Jon on a bike…La Vélo Francette

My worry that the sluggishness I have felt recently was caused by my medication have thankfully proved unfounded and must have been the after effect of a heavy cold. Instead I have pushed myself to cycle longer distances. Last week I managed well over a hundred miles including a forty one mile round trip to a village near Newmarket, with a lot of it into a gale force wind. Then yesterday, having cycled to the hospital for an appointment, I carried on to Ely, thirty six miles in total.

It is a superb ride through Wicken Fen along the Lodes Way then following the Cam towards breathtaking Ely Cathedral. Lapwing were soaring and swooping overhead and a solitary grebe was plunging to the river bed.

 

I couldn’t believe how fit I felt as the cathedral loomed larger and the incline from the river to the Market Square did not pose any problem.

 

Fingers crossed, my confidence is returning….

I haven’t posted for a while for two reasons. Firstly, my scan results took a few days longer to be received than normal, and secondly, my cycling confidence has waned a little.

The good news is that the CT scan and the bone scan showed the cancer is still asleep and my PSA level is below 0.02. The doctor seemed pleased with my progress, even my    blood pressure was lower than ever.

I’ve realised that although I started this blog with the intention of describing my quest to complete La Vélo Francette I am conscious that I haven’t written much about cycling recently. The main news is that I have bought myself a new bike! The old one would have needed quite a few things replacing before embarking on a long trip and really a hybrid bike, which is much lighter, is more suitable. I opted for a Giant Escape 3 which will suit me fine.

It’s a lovely bike and it makes such a difference to have gears that actually work. It’s a shame though that ever since I started riding it the wind hasn’t stopped blowing. It is easy to fall into the trap thinking that cycling in flat East Anglia is easy when in fact the wind is always a factor, even the puddles have waves.

I have also been suffering with fatigue and in the last few weeks I have not managed a ride over 25 miles. I just hope it is as a result of a cold that I have had difficulty shaking off. I have also had a new Zoladex implant inserted which always affects me for a few days.

However if it is down to my drugs’ side effects then I honestly can’t see me completing the ride.

What a strange word queuing is with four consecutive vowels. This is the sort of fact one ponders while waiting in a slow err.. queue. You know the sort I mean, the sort you join at the supermarket without first judging how efficient the cashier is and in how much of a hurry the customers are in front of you.

You can be sure that the cashier’s mind will still be on the events of the previous evening. Worse still, the lonely elderly lady at the head of the line is packing her goods with no sense of urgency. When faced with the bill she is sure she had some vouchers in her bag that she could redeem but despite a thorough  rummage is unable to find them. For the coup de grace she has not quite enough cash with her so has to go without the bar of chocolate she had been looking forward to eating during Coronation Street.

At times like this patience is definitely a virtue and the wait should be looked upon as an opportunity to do something useful like clear old receipts from your wallet, study the leaflet about supermarket pet insurance, even though you don’t have a pet, or even try and think of any other words that contain four consecutive vowels.

I am in a bit of a slow queue myself at the moment, the sort you reluctantly join to shuffle off the mortal coil. Tomorrow, when I get my scan results, I might discover just how close to the checkout I am but hopefully my readings will have remained the same and are plateauing.

That’s another word with four consecutive vowels. See, I haven’t been wasting my time.

 

It is only when I have to go to hospital appointments that I get a bit jittery. CT and bone scans awaited me at Addenbrooke’s this morning and as I sat in the blue seated Oncology reception area I pondered why, when I feel physically fit, all these expensive tests are necessary. When I look round and see what some of my fellow patients are going through I feel a bit of a fraud, as though the doctors and nurses should be concentrating their efforts on them not me. My attention was drawn to the lady next to me who was approached by a nurse who had evidently administered her first dose of chemo last week. She must have chatted for at least ten minutes. I was still deep in thought, marvelling at the nurse’s kindness, when my name was called.

Over the next few hours I was at the sharp end of 4 needles, injected with radioactivity, water, and contrasting fluid. I had to lie still in two scanners and told that due to my radioactivity I should move away from a teenage boy in the waiting room. At every stage, without exception, I was treated in such a caring and friendly way with complete professionalism. How do they do it? I know I couldn’t. They must have their own worries..bills to pay, childcare issues, any number of things, but they are always unwaveringly cheerful. Heartwarming indeed.

Day to day my brain’s strategy for dealing with the cancer is simply to ignore it. I don’t think that makes me a positive or a negative person but just someone who accepts his fate. This works for me..

Today had extra poignancy as it is not only the day for my scans but is also the second anniversary of having my prostate removed which led to the inevitable consequences.

At the same time it has prolonged my life beyond my wildest dreams and it is on days like this that I am so thankful, not only to the medical staff, but to all the other people who have worked so hard, put up with my moods, and supported me tremendously to get me this far. You know who you are.

