Jon on a bike…La Vélo Francette

Well I am definitely making progress and feeling a lot stronger in all types of circuits. They are all quite modest but I’ve got to build up slowly. I have also been doing a fair bit of walking with friends which is good for keeping my bones healthy.

In terms of distance I have now got over 20 miles on this route, https://www.strava.com/routes/7210181 at a good average speed and got up the long hill out of Littlebury to the top of Coploe Hill without much of a problem. This is a picture of the easy bit..

Of course at this time of year there are a lot of distractions and I am not sure sharing two bottles of prosecco with my friend Eliza yesterday for a pre-Christmas get together was part of the training schedule. She is a great motivator though.

So many things can go wrong in the next six months, the most obvious being my health. At the moment I have a full body bone scan and a CT scan every three months along with the usual blood tests. It will be at one of these clinic appointments where one day I will be told “Jon, it’s not good news….” and the cancer will have advanced.

I was in the Oncology clinic on Thursday, where Suli, the doctor, said the results are still excellent. Phewww! On with the cycling then.

The only downside was that Suli said that he is taking up a new post in Israel in the New Year so I won’t see him again. Such a great guy..good luck Suli..and thanks for all your support.

When I first mentioned to Ros and a few close friends that I was going to try a 400 mile bike ride nobody laughed or told me I was stupid. In fact, so far everyone has been consistently encouraging. Furthermore the fact that I have told them will serve to make it harder to give up.

And so to the cycling… It was incredibly disheartening on my first few rides to discover how much strength and energy I had lost in just a few weeks as a result of the drugs. My first ride was just under 5 miles to McDonalds for a coffee and then home again…..arriving completely shattered and gasping for breath. What is worse, I didn’t get much better the next couple of times. What have I taken on? Giving up before I had  hardly started was out of the question so I set off more in hope than expectation to Addenbrooke’s for an appointment and was going well until I got a puncture. Typical.

Last week my son Nick was moving to a flat in the north of Cambridge so I decided to try and cycle there and did it! 16.4 miles. It doesn’t sound far but it’s a start.

Then last weekend Ros and I went with good friends Eliza and Adrian to the spa at Whittlebury Manor near Silverstone. I went a bit mad on an exercise bike, creating an impressive puddle of sweat underneath it by the time I fell off, totally exhausted. As a result on my two rides this week I have felt so much stronger. Each one was only about 15 miles but I did them easily. Time to step up the distance I think.

It’s dark, the temperature is below zero and it is the first of December. The idea of cycling the 400 miles of the Velo Francette route seems to be an impossible dream. I imagine the chance of me reaching the finish must be about 5%. So why embark on such a project?

For those who don’t know, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer in December 2014. A prostatectomy and radiotherapy didn’t stop the cancer spreading to my bones which means it is now incurable. I am taking part in the Stampede Trial (arm J) which involves hormone therapy to delay the inevitable…

A few years ago I cycled from Dunkirk to Paris and loved it, all 270 miles of it. Here I am posing at Place de la Concorde just to prove I made it.

I get a lot of side effects from the hormone therapy including fatigue & muscle wastage and the best way of fighting them is to take exercise so I need to set myself a target to get me out of the house this winter. La Velo Francette looks brilliant but maybe too ambitious? On verra..