On the mend...

What a difference a few weeks makes! It feels a long time ago since my last blog and the way I was feeling then!

Actually, after a week of stronger drugs, and less pain, I’m pleased to say at 2 weeks post-op, things were already feeling a lot better than that horrendously low and painful first week. With the pain under control I was able to refind some of my usual positivity, and look at life in a whole different light again.

Scars healing, pain settled, starting to smile again!

Another few weeks on and it’s now 5 weeks since my op. Things are going well for this stage of the recovery. I still can’t do any of the things I really love and miss, namely mountain biking, climbing, skiing and swimming, but I can feel my shoulder getting stronger and more mobile each day, and that’s motivation enough to keep me working hard towards the elusive day when I can finally do all those things again!

Hours of daily stretches and exercises...but they're working!

Of course there are days when I deal with it pretty well and then definitely tough times and moments where I feel frustrated and quite down at the length of time it’s felt like since I’ve had some proper fun, but in general I’m managing to keep myself busy and occupied, and looking towards the future and getting back to work and play.

It’s been weird being so inactive…for a person who is normally outside doing some form of exercise almost every day, often on my bike from 9 in the morning until 6 in the evening during the summer months when I’m working in France, suddenly being forced to take things easier and spend more time sitting (and not on a saddle) is not easy. I’m also not very good at people doing things for me, I like to be independent, but for the first few weeks where I was wearing the sling 24 hours a day, I had to accept help for a lot of things! Being cooked for, driven to appointments, made cups of tea, it took a while to get used to, but I’m very grateful that my mum and dad have been looking after me so well. Even now, whilst I can do a lot more, there are things that require a lot of strength or use of two strong arms that I still can’t do and I don’t like it!

Lots of walks with my Mum and Dad..one of the positive sides of having an injury that forces you to do something different!

Exercise currently has been limited to walking (I tried running for 45 minutes this week and my shoulder has been killing me ever since…), turbo training (but 45 minutes is the limit I can tolerate due to boredom!) and morning and evening physio rehab exercises, which take a good couple of hours out of the day! Excitement comes in the form of being able to see my arm shaking less with certain exercises, moving up to a harder colour of theraband, and finishing sets of exercises without grimacing in pain! Small steps but I’m happy with them! Crazy how your expectations become completely redefined in situations like this!

Spending plenty of time in here!

I’ve had to remove myself from my normal world a little, as I can’t join in with the things I’d normally be doing, and seeing others having fun whilst I’m bored and feeling useless is hard! So I’ve been practising life in the “real world” as some people would call it again. Visiting friends, getting up to date with admin, organising photos, meeting people for coffees or lunch, watching films, cooking, etc etc.  It’s actually been great to have time to catch up with people I haven’t seen for a while who’ve been to visit, and I’ve also had time to start planning some little projects for next year, which has certainly given me things to look forward to! I hope my shoulder realises what's in store for it and how strong it needs to get before then...

Sunday walk and pub lunch with Pete, Lana and Jacob

Whilst still in the sling a couple of weeks back, (and on a delicious pain-dulling concoction of the strongest drugs I've ever taken!), I made it up to Kendal for the Mountain Film Festival. It was great to get out, have a change of scenery from the TV screen, and catch up with lots of friends. There were some incredibly motivating films and talks which kind of put things in perspective a bit, and I came back feeling more positive about the coming months of recovery. My arm suffered, just standing and walking more each day for the first time since the op, even though it was in a sling and I was on painkillers, rather than the previous two weeks of sitting/lying and resting, it was pretty uncomfortable. But I even made it up to Stickle Tarn on a walk with Paul, attracting some interesting looks and comments from other walkers.

Paul above a wintery feeling Langdale

 My arm currently has a kind of low level ache to it all the time, made worse each day after the exercises I’m doing to regain strength and movement, but eased by ice and the occasional paracetemol….however, I don’t really mind this kind of pain when I know it's part of my shoulder working towards recovery! Sleep is best left untalked about though…I haven’t had a really good night’s sleep in 11 weeks since I first dislocated my shoulder, and expect it will be a while yet before I do! (I await the raised eyebrows from friends who are new parents...) Frustrating, but until I can sleep on my favourite right hand side it’s just something I’ll have to put up with. I imagine the lack of physical activity compared to normal isn’t helping either, I’m simply not worn out enough to sleep! 

