me again.

“Woohoooooo! I called into the dusk sky, joining chorus with the wailing Jackals and throwing my arms into the air in elation. The cushioned roll of the fat tyres absorbed the bounces as we rolled back on the Ztrikes ICE trikes along a dusty dirt trail. The orange hues of the golden hour had faded, the sun deeply sunk behind the distant hills. The shadows of Mount Hermon and the hills towards Syria were blackening in the distance as we navigated tomato fields and almond plantations back towards the lights of the kibbutz.

Leaving behind the familiar and going into the unknown, I have often felt uncertainty and fear. However, without new and novel experiences, our brain can become stale. In the last few years I felt a little ‘mouldy’ in my thinking and zest for life. I even grew my own rock in my bladder. The geologist in my knows that rocks form with a combination of old sediment, pressure and time. It was time to flush things through, get some flow going again.

The experiences I am having this year and the Pole of Possibility project are purging out the old and opening up my mind and energy again to the new.  Fresh experiences are flowing in. Life is flow, and without it, we stagnate.

I write this blog on my birthday from the kibbutz in northern Israel, where I am in the safe and kind hands of Yos and Ran Ziskind and their families.

Why? To test ride and discover their fat-trike handbike design, with the idea of riding it to the South Pole.

Yos Ziskind is a visionary Israeli mechanical engineer. passionate about enabling technology. His principle work is in robotics automation, but he dedicates his other time to designing a hand-pedalled attachment that can be added to existing off-road tricycle designs.

His design began with desire to cycle with his children into nature. The original concept was a bicycle sidecar which led him to discover the world of off-road recumbent trikes. His next logical step was a trike that engages the whole body, not just the legs, and so he began work on a hand-pedalled design that could be attached. In the research process he encountered paralysed athletes using handbikes and realised his design could help those without use of their lower limbs to access nature better than before.

Yos has teamed up with his brother Ran as the co-brains behind the designs. Also a mechanical engineer but specialising in diamond inspection machiney, Ran’s skills complement Yos and the pair have born ZTrikes.

I have ridden a lot of handbikes. I have tried off-road. But I have never ridden a fatbike with 10cm wide tyres before. Nor have I found a hand-pedalled trike that has so much function that it has been quickly and easily adaptable to my shape, size and pedalling-position preferences.

Will it work to pedal to the South Pole? Well, if any trike could every work, this is it. The mainframe is by ICE (Inspired Cycle Engineering), based in Falmouth, UK. They have loaned a frame similar to that used by Maria Leijerstam who raced over 400 miles to claim the world record of first cycle to the South Pole in 2013.

Maria followed an ice-road into the Pole, whereas we will be crossing virgin plateau ice, so it as yet unclear as to whether the ICE Ztrikes hand-trike will be able to navigate such challenging rough and varied terrain.

We have to step into the unknown to explore what is possible. Excited for this!

Thanks Yos, Ran, your families and the team at ICE Trikes – for taking me beyond comfort!

I write this off the back of a very special 6Points Challenge event in Mallorca. Riders unite to cycle four compass extremities of the island plus the highest and lowest points. It was my third time taking part in a 6Points event, twice in Mallorca and once in Menorca. If you like riding a bike even just a little bit, or just a good craic, then you should join. https://6pointschallenges.com

In the lead up I feel an anticipatory cocktail bathe me with doubt as to my physical capacity to take part and ride over a hundred kilometres for consecutive days. I have an injured forearm and seem to have had a winter plagued with bouts of bugs and Covid. No excuses, but it stirs up the never-far-away uncertainty that most of us have. In the aftermath of the event, a flush of exaltation is the reward – the digestif that will last for weeks.

Now it runs into my fingers and this oozing of words.

I am typically the slowest rider. I arrive late in the afternoon, grateful to the little posse that has hung out with me. They have been good company and have advanced their bike-balancing skills riding slowly uphill with me and sprint trained chasing me downhill. That’s how it goes on a handbike.

As we rode into the finish on the final day, a group of riders came back out to meet me. We rode the final hundred metres together, into and through the inflatable finish arch, to cheers and applauds from the large crowd gathered around.

SUPER NICE

SUPER THOUGHTFUL

SUPER WELCOMING.

But I felt SUPER UNCOMFORTABLE with the fuss on my arrival.

“You’re in the 6 Points Family”. Bryan, the loveable founder of the event embraced me.

I was congratulated by lots of lovely people, many saying “You’re an inspiration”.

I was showered in this compliment for the duration of 6 Points.

As I am for much of life.

Each time I hear it, I smile politely and change the subject.

I am like one of Pavlov’s dogs with a learned response to the words.

The previous evening, I was crashed out on the hotel bed recovering before dinner. My friend and room-mate lay nearby on her bed.

 “Does it bug you that people say you’re inspiring all the time?” she blurted. “It’s non-stop. I don’t’ know how I’d feel if I were you”.

I like it that she has asked.

I imagine that she can see me squirm, wriggle and retreat inside, that she notices my lack of “thank you” and how I change the subject.

“Yep,” I confess. “I don’t know what to say. It makes me feel like I’m in a show, playing a role of inspiration. I’m just doing what I love like everyone else. I like to fit in not stick out”.

