Living with Type 1 Diabetes

For World Diabetes Day last year, I wrote an insight into a day in the life of a child with T1:

1) night testing

0145, give her a nightime blood test. Levels a bit high but decide not to correct as experience tells me the numbers fall away quickly as morning approaches and I don't want her to go low. Last night they were a bit low so gave her a snack - biscuit & milk. She has no memory of being sat up in bed & fed. No 2 nights are the same.

2) Breakfast

We do the blood test to see her morning levels, and if there's a correction to do, we do it before she eats. Change the needles on the long & slow acting insulin pens. Today we had to change the long acting insulin as well.

What's the difference? The long acting levemir provides the basal dose, and this ticks away in the background all day, doing normal pancreas stuff.

The fast acting novorapid handles the food intake. But in order to give the right amount, we have to work out the carbohydrate content of everything B eats, type that into the meter, which then tells us how much insulin to inject. This is the bolus dose.

Carb counting: Most foods have a carb content per 100g on the back, so we weigh her cereal, add the measured milk. Toast is easier as they have a per slice count on the bread packet. Some people add a bit on for the toasting as well but we don't. Add on a few grams for the honey, or weigh it onto the buttered toast.

I hate carb counting, it sucks the spontaneity out of food, but it's also absolutely essential. When we let it slide or get it wrong, B can get too much or too little insulin, and end up too high (hyperglycaemia) or too low (hypoglycaemia) - both of which will make her feel shit and both of which could get nasty if not treated immediately with correctional insulin or fast acting sugar.

There are apps & books to help, but sometimes the food isn't in there, so you have to guess.

So, 1 test, 2 needles changed, 2 or 3 injections (depending on whether she's decided what she's having to eat), food weighed & measured, carbs calculated. Now she can eat! Every morning...

3) School

B doesn't let her diabetes get in the way of her doing anything, and nor do we. She does everything at school that the others do. We are very lucky to have a supportive school, and an amazing TA who takes care of B at lunchtime and makes sure she has the right injections. Carb counting is not so onerous, as most of the time the school catering companies can give you an idea of the carb content of the meals.

During the day, B will test herself if she's feeling unwell, and the teachers may keep an eye on her too, but I understand that it's not easy for them and they have 29 other kids as well. As she's getting older, she, we and they want her to become more independent, but you do still need trained adults around who know the signs. In very unusual cases, some parents get a statement, which means their child can have 1 to 1 care - but these are definitely the exception and not the rule.

She'll usually need a snack before or after PE, and this may cause some envy from her classmates, who just see her eating biscuits during lessons. She used to have to be taken to the medical room for tests, but we insisted they keep her test kit in the classroom - if she's hypo, she needs to be tested right away and shouldn't be walking halfway across school, or going down stairs etc.

We're not sure how any residential school trips will be handled, as she does need to be checked and potentially treated at night, and this is usually a big area of concern for parents - we don't want our kids to miss out, and legally the school can't exclude them, but some schools make it very difficult. I hope this will not be our case.

BG levels can be very different during the school day than at weekends, and can vary day to day depending on what they are doing. Concentrating can cause the levels to go down more quickly as the brain also burns up the carbs.

She'll come home in a couple of hours, and may well be bordering on low - she usually fades after lunch, so we need to think about whether the carb ratios are right at lunchtime or not, and change them if necessary.

4) Bath & bedtime

So the evening meal is much like breakfast, with all the food being weighed and the carbs calculated. We have to be careful with certain foods - fatty things like pizza take a long time to release, so we give the insulin after she's eaten it. We also have to watch out that what we calculate is what she eats - otherwise we might end up giving her too much.

She might have a treat from her sweetie box (which we carb count and add to the meter), or if she's been to a party she might have the cake. She's incredibly disciplined about waiting until an appropriate time to eat her sweets or cake - much more than I am.

At bathtime, she might suddenly feel funny in the bath or shower - this is because hot water can accelerate the absorbtion of insulin, so this is another thing we have to look out for. I imagine she'll be pretty pissed off when she's older and suddenly feels low when she's covered in soap or shampoo!

Before she can go to be she has to be tested again, and given a second dose of the long acting levemir to get her through the night. If her numbers are below 7 then she'll need a small snack - a couple of biscuits or a glass of milk - something to bump her up a bit and keep her from going low in the night. This is the nightmare of many T1 parents, and why we test at night, as you just don't know whether they will wake up once they go low or not. The other day, she did, at 0530, so we were able to give her some OJ and get her back up again. Other times she may not. It's a worry.

