Day 22 - Toughest day yet! (Again!)

Today, 22 of the event. I stayed at the Bourbon in that evening. Following from yesterday's epic amount of climbing. Alexis was the driver this week. I'm writing this after the fact because the days seem to be getting longer and the start time later. I don't really have a say in that. I'm out numbered, and most of the support crew are kind of distant from me at the moment. Its them and me, so what I think will work best for me doesn't really get spoken about. I have to go with what the majority want. There is quite a bit of negativity, which is hard to take when your like me. Im an empath, so I take on others emotions quite easily. So when people are negative and not nice, it affects me. I try to stay as positive as I can, but the other bits creep in. But enough of that rubbish! ( I said I'd be honest!).

The start of the day wasn't too bad and not too bad roads either. Everything was pracrucally alright, except I didn't have a great deal of energy because I'd expended so much yesterday, with the massive amount of climbing, but I did what I could. It's always a balance of trying to fuel as much as you can and hydrate as much as you can, which it's not easy when your on the move all of the time. I also suffered quite badly with PMDD. So these past couple of days has been that point in the month where I suffer the most. So its quite bad beforehand and when I've just started my period. So, yep, there's all that to contend too. Lots of fun! I get very swollen all over as well, so that means more weight to push and to move myself around. It just so happened to be a very, very hot day as well. So wearing shorts when you're swollen is not the best feeling! I hate the fact that my legs swell. I hate the fact of my body getting swollen, and it really does get quite badly swollen, and we're talking about half potentially half a stone of fluid extra, which is a ridiculous amount. So it's just quite unpleasant. I'm one of those people that are actually looking forward to going through menopause, so it stops, and hopefully the PMDD will get a bit better because that's not pleasant either. A lot of people don't understand it. I can go through about 10 different emotions in 1! Unless people have it, it's hard to explain and understand as well.
It's another form kind of suffering in silence type condition and there's not a lot that can be done about it. My Dr also discovered before I set off on this, that they think I've been going through early menopause as well. Just add to the Complications, so I'll hopefully be going on to HRT when I finish and we'll see what that does. Hopefully that will help with everything. I always think it will, and hope for the best.

So we started off all fine, and then we came to a turning on a road where the road was actuly closed, but I was pre warned that it would be closed, but they've said that we could go through which was amazing. So poor Alexis was about to find out how to navigate cattle grids! Learning curve!

The first section was full of trucks, and building supplies, and the entrance to the cattle grid was blocked, so I had no option but to crawl over it on my hands and knees! That was tricky. It was like being in the Army again, negotiating an assault course.
But as I moved on I saw the most beautiful scenery it. It looked like a really long, beautiful path, and then I looked up and saw lots of, how do I call it, bumps coming.
We're talking very large, mountainous and I thought oh no! But then the hope came that i could be going around them. That's always what I think when I see things like that. I really thought I might get around them and everything would be fine. But that didn't end up being the case. So throughout the day I experience from about 12% inclines up to around 20% inclines. The hardest and highest hills I've every encountered. I'd arrive close to the start of the hill, and my whole body would be filled with dread. But just for a second. I couldn't afford to stay there for long. It was more of an omg moment, then take a breath and carry on. Take every hill as it comes. You only have to do it once.

There were small roads, incredibly tough, but not usually long, and there were a few that were quite long. Some really steep ones weren't massively long. But without my track wheel it would have been completely impassable and the country lanes you would not have been able to move at all, didn't matter who you were! You just wouldn't wouldn't be able to move in either direction, there was too many stones absolutely everywhere.Grass in the middle of the road Yeah very off roading type situations. The photos you can see are there, but they don't do it justice really. Fortunately I like a challenge. So it was super tough, but nothing worth doing was ever easy!

I had a lovely surprising though. I went up quite a steep hill and saw a photographer, who turned out to be my lovely friend, Phil. Well, I saw a camera first and then I thought I recognise that head. And it's still like, oh my goodness, wow! I was totally overwhelmed. I absolutely adore Phil. He has been there from the very beginning, from my 1st ever world record at the Bridgwater half marathon in 2022. It was so good to see him. He is always so positive and I really needed that. Especially when things have been so tough recently and there's been a lot of negativit.y It was lovely to see someone positive, and he's always so positive and always so lovely and always makes me smile, So I was just blown away and so happy. He spent the day sort of driving along and taking photos and whizzing past me and getting this camera out, running around the car and then taking more. The day end up being ridiculously long and I mean I did 30 km, which was nowhere near what I set out to do.

Typically it would take 3 and a 1/2 hours to do that sort of distance even with, despite the inclines. But we were on the road for 8 hours!