I believe in inspiration though: it is a fuel that we all need to propel is forward. My speaking & coaching business is called Inspire and Impact so I cannot shy from the term!

However, I would like to drop the discomfort and deflection and self-deprecation I sense in myself when I hear the words “You’re an inspiration”.

I would like to change my response.

I would like to find new words. I would say “Thank you”.

And I would continue.

“But you just see in me something that you have in yourself. You are greater than you think”.

The night before I was paralysed, I infamously said “I’d rather be dead than paralysed. I can’t imagine anything worse.”

But I love my life.

And I retract those words.

I became inspired by traits in others that I had never seen in myself.

I was inspired to live life on terms I hadn’t planned on.

It makes me happy if something I do inspires another. Truly.

Inspiration means being stimulated to do or feel something.

A fabulous thing.

But next time you are about to say to someone “You’re inspiring”, pause.

Ask yourself “What is this person or situation inspiring in me?”.

If you like, tell them specifically what they are inspiring in you, knowing they are not different from you, but that they have just reminded you of something.

But more importantly, tell yourself and look at what you can do about it.

When we feel inspired, we are receiving a message.

A famous message once spoken by Christopher Robin to Winnie the Pooh.

“You are braver than you believe,

Stronger than you seem,

Smarter than you think,

And loved more than you know.”

The fact that I am paralysed with an adventurous streak means that I have this quote hanging invisibly around my neck. The braver I get with life’s quantum maze of possibilities, the brighter the sign lights up.

Reflect on what or who inspires you and why. Then get after it.

I am inspired this weekend by many. By…

A who sleeps barely a wink and just gets on with what needs to be done.

B who works tirelessly in his retirement to create 6Points

C who is passionate about photography and leaps from feet to floor with camera embraced

D who offers his brain and time and skills to tell stories of refugees and wait, another D who bundles love and care from a support car

E that sailed around the world a few times, and I think there was an R and a few others that did that too.

…

H who had knee arthroscopies and pain but goes for it anyway and invites all his mates

I who works hard at a dull job to provide stability to loved ones

J who bundles treats and water and laughs and loves with others in the support car

K who has radically changed their life and only started riding a bike a month or two ago

L …I know there was one that inspired me

M who bakes cakes and wraps each individual slice up with love

N who effuses care and coordination and positivity to everyone and everything

O who supports and crashes and recovers without complaint

I am inspired by all of these people and it reminds me to keep stepping up, to believe in what we can create and do collectively, to follow our passions, to effuse positivity and love, that sometimes we have to dig deep and work hard to overcome. And if any of you 75 riders or support crew read this, the list is longer and no-one is excluded and you will see these traits echo within yourself.

We are all connected.

Inspiration is the fabric that weaves us all together.

Thanks 6Points for the collective fuel of inspiration.

As we are the average of the five people we spend the most time with, then go after hanging out with more of those that help you towards that inspired version of you.

Entering 6Points is a good place to start.

Xx

P.S. There are many more handbikers our there, all brave and stronger and smart in unique and different ways. Some of them will be able to ride the Muntanas group as fast as the fastest of you! If you are a handbiker, get your biceps to 6 Points next year. You will love it and 6Points will love you.

This article is all about turning doubt into daring: how do we manage the cognitive load of overwhelm and self-doubt so that it doesn’t paralyse us, but allows us to DARE to move forward.  

Mark Twain said “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear.” – Mark Twain

The adventure that best illustrates my experience of this was the climb of El Capitan – a kilometere high over-hanging rock-face in Yosemite National Park, California.

Climbing El Cap was the most fearful experience of my life. We planned it would take us ten days to climb, sleeping on a ‘portaledge’ – a portable, fabric ledge – each night, and we would carry all the water and food we needed to last the duration.

It was fourteen years since I’d fallen from a cliff and become paralysed. Whilst I have no conscious memory of my accident itself, it quickly became apparent as I began climbing again that some things were different since I’d last climbed! There was the practical aspect of choosing a route that wouldn’t require dragging and scraping my body over sharp rocks. That meant I had to climb overhanging rock, pulling myself up a rope rather than clinging to the rock face. More challenging, though, was the emotional aspect. There were two big things: (a) I was now terrified of heights, and (b) I felt vulnerable and more scared than I’d ever felt in my life.

My past experiences were affecting my present, so instead of enjoying climbing the giant granite beauty of a mountain, I was locked into fear and stress. My head was full of all the things that could go wrong and I felt dread at the thought of climbing. How could I undo it, and release myself from the prison of fear?

Managing the ‘load’ in my brain was key to moving forward. I knew there was a logical, safe way to climb but I was struggling to get relaxed and to empty my head enough to find it. I felt full of fears, of anxiety-provoking thoughts, old trauma emerging from my sub-conscious to overwhelm me. There seemed so much to do, so much to concentrate on, and so much to go wrong.

We began the climb, and sure enough, a lot of things weren’t working well. I knew my head wasn’t in the right place for success. After three days on the wall, we dropped a bag and watched it fall a long, long way below, too far to see it burst open as it hit the ground.  It was full of all our food. We retreated from the wall and had a big decision to make: leave for a Californian beach, or stop, re-set, and go again.