When she eventually goes to bed, we can put our feet up until we go to bed, but we should expect to test her a couple of times in the night, and be prepared to feed her again if we need to - or indeed administer a correction. We can usually tell if we'll need to correct her as we'll hear her padding around upstairs going to the loo frequently - one of the signs of high blood sugar.

Just another day in the life of a child with Type 1 - and this was an easy day without any additional complications like being ill!

5) the stats

B's numbers today: 5.2 at breakfast, 6.1 at lunch, 4.1 after school, then a biscuit-frenzy induced 13.2 at teatime. Apart from the 13.2, these are excellent numbers! I just know that tomorrow we could do exactly the same, she could eat the same, and they'd be different - higher or lower - such is the roller-coaster of type 1 diabetes!

Thanks for your patience in reading these updates about what it's like managing & living with Type 1 diabetes. I hope you've gained some awareness into what is a relentless but manageable condition - she'll have it for life, or until there is a cure, but it needn't be a life sentence.

Type 1 is auto-immune, it is not caused by obesity or poor lifestyle choices or too many sweets - not that you'd know that from the way the media uses the blanket term "diabetes". I'm not sure I knew there were several different types before it affected me, or what they were, so I try to raise awareness rather than be judgmental!

With B the signs were rapid weight loss, extreme unquenchable thirst, going to the loo all the time & general listlessness. We were lucky that the GP did a blood test and sent us to Paediatrics at Lewisham in an ambulance, where we have a lovely team helping us manage this disease.

It is a daily struggle, but we do our best to keep everything as normal as possible, and things like carb counting are becoming part of the routine. She can eat the same as everyone else can, there's nothing we have to avoid - we just have to calculate how it's going to affect her and account for it with insulin.

One of the reasons we're able to cope is partly because we have no choice, but mainly because B takes it all in her stride with such courage that she leaves us humbled.

Here she is with her equally incredible Mum who does most of the work, saving the best bits (weekends and nights) for me!

If you want to help find a cure, then you can make a donation to JDRF, or sponsor me for one of my crazy bike rides - it'll get to the same source, and will be used to find a cure.

Thanks for reading.

RideLondon 100

So, the day was finally here. I had done a reasonable amount of training- plenty of short 30-40km rides, 1 x 75km, 1 x 100km, so I had some mileage in my legs at least. I'd also lost about 5kg, which was very pleasing.

The week began with a bike fitting, as I had been getting a lot of lower back pain. This was a detailed process - nearly 3 hours assessing my position on the bike, changing around various bits & pieces, learning a new pedalling style, and the next day I rode to work and felt a bit faster! However the back pain was still lingering, and I couldn't decide whether it was the new fit causing it, or it was left over from the weekend, or it was because I was nervous about the ride!

On Friday I went up to the ExCel to collect my starting pack, and to meet the lovely JDRF team in person. There was also a massage area, so I decided to let them have a go at my back, and it helped. I avoided the sofa for the next 2 days, which probably also helped! On Saturday we pottered around - I ate plenty of protein at a barbie, but in the evening I didn't really feel like eating - the nerves were starting to kick in, though I forced some risotto down, searched the house top and bottom for one of my lucky training socks which had gone missing, and eventually packed it up, got some other perfectly acceptable socks out of the drawer, prepared the rest of my kit and went to bed.

The night before the Etape du Tour in 2011 (a stage of the Tour de France going over 2 alpine passes and finishing on Alpe De Huez,) had been terrible - I'd lain awake devising a foolproof plan to hide in the woods behind the chalet until they all went - and I started that ride on a bit of a hiding to nothing with shattered confidence, dehydrated, and nothing in my legs. I got over one alp then was caught by the broom wagon. This time I slept pretty well, apart from being woken at bladder o'clock a few times, although I did wonder at one point if I should accidentally leave the garage door open to facilitate the theft of my bike...

After my experience in 2011, only a few months after my daughter was diagnosed, I felt like I had a bit of unfinished business with long distance sportives, and to really tempt fate, I decided if I were going to beat the demons, I would wear my etape t-shirt under my kit to get that closure. The lucky socks would have really pressed home my advantage, as well as the very generous cut off times, so I felt like I had a good chance, if my creaking back could hold together.

