“You race to win” we’re taught. That’s what should be hardwired into an athlete. Clearly my head and / or my heart intervened and got the better of any thread of hardcore athlete I may have woven in me. I have no regrets though. I don’t think it’s all about winning (and certainly not when your competitor is your own team mate).

Last weekend (there is a connection here, bear with me) I was on a handbike mountain bike attempting to climb Cadair Idris, a mountain in north Wales which has always felt special to me as a close friend, Will Ramsbotham, died up there in 1993. ‘Handbikes at Dawn’ (there’s a few You Tube videos on it you can check out) was a well-organised project to get some handbikers to the summit of the mountain. It was an amazing day for the challenge – great weather, great teams, great atmosphere and well supported.

Two hundred metres from the summit we reached the edge of the mountain rim. I saw what I’d gone for – a view of the craggy cliffs that had last seen my friend and a stunning panoramic backdrop of mountains and sea stretching to infinity. My chest was raw (the ‘One-Off’ mountain bike has a weird chest steering pad that rips you up), my shoulders were burning with the acid of effort, and the final stretch to the summit I could see was not possible to cycle without a lot of shoving and pushing from the mountain rescue crew with ropes rigged up to assist the final summit bid.

“This is good” I nearly said to my small team. “No need to go up there”…but I couldn’t get the words out because I felt I’d be letting everyone down. So I said nothing and went with the flow, summit bound. Right enough, the shoving and pushing began, craggy scree tumbling from the summit trig point. It was way too extreme for a solitary handbiker, and I adapted to the ‘being luggage’ experience. It would only be short. I dug in, amazed that I still had gears low enough to cope.

As the summit approached, the truth of my thoughts slowly crept over me – that the summit didn’t matter. It was the experience of the day I’d come for, and the spirit of that first big view from the rim.

The Paralympic road race and Cadair Idris were two great reminders of what is important in life. It isn’t about summits, or conquering at all cost. (Though I should say the view from the top was great too).

Thanks, to the Handbikes@Dawn team (especially organisers Graham & Jacky O’Hanlon and my small all-day crew Neil, Andy and Alice), and the other riders and supporters.

Visit Berghaus Online Store

For outdoor clothing from Berghaus including men’s waterproof jackets, men’s rucksacks and more then please visit our online store.

You can find a wide range of gear for climbing, hill walking, mountain biking and other activities.

Choose from a range of cutting edge waterproof jackets, fleeces, trousers & more from Berghaus.

Experiencing a sense of freedom is what keeps life in a wheelchair bearable for me and it feels that winter steals some of that away. It is harder to get around and to battle with the wheelchair through mud, grit, ice and snow. This winter though has felt a little different thanks to a new gadget I’ve tried – aptly named the ‘Freewheel’ – invented by a guy in a wheelchair who apparently took his frustration about the difficulty of navigating rough terrain and did something to solve it. Thank you!!!

The quality of my winter has improved! In December I found myself whizzing through city streets with the Freewheel clipped on front, barely noticing the kerbs, bumps, potholes and trail of potential hazards that impede my journey from home to the gym – it took me ten minutes to get to the gym instead of twenty! In January I was scooting through a parkland in central Oslo where people could barely stand up on the thick mantle of ice that encrusted the ground – I was suddenly far more mobile than them as the small front wheels were lifted above all the lumps and the Freewheel kept me from spinning on the ice. In February, with a yawning blue sky across the Cairngorm mountains near my home in Scotland, I set off on a forest trail I’ve regularly pushed around, but more quietly, freely and easily than ever before.

It reminds me that technology and equipment are incredibly powerful at changing our lives (I suppose I wouldn’t be anywhere without a wheelchair, and there are of course parts of the world where if you’re paralysed, you are confined to a bed or static chair as there are no wheelchairs). Freedom isn’t something to take for granted.

On that note, enjoy this short You Tube video filmed and edited by my partners daughter, Ella Kirkpatrick, after she impressively pedaled the rear of my crazy tandem around the forest last week (it’s been locked up in the shed for far too long!). It too is a freedom machine! (from www.greenspeed.com.au )

Visit Berghaus Online Store

For outdoor clothing from Berghaus including men’s waterproof jackets, men’s rucksacks and more then please visit our online store.