So let me explain why that was, and it was mainly due to unforseen elements. Unfortunately, Alexis didn't really know what to do when it came to the driving on these some lanes, so when it came to cattle grids, that was tough.

What we'd do before when Cat was driving, and we encountered lots of these in Scotland, was she'd stop at the cattle grid, I'd go to the gate. Pam would get out of the car, she would opened the gate, let me through and cat would drive over the cattle grid, I'd be the other side, and then she'd let Pam back in the car. Then all would resume as normal. Alexis unfortunately, would let Pam come out of the car drive on, a long way up the road. Pam would then walk to the car to get back in, which made absolutely no sense. But I should have mentioned how we did it before, but presumed that this bit would have been imparted to Alexis by Pam. Alexis wouldn't know unless being party to the info, so we kept going like that for a while.

So that added a lot of time on to the situation, and it meant these sections were negotiated incredibly slowly. The planning phase was to ensure all the team were told everything and looked after, so it was tough to find that things werent being done to help either party. Pam always says that she walks all the time, so I'm hoping that it wasn't too bad for her. Or Alexis for that matter. It's not easy negotiating new terrain. She was doing a fantastic job under difficult circumstances.

It was so hot, which made things quite difficult hydration wise. Its always quite difficult for me as I'm on the move all the time, and I ran out of fluids quite early on. Phil went to a load of people on a campsite and they donated load of water and Mars bars to the crew, which was amazing and so generous.

Unfortunately I'm gluten-free, so I couldn't eat anything but these in car could, which was brilliant.
I prefer to be on my own during difficult times. It means I can concentrate on what I'm.doing and curse as much as I like, and believe me, there was a bit of that on this day. Not at anyone, just to myself and the road. I don't like it when my body wont do what I want it to. But it was necessary a few times because the hills were so steep and so dangerous. I had to put knee pads on in case I had to throw myself out the chair because my chair was tipping up so much. I was leaning forward as much as I could but the force trying to drag me back down the hill, was immense, so I'm trying to push myself and the hill, against the gravity of a massively steep incline, with pain all over. I cannot over state how difficult this was it was.

Its like doing pressups with a fully grown person on your back. It was almost impossible. Almost! I had to constantly fuel because my energy was running low. Constant lacted acid burning in my shoulders, my chest, my triceps, the whole of body, my back, was hurting. Even my lower back and leg was hurting, everything was just burning. But it's almost a good thing. It's almost theraputic. Cause pain somewhere else, to ease it somewhere else!

Not once in that whole day, did I think about quitting or giving up? It just doesn't enter my head. I don't know why but it never has doing any of these events?
It just doesnt enter my head. I don't know why that is? It maybe it stems back to my childhood and my parents would always tell me that I was nothing and nobody, so i set out to prove that was not true. That even though I'm just a plonker in a wheelchair, I can still do stuff. Maybe that's where it comes from? Who knows?

We carried on the day and it got to 5 o'clock. I just said, look, we cannot keep going all night and I've got another day to do tomorrow. And I need to try and fuel because I had a lost alot of fuel from that day, so we ended up going to the Bourbon in which was lovely.

Owned by a really lovely lady. It was tough to navigate round when your in a wheelchair but that never really bothers me. It was a nice room. No bath again, which was gutting, but that's a recurring thing. All I wanted was a bath after a long day. But most of the time I had a shower which causes alot of pain from the water pressure, on my leg. When you have CRPS you often have something called Alldonia, or hypersensitivity, which means that anything like water drops feels like your being stabbed repeatedly. So I'd navigate myself into wierd and wonderful positions so that i could wash myself without the water going onto my leg! Then I'd need to wash my leg on it's own, often in the sink! That's was another bit of fun!

I had an amazing supper of hunter's chicken, which is really lovely. They were just so friendly, such amazing people. The lovely landlady give me a hug and got all emotional, when she found out what I was doing, which was really sweet.

Running the news outlets, you would think that, we might actually be able to fund raise some decent amounts of money but still not much on that front, which had gotten lots of radio, which is great, but I still can't believe that so many people do much lesser things, and have more intervention from media.
A man last year Handcycled 8 Miles and there it was on national news and yet I do something that nobody else has ever been able to do before, and I'm completely ignored, it's very good, very upsetting and very gutting, but nothing I can do about it. All I can do is keep going, and just hope that I can help the charities as much as I can.

And it's not that I want to go on programmes or be famous, it's because I all I want is to be able to have a fair chance of fundraising, just like everybody else.

So the day was tough, and I had been out to finish the whole day and do the 42 km that I wanted to do, so that was a bit annoying, because I now have distance to make up.
Which I really did not need to be making up, but nothing I can do about it. So it's a carry on again and hope my body can do another day.

A hill!!

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