I was wide awake by 4am, got up and had some porridge Gaby had prepared the night before. Mum was staying (so we didn't have to take the kids along), and she woke up too, read through the riders' instructions and worried whether I had everything (I did!).I stuffed my jersey pockets with dried fruit, jelly babies, homemade flapjacks, and got the bike in the car, and off we went.

There were a few other cars on the road with bikes, and there were knowing glances between the drivers. We were all heading for the O2 carpark, where the bikes were unloaded, checked for the last time, wives were kissed goodbye (the event was about 75% MAMIL), and off we cycled through the closed tunnel. This was fun in itself - I have ridden through a closed tunnel once before in Rio, when the roads were impassable due to mudslides, but on that occasion there were diggers in the opposite bore making a terrible racket.

This time, it was just the whirring of pedals, and it was quite tranquil. Out the other side and along the road down to Stratford. I ran into Steve, another JDRF rider I knew, and we arrived at Olympic Park way too early, about an hour and a quarter before our start time. Didn't do much - queued for the loo, met some other riders, got cold, went through to the start pen, queued for the loo again, chatted a bit, lost my buddy, found a broken pair of Oakley shades which I repaired by clicking the lens back in, waited around, ate flapjacks, tried not to think about what was ahead... The hilarious PA man wasn't quite as tiresome as the one in the Etape, but he didn't need to be waffling on quite as much as he did at that time of the morning. (I wonder if they ever think to play calming classical music instead of pumping hi-energy pop?!)

And then we were off, about 5 mins ahead of schedule. There were a couple of miles until we officially started, and I just rode off at my own pace. There were a few bunches of people together, but no one riding in a properly formed group. There were chain gangs of good club riders who came through from time to time, but they were too fast for me to get on a wheel. There were all sorts of different shapes & sizes- from Boris Johnson's chiselled whippet to some very large people, and on different kinds of bikes - mainly road, but some hybrids, a few tandems and some bloke on a Brompton - no idea how he got on! Once we were over the start mat, we had a lovely run down the A13 with great views of the Canary Wharf area in the early morning light. Then it was down into the Limehouse Link for a while, until we popped out, somewhere along from the Tower. This is also where we saw out first spectators on the road, and I was momentarily overwhelmed by this, stifling a couple of sobs, glad of the protective shades. I had anticipated pain & suffering, but not emotion. It was going to be a dusty day, by the look of it.

Around the tower a large group appeared on my shoulder and swept past - Laura Trott & her team mates, minders and hangers on. They weren't going hugely fast and I was close enough to see them drop out by The Ritz - even telling another rider that whatever else happened, we had beaten Laura.

The route took us along the A4 then over Chiswick Bridge, through Sheen & up into Richmond Park. I wasn't riding in a group as such, but seemed to be sticking with the same people. There was a bloke with cow horns on his helmet for some reason,  and I was glad once I had dropped him because he was annoying me! Cow horns! After the park it was Kingston, past the JDRF support on the bridge, Hampton Court then out towards Surrey via Walton, Weybridge and other places. The pace was good - 30kmh average - but it was windy.

The 10 mile posts came & went, and I was telling myself 10% done, 20% done etc. The 20-30 seemed to take longer than expected, and I didn't see the 40 mile sign. I had decided not to stop until the 45 mile mark, which was at the top of Newlands Corner. The ride up is quite sharp, but not that bad, and I was a bit surprised to see some folk already walking up, pushing their bikes. There was food & water at the top (bananas,  crisps,  gels) but I didn't feel like anything. I phoned home (more dust, what was happening to me??),  let them know where I was,  and though Leith Hill & Box Hill were up next, I was going much faster than I thought I would be.

I was quite amused as we headed down from Newlands towards Leith Hill to hear people around me mistaking the straightforward hill we had just been up with the brute still to come. On the way we went past the 50 miles down - the halfway point. There was a sorry lack of festivities at this point, but I commented on it to the bloke next to me at the time, who just grunted and carried on. Once we reached the foot of Leith Hill, it was as bad as expected and seemed longer too. It was hard to get into a steady rhythm as the road was very narrow,  and once it ramped up to 17%, that slow lane became the walker's lane as people got off / got in the wrong gear & fell off.  I wasn't quick enough to go in the middle bit, so, (secretly not that disappointed), I got off too! It flattened out towards the top so I got back on, rode off the road into the wood, tried again & managed to get moving again!