You can find a wide range of gear for climbing, hill walking, mountain biking and other activities.

Choose from a range of cutting edge waterproof jackets, fleeces, trousers & more from Berghaus.

Feeling a bit tired after a week camping and journeying through snow and ice, and sharing a tent space the size of a double bed with 3 snoring blokes. Also feeling very weird in the chunk of my body I can’t feel (like three quarters of me!)…not sure that being squashed up in a sit-ski, tied in with straps, covered with layer after layer to stop the cold biting and working my arms so hard they feel leaden is the ideal way to feel good! Or maybe I’ve got soft after a few years racing bikes instead of bashing around the wilderness…

Discomfort aside (I forgot to mention the pulk base board converted to a snow toilet!),  It was our chance to test ourselves and our kit as we develop our plans for the ‘Pole of Possibility’ journey to the South Pole. The special snowbike was the key bit of kit being put to the test. It’s a great bike made by Lasher, Alaska and it rides really well on the ice and snow covered winter roads and tracks. However, plonk it in the middle of the wilderness with my 63kg on it, and it’s not so happy.

We took it on tour for the whole week, nearly left it behind three times along the way, but somehow we kept on persisting, eager to find conditions it would work in – hard surfaces seem to be key – anything softer than ice or very compacted snow, the big front tyre just breaks through and gets stuck. It reminds us that we’re exploring at the fore-front of what is possible. There is a reason why nobody has yet biked to the South Pole, and there’s a reason why nobody paralysed has travelled across Antarctica to get there! The saying of a ‘poor workman blames his tools’ is far from true when it comes to adventure with a disability. When you’re paralysed, technology and equipment is everything – the right piece of kit can make impossible things possible, or vice versa!

Mostly I feel inspired by our week in the wilds – it was so good to be out breathing crisp clean air, we travelled over a 100km through winter wilderness, we survived, we had fun and an adventure. Partly though I feel disheartened. I realise I was pinning my hopes on the snowbike, so now I’m asking ‘can I physically make it across Antarctica in a sit-ski, so demanding on the body, so dependent on ski glide which in cold, uphill conditions doesn’t happen well?’ The answer as it is for so many things in life – rest, reflect, learn, re-plan, then go and try again, and we’ve certainly learned plenty this week to help us do that.

We’re definately pushing the limits of possibility, and bringing the name of our planned trip south to life. With training and testing well underway, we’re eager to bring to life our world first attempt by anyone paralysed to travel from the edge of Antarctica to the Pole. If any person or company is interested in partnering with Pole of Possibility project, please get in touch with me, karen@inspireandimpact.com. For now though, a huge thanks to Berghaus for supporting this training adventure, and to all the companies who supplied us with other discounted equipment or support (Snowsled, Fischer, Multimat, Hilleberg, Lyon, Exped, Lasher Bikes, Brinje, The Climb Inn, and the legend, Dave Durkan).

After 2 days here getting orientated, testing the ATH Lasher (All-Terrain Handbike) and gathering food supplies, we’re setting off in the morning. Pulk packing tonight and last big feed (hmm, homemade crumble…we’ll be dreaming of it tomorrow night as we look into our vacumn packed bags of dehydrated food). My optimism levels have gone from 10 on seeing the bike – fresh in from Alaska, giant 5” Surly tyres – down to a 2 after struggling to ride it across soft melting snow that covers the lake ice.

It was +5 Celsius here today, so hardly the subzero Antarctic type weather we were hoping for. In the warm weather, we’re not sure how well the bike will work, hence the sit-ski is coming along for the ride too…lots of kit to lug about the plateau, but hopefully worth it (so we can either push the frontiers of what is possible when you can’t walk, or look like total idiots and realise we were chasing a foolish dream).

So in the shadows of history of the Telemark Heroes, we couldn’t feel less like heroes ourselves, with lots of things to test and figure out before getting one step closer to our ambition of going south, www.poleofpossibility.com

Berghaus Store

For outdoor clothing from Berghaus including men’s waterproof jackets, women’s rucksacks and more then please visit our online store.
You can find a wide range of gear for climbing, hill walking, mountain biking and other activities.