I thought about  the overload I experienced whilst hanging from the rock-face, and considered what I could do to change things.

Firstly, I needed a logical process to follow, to eliminate the melee I was experiencing in my brain. I created a systematic process, a mental checklist of actions to take to simplify things. Clip into ropes 1, 2 and 3. Double check correctly tied in. Tighten the metal crabs to secure…etc.

I also needed to generate a different emotion in my body. appreciation. If my mind started to go to places that weren’t helpful I need to stop it. Instead of looking down at the fall below and allowing my mind to run riot, I would shift my focus to appreciation and gratitude. I would look out at the horizon. I would generate feelings of awe for being in such a special place, for the team around me with their skills and experience etc. This had a radical and fast impact on my emotional state.

Thirdly, I needed to get very present; to let go of past history or anxiety about the future. I would focus on my breathing to calm me down. I would really focus on the process of each tiny step. I would notice the crystals in the granite and the rough texture and feeling of the rock under my fingers. Being present with each moment freed me from anxiety.

On our final day of the climb, the wind died with the sun. The sky turned salmon and slate, then jet-black as night fell and the cold bit into the tender skin of my fingers. It was silent on our ledge except for us breathing and fidgeting for warmth, waiting to finish the last few pitches of climbing. Far, far below, the traffic hummed like electric interference in the otherwise quiet night.

A shooting star fell.

“Safe!” our climbing partner’s voice echoed from above, through the blackness, a sign that they had reached the summit. It seemed a strange word to use in such an exposed place, where I had, at least to start with, never felt so unsafe.

I breathed in deep and looked out from the rock to the beautiful night scene, to the shadows of the giant granite mountains licked in moonlight. For the first time in days, I felt myself relax, thankful to be there, appreciating the beauty around me. I was in the same place as I had been for days, but I had begun by making it my own version of hell. That final evening, with my fear and mental load dissolved, I could finally appreciate what a special place it was to be.

Reflecting on that climb of El Cap, transforming this experience of stress and overwhelm required reducing my cognitive load – in other words, the busy-ness in my head. When we are in a state of stress, we carry a lot of mental load and our ability to carry out tasks is impeded.

A logical process, taking my thoughts to appreciation, and doing anything I could do stay present had transformed things. Somehow amongst the doubt, I had found some dare to move forward. And it brought me one of the richest, most special experiences of my life.

A great acronym for fear is ‘False Evidence Appearing Real’. I had to learn whilst hanging from El Capitan, to decipher which fear was truly valid and what fear was an unhelpful relict of past experience. Whilst it may be easy on first hearing this story to think “of course hanging from a giant rock-face by a thead of rope is scary and dangerous: that is valid real fear not false evidence appearing real!’. However, with sufficient safety measures, climbing is safer than many things we are exposed to day to day. I didn’t want my fear to limit me from an incredible experience, but at the same time I didn’t want to repeat a major trauma or die.

So What?

If we are conscious of our sources of fear, stress or overwhelm we know when it is really valid or just created based on false anxieties about the future.

What can you do to reduce your sense of fear and move forward in a desirable direction?

How might you reduce your cognitive load: creating systems and processes to help you carry out tasks?

How can you generate more awe and appreciation of what you have in your life? A daily scan of what I feel grateful for helps me train my brain away from its natural tendency to tune into fear and potential threat. Deliberately generating awe and appreciation supports positive neurochemistry in your body.

And how can you be more present? Focus on something in the moment. For example, focusing on your breath for just a minute or two, breathing deep breathing into your belly can re-set your nervous system from the fight, flight, freeze stress response of the sympathetic nervous system, to the  rest & digest function of the parasympathetic nervous system. Try the navy seal stress-reducing technique: box breathing, breathing in for 4 counts, holding for 4, out for 4, and holding your lungs empty for 4. Psychological studies have revealed breathing practice to be an effective non-pharmacological intervention for emotion enhancement, reducing anxiety and stress.

Or do more of a mindful activity like I did – granite crystal gazing, or simply walking in nature to help your nervous system to downregulate.

So next time you experience overload or overwhelm, remember to try some simple techniques to reset your focus and nervous system: create a routine, focus on awe and appreciation,  and get present with each moment..,and enjoy the adventure it takes you on…

This blog is all about using awareness for anti-fragility. As we become more aware our thoughts we have an opportunity for applying curiosity. This really helps us develop anti-fragility: a state where we can bend and flex with the events of life instead of becoming brittle or broken.

Albert Einstein said…“I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.” —Albert Einstein

An adventure that taught me a lot about this topic was an expedition we called Hands & Feet Across Greenland. We were a small group of friends and acquaintances – a team of six of us – and our plan was to ski across the Greenland icecap from east to west, completely self-sufficient. We had fuel and food to last us 35 days for the 550 km crossing. If we didn’t cross within that time, we might perish or starve. The fuel we carried was to cook our food, as well as melt enough ice so that we had water to drink. We had to carry everything to survive the icy wilderness for the month or more that it would take us to journey from one coast to the other.