This last week there has been a noticeable improvement in what I can do with my arm, including driving (whoop!), press-ups on my knees (might not sound much but a couple of weeks ago I couldn’t even push myself away from the wall!), and most excitingly….a couple of little bike rides! Nothing too exciting, just easy riding on the road, but I’ve been in a better mood ever since!!

Back on the bike, whoop!

For the first time since the op, I can start to imagine that in a couple of months time, I might eventually have an arm that I can do the things I want to with! It feels amazing just to be using it again and feel like an arm rather than a useless lump attached to the side of your body!

Dreaming of having an arm that is strong enough to carry my bike again  one day! (Photo: James Dalby)

My surgeon and physio have told me I can NOT do anything where I could fall on the arm at this point, or jolt it suddenly….but in my mind that means there are plenty of things I can do, and I intend to fill the next few weeks with them! Time to start having a bit of fun again! Woohoo!!

So all in all, despite some (very!) low points over the last couple of months, I can’t really complain about 2015….it’s been a good year! From incredible travel adventures with my bike in New Zealand, to some wild rugged Scottish exploring, to the hot and dusty summer in the Alps…full of fantastic moments to remember, and good friends both old and new from all over the World who shared the fun times. You know who you all are…let’s hope 2016 can be just as exciting! (Maybe without a frustrating injury though please!)

Wishing friends from wherever you are, a Happy Christmas and a fun-filled 2016!

My Broken Wing.......

It’s a strange feeling coming round from surgery…like waking from a very deep hungover sleep, wondering where the hell you are, and why part of your body feels a bit strange….so it was as I awoke last Thursday after a couple of hours of anaesthesia whilst my shoulder was being put back together. The last thing I remember after walking to the theatre room and lying down on the bed was an achy feeling spreading through my hand and up my arm and then a funny taste in my mouth, then next thing I know I was waking up feeling groggy, slowly realising I was in a hospital bed and as I tried to move, my shoulder felt restricted. I could see it was covered in dressings, held in a sling, and also looked massively swollen.  Ah yes, the memory became clear…I’d just had surgery! The good thing was at least they’d operated on the correct one!

To be honest that first day is a bit of a blur…. after the anaesthetic drug induced light-headedness, I remember having an incredibly dry mouth, a completely unquenchable thirst, drier than the Sahara in a dust-storm, and drinking endless glasses of water. I can remember the pain setting in and asking for painkillers, being given paracetemol and thinking hmmm…don’t think this is going to help much! The struggle to get dressed with a heavy, painful and unusable arm…and how  awkward it felt to move without causing intense discomfort. And most of all, the dawning realisation of what life is going to be like for a while…..I could feel my mood descending lower despite my best efforts to be positive.

My Surgeon came in and reported all had gone well, although there had been significantly more damage than was evident on my scan. Not only had I had the planned bankart repair to my anterior labrum (anterior stabilisation), he’d also found a reverse bankart tear, as well as a SLAP tear and that as a result of these the whole capsule had shifted to the wrong position. These were all repaired during the surgery, so at least I got my money’s worth! And also at least it was all found and fixed early rather than have years of problems and pain and damaging the joint further. I know that’s a good thing, and that undiscovered, these injuries would have prevented my shoulder from ever functioning normally again….so I should be glad. It’s just quite hard to feel like that currently. The news that the surgery had been a lot bigger than planned only added to how down I was already feeling.

It still baffles me how I sustained so much damage from such a small crash, but hey ho, it is what it is. The ex-physio in me has a need to know what’s been done to my body, so I can understand why it hurts so much and where, and how I can do everything as well as possible to ensure I heal as well as I can. Unfortunately this also means I understand what a massive invasion on a sensitive and important part of my body this is….i can’t help but worry about how much it’ll impact my shoulder in the future...

Here’s a bit of anatomy so you can see what has broken, and been repaired, inside my poor little shoulder…

Anatomy of the shoulder socket [www.shoulderdoc.co.uk]

The damage is to the fibrous cartilage ring called the Labrum, which encircles the shallow socket of the shoulder, providing a lot of the stability in a joint which is inherently unstable. 