So training has been lower key for a while, but I was at the gym the other day. Time wasn’t on my side and I dumped by bags next to the bench press, and began a warm up until the bench came free. Ten minutes later a guy sitting recovering between reps stopped me.

“S’cuse me love” he started, “ I’ve just got to say to you…” he stuttered a little, “Respect. Real respect.” I assumed he was talking about the Paralympics, though couldn’t figure out how he’d know I’d been in it.

“Errr, how come?” I smiled back.

“No-one would ever leave their bags next to us” he replied, “but you did. You trusted us. Respect for that.”

“Oh…” I tailed off, surprised. “It didn’t cross my mind.”

“Exactly. Respect.”

I can be a bit naive at times, and there’s not much crime in places I’ve lived, but why wouldn’t I trust them?

“There is something really valuable in one of those bags though” I couldn’t help myself. “Do you want to see it?”

“No, no way. Just respect.”

I think they were the taxi drivers I know train there every morning. Maybe some don’t trust them, but they seemed like top guys to me. I dug out the medal anyway, and a gang of blokes quickly gathered round, nodding and saying stuff like “Respect. Silver”

The other ‘silver’ moment of the month happened this weekend, when I went back to visit Mytholmroyd (try and pronounce that), the village I grew up in. My mum had organised a coffee morning / book signing of Boundless and it happened to coincide with the official switch on of the village Christmas lights. The community had given me amazing support during the Paralympics, but they really went all out this time – with the only official silver post box in the country! A man from the Post Office came especially all the way from Newcastle, armed with silver tape to dress the box. Unfortunately he started on the wrong box so ran out of tape halfway through the big pillar box – but it got finished off with silver foil until every bit of red was covered. Very cool! Not sure it will last much longer than the Monday morning post pick up, but I’m moved by the thought and effort.

If there’s one thing the silver medal has taught me (apart from how to nearly kill myself in training to get it), it’s that there are some AMAZING people in the world with big hearts and generous spirits. Thank you all.

Berghaus Store

For outdoor clothing from Berghaus including men’s waterproof jackets, women’s rucksacks and more then please visit our online store.
You can find a wide range of gear for climbing, hill walking, mountain biking and other activities.

So, here I am in New Zealand, and the World Triathlon Championships, having limped through the last month or so (post-Paralympics) feeling tired and too busy to give much thought to the fact that the Triathlon requires swimming in Auckland harbour. Yikes! It’s cold and murky (but kind of turquoise) and apparently has jellyfish and occasional sharks, and since getting here the wind has been blowing a gale. So I decided, given the scale of the event, that I should really learn to swim better, and overcome my fear of swimming in the sea. So I’ve swum every day, sometimes twice a day, in the pool, the lake and the sea and thanks to some great lessons from the team coach the panicked heart rate I usually get seems to be a bit less. I’m cleaner than I’ve been for a while and have a left shoulder that’s complaining about being stretched in weird and wonderful ways. It’s reminded me how great it is to face a fear head on and tackle it, and also how good it feels to learn a new skill. Within one hour the coach changed my swimming style completely…now I just have to wire it into my brain with hours of practice.

So, the World Paratriathlon Champs is tomorrow afternoon – and if I survive the swim without swallowing too much water or resorting to back-stroke, I’ll be happy. And if my ‘Elite Transition Team’ (thanks Ashleigh and Ben) survive ripping my wetsuit off and lugging me into the bike, then the racing wheelchair, I’ll be happy too (yes, transition times are included, which is entertaining for weebles like me – for anyone watching, you’re bound to have fun watching Paratri transition). Let’s just hope my biking can pull me through.

And good luck to the thousands of competitors taking part tomorrow – respect for your sea swimming!

Berghaus Store

For outdoor clothing from Berghaus including men’s waterproof jackets, women’s rucksacks and more then please visit our online store.
You can find a wide range of gear for climbing, hill walking, mountain biking and other activities.

Andy asked me how my POD was the other day, and I thought he meant the very comfy portable athlete bed I was sleeping in for the month before the Paralympics, though I couldn’t quite figure why he wanted to know how my bed was given we’d been sleeping in the same one! “Nooo, the post-Olympic thing” he said “Post Olympic Depression, aka POD.” This was a phrase coined earlier in the year but I hadn’t thought about it much since.