Being paralysed from the chest down, I relied on the action of double-poling across the ice in the special sit-ski I use, and left my wheelchair behind as it would be on use on the snow and ice. It was the most physically demanding experience of my life. Pain is perceptual, and in many ways it has been physically tougher to train and do Paralympic training and race my handbike hard, but that would be for maybe 30 minutes and the effort in Greenland was for ten or more hours a day, day in, day out, week in, week out, with no scope for dropping behind schedule because we had limited rations of food and fuel. On Day 1, when every muscle in my body was screaming, Day 35 seemed an eternity away. On Day 2, when the tendons in my hands were so tight that my friend had to peel my palms open to get them moving in the morning, reaching the end seemed an impossibility.

My fingers were numb from gripping so tightly and ached with effort. It was way harder than I had anticipated. Adding to my sense of gloom, the GPS seemed to never report progress being as far as it seemed we had covered.  I felt lost in the sea of ice and it felt like skiing through glue.

It felt like we had been there an eternity yet we were only at the beginning. My body was exhausted and my mind worn out from thinking about what to think about.

Gone was the excitement of a journey finally underway. Gone was the exoticness of new surroundings. Gone was the spring of muscles eager to work after a week of packing and traveling.

My body and mind were taken to new extremes: physically in my hands and shoulders, and mentally through twelve-hour days trekking in silence with little stimulation.

I became acutely aware of my thoughts.  “I have never felt in this much pain before” wasn’t a thought helpful to keep thinking. I needed to replace the limiting, unsupportive thoughts with something more expansive….

Instead of thinking anxiety-focused thoughts of pain or “‘Oh no, we still have 10 hours of skiing to go’  I shifted to asking questions: ‘I wonder what will happen next?”. ; ‘I wonder what  beauty we will find in this special place today?’’. Whenever my mind plummeted into unhelpful or over-whelming thoughts, taking my thoughts to difficult or grim scenarios; a simple question had the power to release me from the emotional pain and open a doorway with some light. These curious thoughts took me to moment in hand.

So reflecting on that journey across Greenland…

Awareness of our thoughts is the first step to changing them. We can stop, change and alter our thoughts to create a better outcome. Fixed ways of thinking are like limiting beliefs, and usually create walls – keeping us trapped or stuck inside, repeating our way of feeling and hence generating undesirable emotions or outcomes. Questions however, open up doorways. Doorways that lead us to new rooms, new views, new perspectives.

Curiosity is a great tool for opening up questions and changing our awareness.

The philosopher Thomas Hobbes described curiosity as the “lust of the mind”. There are different kinds of curiosity:  ‘deficit’ curiosity – a drive to ‘know’ something – is a version of desire, but apart from a brief moment of pleasure at having answered something unknown or forgotten, is of little benefit.

However, when curiosity is led by intrigue or interest, it is a different experience from a need-to-know state. It is a freeing experience, where we can be open to explore: This ‘intrigue’ version of curiosity is a kind of superpower.

I first became fascinated by curiosity in that journey sit-skiing across Greenland.

I recently discovered a body of research at the University of California Davis that goes some way to explaining this ‘freeing’ effect of curiosity. It is rooted in the associated neurochemistry. Students had to review a list of triva questions and rate their curiosity towards discovering the answer. At peak curiosity, dopamine pathways in the brain fired with more intensity, and there was a stronger connection between reward centres of the brain. The research suggests that the brain experiences curiosity as a reward, and thanks to the dopamine release, the process of interest- / intrigue-led curiosity feels good.

Research goes on to suggest that too little uncertainty about something fails to provoke curiosity, but too much provokes anxiety.

So What?

When we challenge ourselves – for example by choosing to do something like make a podcast, or do a presentation, communicate something in a different way, or anything at all that stretches us…we leave our world of comfort. Or perhaps the challenge isn’t something we choose, but something thrown into our path. Either way, we begin a journey with uncertainty.

There is an opportunity here, to see the challenge as an opportunity for learning, for growth, for new perspectives. We can choose to ‘spike’ our curiosity…
“Can I do do this?”; “What can I learn from this?”; “How might this be helpful in the future?” ; “If we can get through this, what else might we have the potential to navigate?” and so on.

Notice your thoughts and steer them towards curiosity. Release yourself from anxiety by opening up those doorways and finding a sweet spot of questioning that stimulates you enough to move forward. Making curiosity a habit creates a kind of anti-fragility : a super-power beyond just tolerance or resilience, but a real opportunity to use challenge as an opportunity to create and learn new things.  It will help keep you excited and motivated as you go forward on a journey of discovery…

I would brace into the wind five days a week, the blowing, biting cold coming in from the North Sea like some strange form of masochistic therapy. If I let go of the push rims, the wind would whisk me backwards, spinning me, scraping my wheelchair into the old painted rails along the beach promenade. I would look to the horizon, see the offshore supply boats labouring out to the rigs, and in the foreground I’d see the other constant : surfers, their neoprene heads bobbing like seals, black skin on skin against the bite of the winter waves.  