Once over the top there was a fast descent back to the A25, and I later heard that I'd narrowly missed a pile up behind me. Given the way some folk were hitting the descent,  I wasn't that surprised. Anyway, as it had all been going brilliantly so far, there had to be a spanner somewhere,  and the first spanner was that I got stung on the shin by a bloody wasp! This was painful but not debilitating - however, the St John's ambulance people in Dorking had no antihistamines,  so it started to swell a bit. As I went through Dorking I saw the JDRF supporters zone, who cheered me on, and we shared high fives, then my friends Kate & Pat who had caught a train down to see me. I was so far ahead of the anticipated schedule that they had cut out the first place they'd planned to go and gone straight to  Dorking. It was so good to see some friendly, familiar faces - the roadside support was fantastic, but there's nothing like seeing friends & family to put a spring in your step. Now I know what a difference it makes, I am resolved to go and support the marathon runners next year.

And so to the "mythical Box Hill" - I'm not really sure why it is so mythical, as it is a very gradual climb, 3-4%, lovely surface, no problem going up. No walkers here, so no problems with rhythm, though the wag at the bottom who said there was free beer at the top was a lying dog! I was at the top by 1210, about 4 hours 20 after setting off, and with only about 35 miles to go, I was looking good for a great time...what could possibly go wrong now?!

Even to entertain such thoughts was to produce the other spanner, which was that my right knee packed up a few miles later, and it suddenly became very painful to put any pressure on it - so any bit of road which went uphill became a real struggle and I started going backwards. I got as far as the next hub at Leatherhead, and hobbled into the St John's Ambulance tent, where they initially advised me to stop riding. That was never going to happen, and as all they could do was provide an ice-pack, I just took a few minutes to sit in the shade & massage my knees (specifically the IT band, which was causing the pain) with tiger balm, which I had brought along for my back! After a while I pushed on, and, while going backwards on any slopes, I was ok on the flat.

Some of my family were going to meet me in Wimbledon, so I let them know where I was from Kingston and carried on. All the way from Leatherhead I was wondering how I was going to get up that last hill, whether I would have to walk, whether my nephew would run alongside etc. I hadn't forgotten the penultimate hill along Coombe Lane, but there was a lot of support out by now, and so I was spurred onwards & upwards.

As I was riding up from Raynes Park, I got chatting to a Scottish bloke whose legs had also gone, and we resolved to nurse each other through to the end - but then someone swerved in front of me, I lost a bit of rhythm, and the Scottish bloke was gone. I wasn't going to catch up with anyone at this point. I got to the corner, and there were the family cheering me on, "Come on Andrew, only 10 miles to go, you're nearly there!" shouted Anna. I wanted to stop, but knew that if I did, I'd struggle to get moving again, and would have probably burst into tears, so I gave them a wave and turned the corner & started up the hill. The surge of "you're nearly there now" emotion carried me up the hill somehow, as well as all the support, which was really encouraging, and after one last stop for water (they had just run out of new knees, the guy told me), it was off along familiar roads towards Putney.

Halfway along the common, there was an old boy with a sign reading "pain is just weakness leaving the body", which made me laugh. My knee was just about tolerating the position I had got myself into, but when I tried anything else, like sitting up, or standing up, or taking my hands off the handlebars, it made its feelings clear very quickly and I was back down again. I coasted along past Tibbet's corner (not worrying about oncoming traffic was a nice change!) and on down Putney Hill, where we had to stop to let an ambulance cross the course. This was annoying, as valuable downhill momentum was lost and we had to start up again. It may not seem much, but 95 miles in when you're knackered, it's a real effort!

I don't remember much of the next 4 miles, but suddenly I was back on the Thames & heading along towards Parliament Square, where Gaby, the kids, Mum, Giules, Kate & Pat were waiting. I wasn't sure whether they were expecting me to stop & chat, but I just carried on past them (partly because I couldn't have stopped at this point), high fives all round, and carried on up Whitehall to the final corner.

Somehow, I got round it & through Admiralty Arch, even getting a bit of a sprint on as I went onto the Mall, then coasting over the line as there was a big group finishing together denying me my moment of Cav, and the feeling that the sudden injection of pace meant all the crap in my pockets was going to fly out...however, finish I did, about 12000 down (which doesn't mean anything as people started at different times), but according to the announcer, well conditioned to be finishing in a decent time with decent fitness. He clearly had no idea about my knee!