“Errrr” I stammered. “Well, yeah, it’s a bit weird.”

‘A bit weird’ is an understatement. I’ve gone from having the most sustained focus ever (physical, mental and emotional), a rigid training programme that defines each part of my day, an amazing team supporting and working with me, the event of a lifetime…not to mention an amazing weekend in the Olympic village, closing ceremony, parade through London (astounding turn outs) to….well….an exhausted body, 1500 emails, a daily stream of more, and a mind that’s not quite sure what to make of it all!

After any ‘big’ thing in life there is always a small hiatus in energy – a ‘come down’ from the experience, a confusion while we reorganise ourselves (inside and out) to a new situation. So I’ve stolen a few hours from the busy-ness to sit and sip a Chai Latte (my favourite drink) in a comfy sofa and to reflect on what’s just been and what next. Here’s a small stream of consciousness about that…

What has been…

I owe so many people so much thanks for enabling the whole experience…I could never have got a silver medal alone…and a nearly bronze (which incidentally was absolutely the right thing to do even though I discovered afterwards that we could have been disqualified…but sometimes people and relationships come before medals!)…the way the British public have got behind the summer of sport is incredible…and it’s so great to see kids with the silver medal…it captures their imagination and seeing their faces (I’ve talked at a few schools) makes me realise that a medal isn’t just a lump of metal after all. It’s a lump of magic…and it can definately inspire a generation. It’s hard to have lost the focus and I’m missing ‘my team’ (thanks team – you know who you are from gym to psych to physiology, nutrition, coaching, friendship, family…)…maybe I’m grieving a bit for a great thing been and gone…I need to let go…that was then and this is now, a new ‘phase’. But it was great!

And what is to come…

People always ask me ‘what next’ after any of the adventures or projects I’ve had, and sometimes it irritates me as I like time and space to absorb what’s just happened before leaping into what next. But, this time I have to leap…into speaking in all sorts of places from schools, charities and businesses, into the World Paratriathlon Championships in New Zealand next month (I’m representing GB but haven’t properly swum or pushed a race chair for more nearly 18 months, yikes), and then the Pole of Possibility in November 2013 (www.poleofpossibility.com) which is super exciting, totally overwhelming and really quite scary. How to raise funds to go, how to raise £1 million for our chose charity Back Up, how to travel over 1000km across Antarctica…there’s so much to do it’s hard to know where to start…and so, I’m sitting drinking Chai Latte, slowing down, taking stock and reminding myself that almost anything we can dream up is possible, but that sometimes, taking a deep breath and slowing down is the best way to move forward. I remind myself that life isn’t a tick list. It’s important to pause, reflect and plan (these things don’t come so naturally to activists like myself) rather than trying to do and solve everything in one day!

Needless to say, life isn’t dull, adventures lie in store and THANK YOU to all of you who have moved me to tears with your messages in so many way – your support about the Games, about my new book Boundless, and just in general. And my favourite story of the week (apart from a train conductor insisting I couldn’t buy a ticket and giving me a bottle of wine instead!!!) is this… I gave a Union Jack flag to a small boy at the closing ceremony and a few days ago his dad sent me a picture of it on the wall at his school, with a story about how a real Paralympic athlete had given it to him underneath. Very cool!!!

Take a look at my site www.karendarke.com where you’ll find details on how you can buy signed copies of my books If you fall and Boundless.

Berghaus Store

For outdoor clothing from Berghaus including men’s waterproof jackets, women’s rucksacks and more then please visit our online store.
You can find a wide range of gear for climbing, hill walking, mountain biking and other activities.

I might have been the ‘tip of the arrow’, racing the races, but behind me were a team of people that allowed me to be the best I could be on the day. The silver medal I came home with is a symbol of all the collective hard work, and the bronze medal in my heart a symbol of the power of friendship over competition (if you don’t know the story see the video below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

THANK YOU to all of you – you know who you are, and of course to Berghaus for supporting me too. Now the training will be less structured for a while, I’m looking forward to more varied outdoor adventures again…time to dust the kayak and the skis down!