Back then, being paralysed was still a fresh wound. I allowed my mind to wander and wonder at how I could still engage with the great outdoors. I craved escape from concrete and tarmac. The emotional pain of paralysis was raw, but seeing surfers with their vans on the beach front, playing, their connection with each other and the waves palpable, somehow never tore at my scabs. It looked cold. A little bleak. I almost never saw anyone actually surfing a wave.

Almost thirty years on, I am a veteran of paraplegia. I work as a performance coach with the concept of  ‘flow’. I regularly hear how surfing is a great way to experience more of it – the wonderful presence and zone of altered consciousness that I’ve experienced in other sports and creative endeavours. I have been moved by the you tube clip of ‘duct tape surfing’ where a paraplegic woman is bonded to the back of her son’s friend and just loves the freedom of being out catching waves. Click here to watch!

https://youtu.be/4h51_z386-M

And then, synchronicity or not, a friend connected to “SurfABLE Scotland’ asks  “will I be an ambassador for the organisation?”. I felt a little resistant. Life was full. How could I be an ambassador for a sport that never appealed and that I’ve never even tried? How do you even surf when you can’t stand up and don’t want binding in duct tape? But I was curious. I’m scared of the sea. Of its power. Of my vulnerability. Signs that I should go.

The swell rises and I am shoved forward fast, raking the water with my arms to try and catch the wave. I feel it gather height as it picks me up and I teeter on its peak. Then I am plummeted towards the beach, riding in foam. I’m not sure if to be scared or exhilarated, but a grin breaks across my face.
It’s a giveaway.
Something deep within is speaking.
I am thirsty for more.

My summer in Scotland has been like no other. Thanks to the team at SurfABLE, I have escaped the tarmac and found new friends. In the force of water and wind, perceived problems disperse, I connect with my body, with my soul, and some form of magic unfolds. There is freedom.. There is flow. Thank you Kev, Glyn, all the volunteers and the Lossiemouth lifesaving crew.

Surfing without functional legs involves lying prone on a surf-board, and shifting your body-weight around with your arms to stay with the wave, angle the board etc. Some special surf boards are available with ‘risers’ to support the chest, and handles to help shift your weight. See pic below thanks to Hannah Dines 🙂

There was nothing oozing or flowing or majestic about the scene. The earth’s core was projectile vomiting liquid trails; raw, violent energy rapidly calmed by the cool black mountainscape. I was hypnotised beyond my pain and fever by the liquid magma spatting and spewing into orange rivers. An intravenous line feeding hard-core antibiotics into my system obscured my view of the Icelandic volcano bubbling and breathing its fire.  I lay still under the hospital sheets. I watched the raw beauty and chaos of nature play out on the screen. I noticed the fight and the fear dance through my body with the infection that had taken grip. I noticed a choice. I loitered on the steps in front of a familiar gaping doorway.  I could step within, into the mansion of despair, wander dark hallways and fumble into darker rooms; or I could turn with eyes closed to the sunlight, and warm my face.

I might have been in the Arctic Ocean. I might have been pedalling a bike on the back of a sailboat, generating power, testing transitional technology and exploring perspectives of the climate change crisis.

“We miss you!” the text messages from my team-mates said before they’d disappeared off-grid, headwind into stormy seas in the direction of Greenland. They were generous – we’d only all met two days before – but I missed them too. I had been so excited to be part of a team, to be bound together not only by the compact space of a beautiful sixty-foot yacht, but by a clear goal, a passion and a purpose.

My sudden diversion into an Iceland emergency department marked another all too frequent near miss. I like living. I love feeling alive.
I avoided telling anyone back home. I wanted silence, no noise of concern or story. I was done with the drama of trauma, and whilst the tornado raged around my body, I lay in the eye of the storm. It felt new, to be in a hospital emergency department, completely peaceful.

When I did connect, lovely caring messages arrived. “So sorry you have missed out on the sail” they read, but I felt no sorrow. I noticed what had arrived rather than what not arrived. I noticed the beautiful people looking after me. I felt care and comfort. I allowed myself to be mesmerized by the magnificent volcano. I savoured the fresh, healthy and delicious food that regularly arrived. There was porridge and cream and kefir for breakfast for goodness sake. I had hours to rest and sleep and relax like I had never known possible. I mean, what was there not to like?

In the original adventure, Yacht Qilak with its extraordinary crew and six strong women were making their way across the Arctic Ocean. I watched a dot on a tracker as they slowly tacked toward the mass of Greenland. Unbeknownst to me, half of them were also laid in bed with wretched stomachs, sea-sick as they tossed through tough weather. They were battling with time and storms to reach the Greenlandic shore and begin the science and exploration intended. As they reached the shores of Greenland, much whiter than those of Iceland – some Viking real-estate scam there – I moved to a hospital hotel, a stepping stone back to reality. Slowly I eased back into the world.

As I rolled down a rainbow street in Rekjavik, a remnant of Pride weekend, I wondered at the adventure I was in. “Merge with the fight to transcend it” said Aureal, wise and golden on the screen of my phone. “Say yes to the fight”. I had. For the first time in my rollercoaster of medical incidents, I had dived in, no resistance or frustration, and stepped into the peaceful space that always lies in the eye of the storm.

