St Ives 2.0 and Chair 2.0

Last Wednesday we went to race at St Ives again. We were quite a diminished crowd - just me, Claire and MJ - but despite this and despite illness we had a good time and all came away with some cracking results.
The fact that we had been to this track before and so knew our way round was helpful. I knew where to go to collect numbers and to pay, to go to the loo, to find the paramedics (!) and where to be out of the way whilst warming up. This time we decided to colonise a small bit of track tucked away just off the main racing track on the first bend - there was plenty of space for the three of us, and it saved fighting our way up a little ramp and round a bend with three racing chairs as well as day chairs and all our kit.

...we have a lot of stuff. Sadly no donkeys/mules.

Like last time, the first race was the 100m. After my experience last time of not going off straight and struggling to find a straight line all the way through, I had spent a bit more time setting up my compensator and locking it into place with the screws so that the force of the start wouldn't make it slide off. The start of the race was slightly delayed as MJ had a bit of foot strap trailing on the ground and it was surprisingly difficult for us to relay this to the officials! They soon got us ready, though, and we were underway. I pumped nice and hard and concentrated on staying straight. I think that this whole going off straight thing is something I will have to work on quite hard for the 100m. I still don't have it anywhere near perfected and I think it must lose you a lot of time. However, on this occasion, I managed to come first and to beat my PB by quite a long way - my previous PB was 25.7 from Chelmsford; this time I managed 23.99. Just squeaking in under 24 seconds felt really good!

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After the 100m we had a bit of time to rest before the 800m. MJ wasn't feeling too great so was trying to use this time to decide whether or not to race. This is a really difficult decision to make - obviously you want to race otherwise you wouldn't be there, but if you think it will make you feel worse afterwards then you do sometimes have to be sensible and not go out and destroy yourself. Claire and I didn't want to make the decision for him and we didn't really know how bad he was feeling. We would have supported him whatever but we were pleased when he decided that he would take part.

For the 800m, we were set off in separate lanes again, and allowed to break to the inside lane at 100m. It has to be said that although I felt better this time I still wasn't feeling quite as on form as I would have liked - things still felt heavy and difficult. By about 500m my reflux was quite bad and I was doing my best to re-swallow the hash browns that I had optimistically nibbled on before leaving! I managed to keep everything inside and even had a bit left in me to accelerate down the final straight. What was really nice was that there were quite a few people hanging about and they all cheered me on. I finished first in a time of 3:31.99 - this was actually slower than the last time I raced (by about 0.9s), even though I didn't feel as tired. I suppose it shows that the numbers don't always match how you feel.

I would rather my food didn't try to say this.

After finishing my 800m race, I noticed that MJ wasn't too far in front. Despite feeling absolutely terrible, he had kept going into the second half of the race and was fighting on hard. Since I'd cooled down around the first half of the bend anyway, I decided to follow behind him to carry on cooling down, offering encouragement and generally just cheering him on. I didn't really know at the time if this was welcome or not but fortunately afterwards he said how proud he was to have finished, but that he would probably have retired if I hadn't been there behind him. I was amazingly proud of him as he beat his PB by 5.75 seconds - a huge margin over that distance, especially when he was feeling really ill (turned out that he needed a pretty strong course of antibiotics, so it was even more impressive!).

Afterwards, when we were taking the chairs back to the cars, one of the officials was chatting to us and lending a hand. He said that a bunch of them from Cambs had gone to help in London for the Olympics and Paralympics, and that the Paralympians were so much nicer and more fun than the Olympians. We weren't really surprised by this! He loved how supportive we are of each other which is also one of the things that we love about doing the sport. It was reassuring to hear that this level of support goes all the way up to Paralympic level.

The day after St Ives, MJ and I had a trip to Huntingdon to pick up my new racing chair. At this juncture, I'm going to insert a quick plug for Draft Wheelchairs, who handled the order for my chair. They are so friendly and so helpful. When I went to collect the new chair, obviously I took my day chair along too, partly because I needed it and partly because I wanted to pick their brains about my jazzy new front wheels (they light up, and I love them, but they were a bit narrow for the chair and were rattling around a bit even with five washers in each side, so I wanted a better solution). I didn't buy the chair or the wheels from Draft but they took it off whilst I waited and made and fitted new axles so that now the front wheels run perfectly - and didn't even charge me! Second part of the story of why Draft are so great is below. For now...

MY NEW CHAIR IS BEAUTIFUL! It's bright and sparkly and (almost) everything on it feels smooth and sophisticated. There is just one problem which is quite a big problem - the grip on the push rims came off the right wheel in my first outing with the chair. I knew that this could happen with this design, but I was a bit pissed off that it happened the first time I took the chair out. This is a major problem. If the grip is hanging off, you can push the chair but only very slowly and awkwardly - I suppose it would be a bit like going for a run and suddenly finding that your shoelaces have disintegrated.

'Top End'...!

I took some pictures (see above) whilst I was out on my first session (which was otherwise lovely, despite the baking heat) and emailed Draft when I got home to ask them to shout at the Top End people in America and also to ask if they had any suggestions. Their solution was better than I would have imagined - I had just been thinking about some really strong adhesive that I would have to keep on reapplying, and had also considered a series of cable ties holding the cover to the push rim, but they said this: "I’m going to get a new pair of push rims covered for you Monday. Not glued on, will get them sewn on so we can exchange them for you." Basically, again, they have taken something which is not really their problem and sorted it for me. Heroes! They didn't want any payment so I took a box of Miniature Heroes along - seemed appropriate.

Ladies and gentlemen, the staff at Draft Wheelchairs UK.