7 hours 10 in the end, which included a lengthy injury stop and a very slow final third - if only I'd found that other lucky sock!

We were then asked to dismount, given a nice heavy medal, given a goody bag full of junk - a milk drink, a cranberry juice, a bottle of water, some gels, a tube of toothpaste, a sachet of salad cream...all really useful. A cheese roll would have been much better. I made my way through to the park, found a space on the grass, sat myself down, had a chat with my brother who had finished in 4.5 hours(!!!) then got mobbed as the support team arrived!

It was great to see them, and they were so pleased for me too - I don't think I had fully appreciated how others had looked on this whole venture - because I had done 100 miles the previous summer with a couple of neighbours, albeit in about 5 more hours, I never felt that I wouldn't finish. But 100 miles is a long way, and I had only been training since June. I had failed to finish the Etape, (you can read about that episode here), so definitely had some unfinished business. I also felt, as I rode along in a blur from Fulham, that I could cross the mid-life crisis off my list. And whenever it got tough, I tried to remember why I was doing it.

After a decent sit down, we went up to see Elizabeth & the JDRF team, then we walked gently back towards Charing Cross, fuelled by chips & hot-dogs, and looking forward to a milkshake from Maccy D's! The knee stiffened up in the evening, but an ice pack and some voltarol meant I could just about get upstairs at bedtime and slept the deep & dreamless sleep of the virtuous - what a day!

This morning, having sworn that was it yesterday, and now that the knees are working after a fashion again (if anyone has any tips for sorting out femoral tibial band issues, let me know!), I'm already thinking about the next one - Tour de Type 1 anyone?

You can still sponsor me here!

Grand Tours

So, before I ride out on my 100 miler in August, the pros will have completed the Giro d'Italia, and the Tour de France - those doing both will have ridden over 5000 miles - I've got stiff legs after a 20 mile ride yesterday! Admittedly it is their job, and they do little else, but still, that's a phenomenal amount of riding to complete in 2 separate 3 week races.

Cycle races at a pro level are made up from one day classics, usually in the spring - races such as the 300 km Milan-San Remo, or Paris-Roubaix, which is famous for its mud & cobbles. You then have the shorter stage races, up to a week long, and then the big boys of Italy, France & Spain. La Vuelta is where Chris Froome came to prominence a couple of years ago, when poor tactics from Sky caused him to miss out on the win by a few seconds.

The one we've all heard of is the Tour de France of course, raced in July, with a huge global audience, and a 3 week tourist advert, with those amazing bucolic shots of the mountains, chateaus, fields of sunflowers...and it starts tomorrow!

96.85

One whole kilogram! That's like 2 bags of sugar just evaporated from my gut! In little over a week! Must be the salad I forced down for lunch yesterday.

In training terms there have been 3 turbo sessions,  a 35km ride, a bit of walking and the ridiculous & frankly terrifying experience of carrying H up and down the spiral staircase  (311 steps) of the Monument. This spiral staircase, illustrated below,  could almost be some kind of "metaphor" for my "journey" to fitness.

In perspective news, il Giro has started, which will be excellent this year, over a tougher course than le Tour, albeit with a nice time trial to attract Wiggo. He's made no secret of his desire to win it, so it will be interesting to see whether the other riders, either individually,  collectively as teams, or by alliances formed on the road, can shove a proverbial stick through the well drilled spokes of Team Sky. 200+ km daily stages, up and down some brutally unforgiving terrain...while the measly 160km of the London-Surrey will mainly be riding on nice wide a-roads, and with Wimbledon Hill in the top 5 climbs of the day...!

Richmond Park tonight if anyone's interested - 1815 by Ham Gate for a couple of laps then The Roebuck!

fundraising

Fundraising has been made a lot easier these days, with the advent of online giving sites, and I'm lucky to have very generous friends & family. I'm still a bit unsure about what ELSE I can do. B is going to help by having a cake sale at her school, and I'm going to put the info into the school newsletter. I'd like to do a quiz night, but we only just had one, which wasn't very well attended, so I'm not sure if the school would want to do another one so soon. Does anyone have any good fundraising ideas? To read more about why I'm doing this, and hopefully to sponsor me if you are able, click here: http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/fatladonabike

97.85

No, this is not Donald Bradman's revised batting average. It's my weight this morning, with just over 3 months to go until the London Surrey 100 miles, as the title of this blog becomes relevant again. I'd like to say I was shocked, but I've been avoiding midriff height mirrors for a while now, so it wasn't a complete surprise.