The hum of the fridge and a ticking clock distracted me from sleep, along with a banging head, more intense than ever after yesterday’s race. Was it the pressure of a big race, selection for the Tokyo Paralympic hanging entirely on this one weekend? Or a cocktail or hormones, neurochemicals, the change in climate… I considered the scenario ahead: alarm at the crack of dawn, getting to the start line of the road race in the lashing rain, finishing in a puddle of piss due to ongoing bladder dramas, no shower, packing the bike up, rushing to the airport. Then I mused the other path, the path of least resistance.

“But this is what you do” an inner voice told me, “You always show up. You always do what you say you are going to. You can’t back out now.”

A few friends messaged, encouraging me on. “You can do it. Go race, show them what you’re made of.” They meant well.

I am headstrong. I wouldn’t have become paralysed if it weren’t for that; I would have listened to the screams from my gut and come back down from the cliff face. My pattern for years was to ramp up, then crash and burn, recover, course correct, then repeat. It is a pattern I’ve been working hard to release. My driving curiosity for a third Olympic cycle was experimenting with being gut-strong: if I listened deeply to my truth and honoured what my body was needing, could performance be better than ever rather than being driven to the point of collapse?

It was getting late, and I got wrapped up in the drama of the decision I was facing. I felt the current of racing struggle through my body; resistance. I talked to a compassionate friend. I cried. Then I climbed into bed and stopped. In the darkness of the Air BnB, I listened. Not to the fridge or the clock, but to myself. When I thought of racing my head got heavier, a feeling of struggle and pain, almost dread. 

“What if you just say no? Enough is enough,” another voice reasoned. It was an unfamiliar voice. 

I listened. 

I heard my breathing.

I listened some more. 

I allowed the question to sink in.

“Enough is enough” reverberated. I heard the Chumbawamba song playing, chanting the words, “Open your eyes. Time to give up. Enough is enough is enough is enough!” I thought of my friend Will, a big fan of the Chumbas, and wondered if he was speaking to me. His climbing accident, three months after my own all those years before, had taken him to the other side. I felt often though that he wasn’t far.

“Is it time?”

Some peace arrived, and I sank into sleep.

Endings often take us by surprise. The unexpected is uninvited, a shocking guest gate-crashing our party. We imagine it turning out a certain way, but things go wild.  The medal I was striving for in Tokyo 2020 was a goal that had limped through Covid into 2021, and then dissolved in that weekend, washed away in the rain of a dreary Belgium spring.

Soon after, there were some long days in accident and emergency, a trail to urology and a solution to the puddles that were pouring. I’m a great believer that we embody our deep emotions, and I started to connect deeper. “How long have I been pissing myself off?”

I realised I had not enjoyed the last few years of racing at all. Without noticing, I had been  afraid of change. I love to ride my bike, and was scared to stop the big goals that gave me so much meaning and reason. What if letting go meant losing my most faithful partner….?! Deeper than that though, I was bored of the same routine, of 13 years non-stop on the hamster wheel, of such a driven, solitary life. I needed more connection; love; expansion.

It seems ironic that as a doctor of gold geology that I managed to metamorphose a 6 cm infected rock in my own bladder.  It’s been removed now, and flow of the golden stuff has returned in so many ways. I realise that my most faithful partner is not really my bike (though I still love it dearly!). It is the ability to listen, not to words and voices, but to what lies beneath, to the barometer within. Perhaps this is our Inner Gold. A better medal than any.

The vision of Quest 79 is to help people find more ‘Inner Gold’. Be inspired, inspire yourself and see what people are doing to shine in their lives and communities. www.quest79.com Facebook https://www.facebook.com/quest79community Instagram @myquest79  

When we look back at the journey of our life, we can see moments where our path was radically altered. Rarely do we see how the small actions of every day lead to big events of the future. We don’t see how the daily donut leads to diabetes, how choosing television instead of a walk out in nature leads to gaining kilos. Or the contrary: how the extra deep dive into a training session gets us fitter, or how the choice to recover at the right time can get us stronger.  We don’t see it until a defining moment arrives. Small daily negative habits can lead us to a crisis. Small daily positive routines can lead us to surprisingly good places.

Rarely do we sense those defining moments in advance, rather they creep up on us. But tomorrow I will ride a World Cup race and I know it will be a defining moment in the small micro-sphere of my life. Whilst one athlete’s endeavours can seem self-centric and insignificant compared to the much bigger issues of our planet, I have also come to believe in the power of small to change big. To keep going after so many years of immersion in Paralympic sport I have explored deeply into my motivation. I have been led forward by how inspirational sport is in general, from the pure effort and commitment, the teamwork and support and camaraderie, and the attention to the miniscule details of performance.  And I am motivated by all those that I compete with and all those that have supported me – an unbelievable array of companies, organisations, individual professionals and friends. You know who you are and I am so very grateful for your belief and companionship in this journey.