Karen will be reliving her experiences in a talk and Q & A session at the Berghaus evening at Kendal Mountain Film festival on Saturday 17^th November 2012.

Berghaus Store

For outdoor clothing from Berghaus including men’s waterproof jackets, women’s rucksacks and more then please visit our online store.
You can find a wide range of gear for climbing, hill walking, mountain biking and other activities.

So with only 100(ish) days left, I’ve had my head down in training – and when not training, mainly eating, sleeping or collapsing in a heap on the sofa in my local Starbucks (which is opposite the gym – the manager thinks I live in the lift and just pop out every now and again for a hot drink). I did go bike-less for a whole 48 hours – which felt like forever not to ride – and got scared in a sea kayak instead. It’s been too long since I took to the waves so the whitecaps running between the Isle of Skye and the mainland were testing for my weeble factor. I secretly hoped Andy would offer to tow me back around the exposed bit of coast into the head wind on the way home, but when we’d finished he just said “I knew you wanted towing, but it was better you did it yourself – you had to find your super-powers”. He was right – I know I’ll have to find them more and more in the next 100 days.

I’ll be in the lab to be tested soon – pricked with needles, lactate levels in my blood measured, power outputs, oxygen efficiency (VO2) etc. My interesting fact of the week is that apparently race horses go through the same process. They are set to run on a giant treadmill in the lab and have the same fitness tests done on them as we humans. Amazing the lengths we’ll go to in pursuit of medals or simply to try and be the best that we can.

My inspiration of the week has come from Chris Jones. He has been putting my first ever handbike to amazing use. In April he did two major events; an off-road marathon across Dartmoor, where he cycled 27.5 miles to raise over four thousand pounds for the Royal British Legion, and he became the first person in the UK to enter a full downhill mountain bike race on a hand cranked bike! He’s enjoyed it so much that he’s spent the last 5 months starting up a company to design and build off-road hand-cranked bikes. LynxBikes plan to have very reasonably priced off-road handbikes ready later this year. Brilliant!

Meanwhile, there’s a block of racing coming up…Rome World Cup (25-27th May), Swiss European Handbike Circuit race (2-3rd June) and Segovia World Cup (15-17th June), then an open day to ride the Brands Hatch Paralympic race circuit on the 19th June. Kissing goodbye to the coffee shop sofa…

The image below is by Marta Lundby Rekaa.

Chasing down the ICE trike in Mallorca

So once again the importance of rest for an athlete (for all of us?!) has come at me strong – ‘less is more’ to some extent – we can’t keep hammering our bodies into the ground and expect to get faster. I might have to schedule rest into my training diary, that is proper rest (I have been bad for thinking that rest just means not riding my bike but rushing around doing other stuff). Sometimes I think we all get so busy doing what we need to do each day, working, looking after our loved ones, some less-loved ones etc, that we forget to plan in some down-time, me-time, escape-time – whatever you want to call it. Riding my bike used to be my down-time but now its my ‘job’ so reading, sleeping (and I’m embarrassed to admit I’ve got hooked on Grey’s Anatomy box set) seem to be the new replacements. If I was at home in Inverness, I’d be in a sea kayak for escape-time just now – must have been beautiful there on the calm seas of the Costa del Scotland.

Racing in Salt Ayre, Lancaster

So this weekend saw the first race of the season. Seventeen handcyclists turned out to race at the Salt Ayre cycle circuit, Lancaster – shame there were only 2 women. It was a good turn out for the UK (there’s be hundreds if it was in Germany – the Berlin marathon last year had over 200 handbikes and 200 racing wheelchairs). Congrats to Rob Wickham (Team Bromakin) who just pipped the win from Chris Madden (Team Draft), with Brian Aldiss (British Cycling Development Squad) very close in third. I was fifth H2 rider, but considering the first 4 were men with bulging biceps and chests wider than my hips, I was pleased.

Next weekend is a bigger event – the biggest handbike race in Europe – in Rosenau, France. Its the first of the European Series, and a great chance to see where we’re all at after a winter of training. The female world champion in my class, Ursula Schwaller of Switzerland is racing too, so should be fun to see what happens!