I will be trying not to obsess too much about this, unlike l'etape when I went a bit mad (see below! ), but will be making a big effort to lose weight and get fit. I rode 150km last autumn with my neighbours, with no training,  and long breaks, so I know I can do the distance. There is a time limit to this event as well, but there are no alps around so it should be more straightforward - I'd obviously never say anything like that, as that would invoke the mockers. Hopefully the thought of a triumphant sprint home on the Mall on Sunday 4th August will sustain me!

My current training plan is a bit vague - try to do an hour on the road in the evening most days, take the bike to work once a week and cycle around Richmond Park, go for a longer ride at the weekend...play it by ear. I'm lucky to live near some challenging urban hills and 20 mins ride from open countryside, and with the evenings getting longer I have no excuses!

Quite a lot will be happening in the meantime - becoming an uncle again, lobbying MPs in parliament on behalf of Diabetes Voices, work, fund raising for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF), not to mention normal family life with 2 young kids and a patient wife. I'm very much looking forward to the challenge - stay tuned!

L'etape du Tour, 11th July 2011

This time last week was my wedding anniversary. 13 glorious years with the Gabster. So what was I doing waking up from one of the worst night’s sleep I’ve ever had, in France, in a little Alpine village called Lanslebourg-Val Cenis, on a sofa, sweating like a dog outside a butcher’s shop on a summer’s day?

The bloody Etape du Tour, that's what,an actual stage of the Tour de France, opened up to 10,000 lucky amateurs, cycled on closed roads a week or so before the pros come through and show us all how it should be done. It had been an obsession for months, ever since I saw the route of the tour announced and hoped that they'd be picking the Alpe de Huez stage. But now, as the moment of truth was upon us, I'd changed my mind and I wasn’t going to do it. Oh no, I had decided umpteen times throughout the night, on my trips to the loo whenever the cramps took hold and woke me up, as I lay tossing & turning, convinced I had sunstroke, or flu, or something, anything, that there was no way I could do it. How could I? I wasn’t fit enough, I wasn’t light enough, I wasn’t very good at eating at the right times, I hadn’t done enough training, I was scared of cycling in big bunches, I was terrified of going downhill in big bunches, I knew I was going to fail – what was the point?




Needless to say,sitting around the breakfast table with 4 sleepy guys at 5am, my plaintive looks & sighing & woeful expression were roundly ignored. No one was going to give me any sympathy or even respond to my pathetic attempts to get out of it, so I decided I’d just have to go. On very little sleep and let’s say somewhat drained from my nocturnal challenges. And not 45 minutes later, I found myself in the van, heading down to Modane. This year, we were to go up 3 Alpine passes, finishing at the top of the almost mythical Alpe De Huez. And as if all that weren’t already bad enough, there was a time limit which we had to worry about as well, the so-called broom wagon, chasing after us, sweeping us up if we were too slow, putting us out of our misery.

With so many people taking part, the organisers had turned the centre of the small town of Modane into a giant holding pen for MAMILs with their varying levels of fancy bikes, eying each other’s gear, reacting or not, relaxed or feigning it, but mainly waiting. Waiting inside one of the twelve starting pens to be released and get started on the 109km that lay in front of us. Waiting to see whether all those months of training would pay off. Waiting to see whether the adrenaline would carry them through. Waiting to see when rather than if the Broom would catch them. (I may of course just be projecting here!)



It’s hard to prepare for the Alps in the South East of England. It’s not that we don’t have hills, we do – lots of them, far more than you realise until you start riding around on a bike seeking them out. But the hills we do have tend to be shorter & steeper. A typical Col will go on for about 8-10 miles, steadily uphill all the time, gradient changing frequently, usually hovering somewhere between 7% and 9%. Relentless. Add the mid-summer heat to the equation and you get some kind of idea of what it’s like. On Telegraphe, the climb is mainly wooded, and you try and cling to whatever shade you can like a limpet, even at 9am in the morning. Once you get down to the start of Galibier, 18km or so of climbing, there isn’t any shade, and you can certainly forget it on the Alpe as well, where, all being well, you’ll be arriving at around 2pm to start the 14km, 22 hairpin climb, in the blazing heat.