So now, the night before the first race in almost two years in our Covid world, I am intrigued and curious. Winning Gold in the Rio 2016 Paralympics I pushed and dug so deep I was left completely drained, unable for months afterwards to expend energy on social interactions or anything other than pure daily survival. This time I have flipped things up. I crashed and took to big skies and big rides of Quest 79 for recovery. I got dropped from the national team. But for the last two years I have trained hard and rested hard. I have listened deeply to the signals from my body, adopted new recovery strategies from other gentle activities to meditation, brainspotting and some rather unique energy practices. My peripheral vision on life is back. There are so many interesting projects and exciting things ahead – Quest 79 continues to spread ripples of inspiration, and I have stimulating work from brainspotting, coaching and groupwork on training our brains, and in the last few weeks starting as a Peak Performance Coach with the Flow Research Collective. The horizons are exciting, but tomorrow brings my dream of putting a balanced few years of training to the test. Surely when every cell of our body and mind are feeling healthier and we listen within more deeply than ever, our potential to perform expands?!

Let’s see. But one thing is for sure. Life is a learning journey, and whether our passion lies in sport or any other domain of life, it is a wonderful thing to have the opportunity to explore and practice creating. I know the previous approach I took was unsustainable and I have enjoyed this experiment and all the people that I’ve been privileged to connect with in the journey.

Whatever the outcome for me tomorrow – onwards to Tokyo – or a new fork in the road – THANK YOU to you all. The mystery of life is a wonderous thing!

Quest 79 seems to have gained new momentum in the last few months, and if you are following you may have noticed more activity on social media. I am feeling grateful to Clubhouse for this, and particularly coach and inspirator Pete Cohen who has been really supportive in helping me spread the word. As a coach, Pete keeps challenging me, asking me questions like ‘What is your vision for Quest 79?’ and ‘How many people’s lives do you want to impact with this?’. I flounder a little in my answers because I don’t have a numerical target. I do however have an emotional vision of inspiration spreading around the world like a positive virus, infecting people with possibility and enabling us all to shine brighter.

It seems to me that number 79 was gifted to me via the mysterious universe. You probably know the ‘back-story’ by now, and if not, you can watch this short video. It seems 79 is a rather magical number, not only as the atomic number of gold, but in the world of numerology, it is all about personal growth, creativity, and being on a ‘spiritual expedition’. It also says that it is not about material interest, but solely for the good of others: that the profit from it is gratitude: a perfect fit for the emotional vision I have for it.

My belief is that when we take a personal Quest – a journey of discovery – that we step out of our comfort zone into the unknown. We don’t know if we can do something 79 times, or for 79 days, and that challenges us to go deeper and to learn and discover something new about ourselves and the world around us. Whatever connection your Quest has to the number 79, I am certain it helps to find some of that shiny beautiful stuff we all have inside us – the inner gold.

So I am grateful for Quest 79 arriving in my life, and being able to share it with others. I am inspired by the stories that are emerging and the incredible abilities, passion, creativity and kindness that we human beings have! Clubhouse has connected me to some amazing human beings and so much positivity, open-ness and generosity.  I am so excited by the amazing Quests that are emerging as a result. For example, 79 energy healings are happening as I write this (https://www.live4energy.co.uk/quest-79-healing/ ); 79 Messy Rainbows podcasts by two young sisters age 6 and 9 to help other kids with messy lockdown heads https://anchor.fm/ourmessyrainbows ; 79 days of a Clubhouse room to ‘Create Your Fantastic Future’ with Pete https://www.mi365.me/  79 sea-swims with Sports Hub Ally Meredith https://www.linkedin.com/in/ally-meredith-17524286/ , 79 mountain-climbs by an 11-year old boy https://youtu.be/EvVHQoXG7xw , 79 days of kindness, planting 79 trees, 79 days of reading, 79 days of practicing a new skill, 79 minutes of meditation a week….the list goes on. Read this link to get inspired and see the variety of beautiful things that people are doing. https://www.quest79.com/quest-79-inspirational-challenges-list/

Dreaming and future-creating is a favourite habit of mind, and to that theme I am currently creating an ‘open’ Quest 79 Adventure to visit a magical land that I feel embodies 79. If you are interested to join, read on. Bhutan is a country that challenges the world on how to do things: the country is led by Gross National Happiness rather than Gross National Product, with social, environmental and cultural impact valued as much as financial. It is the only carbon negative country in the world, and leads the way in concepts like compassionate conservation. I have been working closely with a very special organisation, My Bhutan who I discovered via The Explorer’s Club to create a journey of ‘inner exploration’. My Bhutan have deep connections within the country and with the Bhutanese royal family, so the journey will involve talks, meetings, ceremony, cultural ritual and experience with some very special people that My Bhutan are linking us with. I’ll blog more about this soon, but please get in touch if you have interest in a journey of a lifetime with this small group Quest 79 Adventure to Bhutan that we are planning for 14-25^th April 2022.

Meanwhile, I am going to let Quest 79 evolve organically and see what naturally unfolds. I will do the best that I can to respond to messages, to share your incredible quests, and to support and nurture all the special things that are happening. I am in the process of creating a charity to help support the project to spread inspiration and positivity around the planet. I apologise if I miss anything, and I am very grateful to the individuals who have come forward to offer help and support in different areas, especially social media support by student Olivia Laird of Dundee University, Sports Hub Ally Meredith , website work to come by Creative Midfield, our new digital medal from Hi-Create, and continued web hosting thanks to Calico UK, content help from Creative Words…overwhelming generosity! And to continuous support from Nomadist for Quest 79 digital support, my website & the amazing healthcare company BBraun for supporting me in all that I do.