Today was yoga day. Ros goes twice a week to classes run by Shelagh & Chris and they had kindly suggested that today’s session would be in aid of Prostate Cancer UK. I thought I should give it a go and it turned out to be a lot of fun with a record number of participants. Although I’m not sure I completely mastered the sphinx, the turtle, or walking the dog…and the happy baby was impossible…Shelagh and Chris are great teachers and we had a lot of laughs. It looks as though we have raised in the region of £165.  (edit..the final total was £400)

This brings me on to the question of whether I will ask people to sponsor me on my ride on La Vélo  Francette. One part of me, the part that wants to do things with the minimum of fuss, is telling me not to. After all, when Nelson set off for Trafalgar he didn’t ask all his mates to donate a farthing for each ship he sank did he? However just riding 400 miles is inherently  a pointless exercise and by asking for sponsorship I will not only raise money but also add some meaningfulness to the trip.

It’s almost two weeks since last posting and I have been progressing well. OK so I fell off my bike again the other day but as things supposedly “come along in threes” I am hoping that I won’t be hitting the deck again for a while.

Before Christmas Ros and I attended a course titled “coping with prostate cancer ” run by the charity, Maggie’s Wallace, who provide fantastic cancer support at their drop-in centre at Addenbrooke’s Hospital. The course itself was interesting but more importantly it was good just to talk about my situation with other people going through the same thing. And despite being the world’s biggest cynic when it comes to these things I also tried mindfulness techniques and even tai chi for the first time to help me with the “panic” attacks that wash over me every few days.

The other course members wanted to keep in touch so we met up again last Saturday and all headed for the Dolphin Hotel in St Ives. I had set myself the target of cycling there and that if I managed it I felt I would be on schedule for Le Grand Départ. A head cold had been hard to shake off all week so I set off unsure of the outcome but just over two hours and 28.8 miles later I rolled across the magnificent bridge over the Great Ouse and to the warmth of the hotel bar. It was great to see everyone and to catch up on their news but I was most pleased that I had done the ride comfortably and could easily have gone further.

This Saturday, after a few false starts, I arranged to meet Caroline, my former boss when I worked in Paris. From day one we had got on brilliantly when she arrived in Paris and has always been a great friend. Caroline loves yoga and we met after her class. We had a lovely Japanese meal and plenty to drink but at the same time caught up on all our news. It did me a lot of good to be able to talk about how much my life has changed in the last couple of years. Another bonus was that Caroline’s fondness for karaoke didn’t resurface! I always remember the time we were in a karaoke bar in Paris and Caroline put in a request for a Carpenters’ song. What happened next was hilarious. As she stood on the stage, microphone in hand, the wrong song was played, something neither she nor I had ever heard of. Instead of giving up immediately she tried to blag it before giving up in fits of giggles. What a girl!

It has been a little while since I last posted. Not because I have nothing to write about, steadily grinding out the miles without incident, but possibly because I have been avidly following the blog of the BBC journalist, Caroline Wyatt, whose offerings are crafted with such clarity as she endures stem cell replacement treatment in a Mexican clinic to fight off the onset of MS. It makes my writing seem so inconsequential and impossible to match.

carolinewyatt.com

However, I have experienced the state of mind she has at the moment and reading her daily bulletins reminds me of those times. When I was first diagnosed with cancer, and after each subsequent setback, somehow my mind’s response was to banish all insignificant things to the recycle bin and make space in which to think and to concentrate on what and who is important. In a strange way it is a refreshing phase to go through and promotes creative thought.

Before anyone reads this, Caroline’s wellbeing will be less uncertain and hopefully more positive. One of her former assignments was as BBC Correspondent to Paris where, at that time, I worked at the British Embassy. One of my colleagues invited us to a salsa party which would involve being taught how to attempt a few basic steps and of course drinking a lot of alcohol. As luck would have it a friend with whom I worked, Severine, was, and is, an amazing salsa dancer so in order to get a bit of a head start she gave me an introductory lesson in the office. Severine is very polite but even she could not find anything to praise in my first efforts.

I am not sure how it happened but at the party I found myself at one point partnering Caroline. Maybe she had identified someone who would make her appear to be a potential winner of Strictly Come Dancing. Anyway, she survived the ordeal and I hope this experience has added to her resolve and given her new stem cells the strength to do their job.