I had tried to prepare, but it’s not been an easy year, not least because my 5 year old daughter was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes in April – so what guilt I already had for sloping off on a Saturday for a few hours was exacerbated. I couldn’t have done it without the support of my amazing wife, who was happy for me to go out and get fitter and try to lose weight, and wouldn’t let me get out of it, no matter how much I tried. Deciding to raise money for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) was another motivating factor, and my incredibly generous friends & family have helped me to raise over £600!



As time went by I did several long rides in the hills around Kent & Surrey, a couple of 80km runs with my friend & cycling mentor Ian, who was very encouraging & supportive as a coach, as well as being able to provide helpful tips on the route, having done it himself a couple of times on an even madder challenge called Le Marmotte. I also did an 80km sportive, my first, at the start of June, with Tom, a fellow sF rider, in absolutely filthy weather – steady, heavy rain throughout, headwinds, cold, miserable & perversely enjoyable.



However, I was also having knee problems, so wasn’t able to do as much training in the week as I’d wanted to – I did ride to work a few times, but it’s a 60km round trip on fairly busy , crappy suburban streets so wasn’t that enjoyable. My last training ride, the 100km North Kent Bikeathon, foreshadowed what would happen the following weekend, when for the first time I started to get backache. I’ve long had back problems, but hadn’t had a problem on the bike. I tried to ride it off, but with a week before the main event, and discretion being the better part of valour, I retired at the first place I got to with a railway station – which ended up being 2/3 of the way around the course!

And so on Sunday we found ourselves in France, resplendent in our company sponsored gear, cycling the 30km or so down the valley to Modane to sign in for the main event the next day. We got the new timing sheet which just showed that despite the numbers, they hadn’t really changed anything. The broom was going to start at 8am, and as it turned out, 3 out of the 4 of us doing it hadn’t started by then, so the clock was against us from the start! Nevertheless, we tried, unsuccessfully in my case, not to obsess about the broom wagon, and ate spaghetti, bread & had an early night. An early night which would prove, as I mentioned above, one of the longest & most uncomfortable I’ve had for a very long time.



Having miserably failed to conquer the nerves and execute my foolproof plan formulated in my midnight delirium to get up early and hide somewhere until the others had left, I found myself in the starting pen at 6.30, as ready as I was going to be, trying to feign confidence. We listened to the increasingly tiresome announcer waffling inanities, interviewing Alain Prost, doing his 10th Etape, then singing happy birthday to some 70 year old man. As the wry Aussie alongside Alister & me noted, this was probably a gift from his kids trying to get their hands on their inheritance early. Eventually, around 8.05, we started shuffling forwards, then the sound of the cleats clicking into the pedals filled the air, and then we were rolling.



The good people of Modane had turned out to see us off in some numbers, and the first few miles of the roads out of town were lined with people cheering us on, jangling cowbells, and generally making a racket. It was quite emotional, and I was glad of my shades! The road down to the bottom of the first climb was long, wide and fast – I found myself topping 60kph without realising it – snaking down the valley between the soaring mountains to St Jean de Maurienne where we suddenly turned a corner, crossed a bridge and started climbing.

Even though I knew it was coming it still seemed to be upon us before I was ready for it, and there was no build up – it just started. Suddenly everyone was bunched up again, heading up the mountain road, 6 or 7 abreast, peeling off layers, going at different speeds. There was an air of excitement, people were talking about just getting to the first elimination point. It was a bit manic. I tried to climb at my own pace, but there were so many people that you either found yourself behind someone going too slowly, or in front of someone going too fast. It was quite difficult at the bottom to get into your own rhythm, but once it started to thin out as we got higher it was easier. It wasn’t long before my back started to ache, and combined with the energy loss & dehydration from the night before, I was struggling. I wanted to get as far as I could, but I was revising my ambitions downwards quite rapidly.