THANK YOU ALL. Shine your lights bright, believe in what seems impossible, and please join in to help spread this great, positive virus.

Welcome to 2021! The events of 2020 have been a great reminder that if we allow external events to affect how we think and feel, then we are travelling a rocky road. This blog is all about taking back control of our mind to serve our health, wellbeing, and deeper sense of peace and happiness.  I hope it is useful given the uncertainty many of us are experiencing, and our focus on past, present and future in a pandemic world: how it ‘was’, how it ‘is’ and how it ‘might be’.  

UNCERTAINTY has been a theme of the year and looks set to continue. Any sense of certainty we used to believe we had is starting to feel like an illusion. Uncertainty is simply the gap between where we are and where we aspire to be. If we accept that we are where we are, with what is, then we are less focused on the GAP that we perceive exists between present and future. A sense of peace arrives. With that we can embrace curiosity and excitement about the journey ahead, instead of anxiety and stress about things not working out the way we might want them to.

Here is a practical example of what I mean. I have just finished my first hard training session of the year on the bike. All of my training sessions are set to power targets for certain intervals of time. A bike computer informs me of how many watts I am producing and for how long. That means that my brain is being fed constant information about ‘the GAP’: that is the difference between my performance and my desired performance. The mechanistic, numbers-focused approach takes my attention to the gap between what is happening and what I ideally want to be happening. Often this means I am under the target power, because in a focused session like this, any good training programme will most often be stretching you to the limits of current capacity. The effect of this is that I feeding my thoughts a message that I am ‘never enough’: one of the underlying constructs of most human mindsets which I believe leads to a lot of the dis-ease that so many of us feel. This leads to a sense of stress and creates an iterative cycle of focusing again on ‘the gap’ between where or who I am, and where or who I want to be.

How messed up is that?! Surely the things we choose to spend so much time on should be more fun. Surely riding a bike should be a wonderful thing for our health, not messing with our stress response in an unhealthy way.  

So, how do we change these habits? One of my key motivations to train for the Tokyo 2021 Paralympics is that whilst I won Gold in Rio, I struggled my way there through various health problems, surgeries and injuries. So, my journey towards Tokyo 2021 is experiential, playing with my own mind at a deeper level than I have before: designing my mindset to optimize my potential through a healthier relationship with myself and with time. This was my ‘WIBA 2020’ (Wouldn’t It Be Amazing…) now shifted to 2021.

Relationship with TIME is one of the areas I am exploring: kind of interesting given my main event – the time trial –  is a race against time! I have often felt pressured by time, sensing there is never enough of it, or that the clock ticks too fast. Here is an example of how I played with that in today’s training session that I’ve already begun describing. I had to repeat the same sequence twice. The first sequence felt hard. I struggled to hold powers, and I definitely didn’t enjoy the effort. In the second sequence, I shifted my focus. Instead of looking at the computer screen intensely focused on the watts and how I was struggling to hold them, I let go. I imagined myself to be beneath Mt Fuji instead of in a cold car park in Europe. I loosely had my eyes on the power, but my focus was bigger and wider, far and beyond. In my mind I was watching the incredible firework display above Mt Fuji to celebrate the Olympics – as the original 2020 Olympic fireworks would be out of date in summer 2021, a wonderful New Year display was given which you can watch here . I imagined feeling part of something truly special, connected to the strength of human spirit, to ‘spirit in motion’ (the Paralympic motto), to the mountains, the sky, the infinity of life and everything beyond. I changed my relationship with time. Instead of Tokyo 2021 being in the future, with a huge hurdle between me and it, I imagined being there enjoying the moment. I hit the powers, and I enjoyed myself in the process.

How beautiful is that? The simple fact that we can imagine ourselves somewhere else instantly eases suffering and pain, and brings a sense of peace and joy. It reminds me of a technique that helped me when I was first paralysed. I would look up at mountains and feel sadness and pain that I could not be there. Memories of walking and being in them would haunt me. A friend suggested that I imagine myself with a giant’s hand, and that I could run that giant hand across the mountains, feeling all of the crags and valleys, textures of rocks, grass and heather. Incredibly, I felt to be there, in the mountains, and the heart-ache and pain dissolved.

A simple shift in perception can change our experience, take us from suffering to freedom, from pain to ease. Whatever you aspire to in 2021, I hope that you can travel the journey with a greater sense of freedom and ease than ever before. Perhaps that is a gift of Covid: to remind us that we are all more flexible, adaptable and creative than we may have previously realised. We can design our mind to embrace uncertainty, delete the gaps, and imagine ourselves already where we want to be.

I will be running a MIND DESIGN workshop in February 2021. If you’d like to release more of your potential, feel more peace and less internal conflict and dis-ease, then I would love to help you on that journey.

Much love and have a wonderful year x