Back to the cycling…

…well it has been everything but uneventful. I went a whole week with virtually no distance covered but far from feeling disappointed I just felt grateful that I survived without serious injury. Quite a few of my routes start with riding to Duxford via Hinxton, along a lane which features a ford across the River Cam. This day was cold, sub zero in fact. As I crossed the footbridge adjacent to the ford I noticed that ahead a van had gone off the road. The thought “I had better be careful, the road must be icy” formed in my head but I only got as far as “I had b” when I realised my saddle was no longer supporting me and I was falling. The impact was borne by the back of my head, or more accurately, by my helmet at the back of my head. I lay there in the middle of the road for a while trying to work out if I was OK. A van driver stopped to help me but as he approached me he too slipped on the sheet of black ice and hit the deck. Eventually I got up and retrieved my bike. My head ached and I felt sick so I reluctantly decided that it wouldn’t be a good idea to continue so I called Ros who came to pick me up. I just felt thankful that I had been wearing my helmet.

Two days later, fully recovered, I set off for Cambridge to meet up with an old friend, Christine for lunch.

I got barely 50 yards before I realised something was wrong and looking down I saw my gear cable hanging loose. It had snapped when I crashed so once again another cycle ride was curtailed.

I have been trying to make up for it since and have been clocking up the miles. Yesterday Ros dropped me off in Royston and I rode to Cambridge at a good speed along flat roads. There is a lot of mud on them at the moment, I think because it is the tail end of the sugar beet harvest and there has been little rain to wash it away. It’s not a lot of fun when the mud freezes as can be seen from the pictiure below.

As you would expect in the second week of January the weather hasn’t been great but unexpectedly I ended the week on a positive note. Thankfully the depression of last week has lifted for the time being and I’ve also managed to clock up over 70 miles on the bike including a 33 mile run yesterday.

The middle of the week saw strong winds which limited not only distances traveled but also my enthusiasm. I took the opportunity to get the gears re-indexed by OWL, part of the Papworth Trust charity who provide a great service while you wait.

These short trips were bookended by two longer ones. The plotting of new routes, planning coffee stops, and taking in different scenery is so much more rewarding than plodding along familiar roads. As Ros was meeting a friend in Woburn yesterday she dropped me off at McDonald’s car park in Royston so early that the racehorses were still exercising on the heath. However the sub zero temperature seemed to give me more impetus (and cold ears) arriving at my planned coffee stop 17 miles later with ease.

On the way I found a new friend who was all too keen to smile for the camera.

 

 

On I went, the wind finally my friend, across Grantchester Meadows, and home.

One thing I have realised is how adept I have become at avoiding the dozens of pot holes pitting the local roads. Now I am cycling further afield I am falling into some big ones. I have heard of amputees being able to feel pain where limbs used to be, well as the force of the drop into yet another pot hole is transferred to my body via the saddle I am sure it is the pain in my erstwhile prostate that causes various profanities to spill from my mouth.

Well it’s been an unusual first week of 2017 with a lot of the confidence gained in December evaporating in two sluggish 13 mile rides. I can’t even blame it on an excess of alcohol on New Year’s Eve. It was cold and breezy but I just didn’t have a lot of energy. I decided to pencil in a longer ride for today (the 5th) but last night the demons associated with the drugs I take decided to come out to play. Not good and hard to keep a lid on. Nevertheless this morning I vowed not to let them beat me and set off by train to Cambridge…

The local news has featured several sightings in the last few days of an escaped large rhea called Lawrence on farmland South West of Cambridge. It would be fun to make his aquaintance so I plotted a route taking in the area where he had been spotted.

All was going well until I alighted at Cambridge Station…a front wheel puncture! Damn..I could either get the next train home or try and get it fixed and carry on. As luck would have it there is a bike repairer in a shack just outside the station. What a shame the proprietor showed a good deal more interest in the sausage roll he had just bought than in my front wheel and he informed me I would have to wait three hours for a job that would take him ten minutes. There was nothing for it but to walk to the City Centre and fix it myself. OK Sports Direct get a bad press but they certainly came up trumps today, an inner tube, tyre levers, and a pump (which I needed anyway) all for £17. Twenty minutes later all was done.

Riding along King’s Parade in front of King’s College is normally a huge pleasure but I could feel the demons resurfacing and scrambling my brain. I pushed on, out through Newnham, Barton, Haslingfield, Barrington before stopping for a rest. I really wasn’t enjoying the ride and not a sign of Lawrence.

Through Orwell and a brief stretch in the Western Hemisphere

 

All of a sudden I settled into a rhythm and eventually struggled home. It was 27 miles and I was proud that I hadn’t given in to the drugs’ side effects. Alas, this evening I have discovered that not only was the rhea recaptured this morning but his real name is Eric. What a day!

 

 

To avoid too long out of the saddle, the day before leaving for our holiday in Yorkshire I tried a new circuit taking in Addenbrooke’s, The Gogs Cafe, Babraham, and Sawston. Although 24 miles it wasn’t too difficult and my confidence is growing.

Thanks to Storm Barbara our four night trip to Aysgarth was wet and windy but still had a lot of fun.

Significantly, Ros gave me the guide to La Velo Francette. The route looks amazing but a long, long way.