Then I did something I hadn’t done on any of my training rides – I stopped. I stopped for a rest, got off the bike and sat down in the shade for a while. I probably didn’t need to, I could have gone on, but I think I had convinced myself by this time that my day was going to be a short one. I tried to stretch the back a bit, but it wasn’t until a chap with one leg cycled past that I pulled myself together, hopped back on the bike and carried on up the road. Not long after this I heard a bellowed “Come on sparesFinder” from behind – I didn’t turn back to see who it was for fear of cycling over the edge and into the forest, but a few minutes later, Tom appeared next to me, and proceeded to nurse me up the next few kilometres, talking about anything other than what we were doing, pointing out the local botany, lifting my spirits. I’d like to have been able to talk back but I was pretty knackered by this stage, and after a while I dropped back a bit and let him go on. And had another rest.

About 3km from the top there was a village, and some local people had come out to cheer us on, but by this time the numbers had thinned so much that there was little noise – just the birds, the whirr of the pedals, the steady sound of your own breathing. It was very tranquil and I sat down again just to enjoy it. And because I was a wimp. The tranquillity was broken by the distant sound of motorised vehicles and a motorbike pulled up alongside me, pointing back to a car about 150m away down the hill, informing me that I was at the end of the race and had to get a move on if I didn’t want to be eliminated. Despite everything that had happened, and my subconscious acceptance of the inevitability of the broom (not so subconscious really!), I really didn’t want to get eliminated before the top of the first mountain. I leaped back on and got up the last mile as fast as I could and made it ahead of the broom – though not ahead of the van taking down all the signage!




After a quick picture, I jumped back on and enjoyed the 5km descent into the charming ski village of Valloire, where the first feed station was and the climb to Galibier started. There was a welcoming committee in the village cheering us through, even the “lanternes rouges” like myself, and the proximity of the broom added a further frisson of excitement to the day.



However, I knew my ride was over when I saw the road up out of Valloire, and there were other people there falling off bikes with exhaustion or claiming altitude sickness, and being a curious fellow, I hung around a bit to see what was going on with the broom. I just can’t resist a bit of gossip! The broom came and were very nice – I had no intention of getting in the bus, so they put a red cross through my number, cancelled my time on the race computer and left me to it sitting in the shade by the side of the road, watching the end of the race go by. I gave my wife a call to tell her what had happened, allowed the pent up emotions to flood out, then called up Mark and arranged for him to come & collect me. After a nice lunch, we then drove up and cycled down the rest of the route as far as the bottom of Alpe De Huez, where we met the others.



My race was run. I had cycled around 900km in preparation for this, somewhere between a third & a half of what was required by some accounts, and managed about 33km on the day before retiring. I was upset that I hadn’t been able to do more, upset that I hadn’t managed to conquer the nerves, upset that my back had let me down. My legs were fine. I didn’t feel tired. I just couldn’t continue. Then I started to remember a few things: this is a stage of the Tour de France – it isn’t supposed to be easy, it’s one of the hardest cyclosportives out there! I had given it a go and got over 1 mountain, despite my physical limitations. I hadn’t done anything competitive for years, since school, maybe since ever, and I’d certainly never done anything remotely like this. I’d never done any sport that required endurance. And I’d raised over £600 for Diabetes Research. I did feel a bit of a fraud for not feeling physically tired anywhere apart from my back, but there was nothing I could do about this – other than get fitter and try again another year.



The next day I proved to myself that I wasn’t a complete no hoper by going out on a morning ride up an alp behind the hotel not dissimilar from the one I’d got over, albeit slightly shorter. And I made it. Without the pressure of the broom, without the nerves, without the razzamatazz of the big event. In some ways the relative ease with which I was able to do this was even more annoying than the nerves of the previous day but it showed me that I was heading in the right direction, I was capable, I could do it – “all” I need to do is drop several kilos, get to work on the core fitness, train longer and hope against hope that the next time I’ll be able to cope with the nerves. And I really hope there will be a next time!



My friends also had mixed success – Tom, who started 15 minutes after the rest of us, was eliminated on the lower slopes of the Alpe, devastatingly. Alister managed to beat the broom despite having 20% less gears than the rest of us – performance of the day without question, and David, with 3 etapes & 2 marmottes worth of experience as well as several other crazy rides to call on, unsurprisingly breezed home in a mite over 6 hours. Meanwhile our sterling driver Mark cycled down the Col du Glandon, so even he got a taste of the action.

As for me, my journey from fat lad on a bike has only got as far as slightly less fat lad on a bike, rather than svelte alpine cyclist just yet. There’s always next year - though I may opt to spend that wedding anniversary with my dearly beloved, especially if I want to get to the following one!