Unfortunately when you dislocate a joint, stuff gets damaged…you wouldn’t be able to dislocate it if it didn’t. Whilst broken bones heal, cartilage doesn’t, and so if the damage is substantial, surgery is required to repair it. You can choose not to have this, but without an intact labrum, there is 50% less stability in the joint, and if your job or lifestyle involves overhead movement, weight bearing, or manual work, then the risk of redislocation, pain on movement, and the joint never regaining full strength is high. 

Add to this the fact that continued dislocations, and the joint not working biomechanically as it should for many years will lead to arthritis, and it’s a no-brainer for me to have had surgery….despite the pain it currently is causing me!

www.shoulderdoc.co.uk

If you imagine the shoulder socket, the glenoid cavity, as a clock face, my labrum was torn off from 4 o clock to 12 o clock…ie 270 degrees.

When a tear is to the 3-6 o clock position, at the front of the joint (anterior), it is called a Bankart tear. If the labrum pulls off the edge of the bone with it as mine did, it's called an ALPSA lesion (Anterior labral periosteal sleeve avulsion)

When the tear involves the 11-1 o clock position, and the point where the Biceps tendon attaches to the labrum, it is called a SLAP tear (superior labrum, from anterior to posterior)

When the tear is in the 6-9 o clock position it’s known as a reverse Bankart tear.

All images above www.shoulderdoc.co.uk

My tear was a combination of a bankart, reverse bankart, and SLAP, a bit like the one shown here.

www.fxrxinc.com

When you see what has actually been done inside your joint, it explains the pain and swelling….3 incisions made for the arthroscope and surgical tools, 6 anchors that are a little bit like miniature expansion bolts drilled into the bone of the shoulder socket, sutures wrapped around the torn labrum (ring of cartilage) and used to tie it back in place, as well as a few extra stitches/overlaps to pull the capsule into the correct place….yes, all that is as painful as it sounds. It certainly feels like someone has screwed nails into the bone on the inside of my joint….in a way that’s exactly what they’ve done!

The picture below shows a labral repair being done in a similar way to mine, except I have 6 anchors spread out pretty much all the way round the glenoid.

http://www.slideshare.net/drnaula/lt0520-d-peek-biopushlock-knotless-anchor-for-bankart-repair

I don’t think I’d prepared myself for how much it was going to hurt post-op, but then I didn’t expect to be having so much drilling, tying, fixing, and poking around done in there either! As the local anaesthetic that had been injected in the joint wore off and the pain from having my poor shoulder thoroughly messed around with kicked in, it was stupidly painful. The paracetomol and codeine I was given did absolutely nothing, and for the rest of the day and all of the night, I suffered with intense pain and a complete inability to get comfortable. I spent hours pacing around, lying, then sitting, then reading, then watching a film, then repeating, all night.

Swollen painful arm one day post-op

The next day I hit a thoroughly low point…as the fatigue from lack of sleep, recovery of my body from the anaesthetic, intense, unrelenting pain, and realisation of how long the recovery is going to take all got to me….I'm a positive person by nature, but I lost it all that day. 

I cried, a lot….from pain, frustration, and anxiety that my shoulder will never be as strong or as good as it was before. I realise it won’t ever be the same, but will I still be able to climb, swim, ride, do yoga, throw a ball, pick my bike up, carry on with all the things I love, without it feeling like I can’t move it in the way I need to do these things? I hope so…At the moment it feels like I will never have the full use or function of it again….

 After the first day and 24 hours of almost unbearable pain, I took the drugs I’d saved from post-op in Canada a few years ago….I hadn’t really needed them there but boy did I need them now. They aren’t licensed in the UK but I’m so glad I had them…along with ice every 2 hours, the pain started to recede a little and I at least got a bit of sleep.

I’ve had lots of injuries and broken bones before, and some surgery, but an injury to your shoulder, and on your dominant side as well, I’m learning is much worse….it’s such a fundamental part of your body, in everything you do, that you don’t realise it until its totally unusable.

Scrambling down from the Squamish Chief a couple of days after hand surgery in 2011....this experience has been very different!

My right shoulder and I have had an awesome relationship the last 34 years….I’m only now appreciating how amazing she is, and how well we’ve got on. From relying on her to pull me effortlessly through water in hours of swimming training and racing, power up and through overhanging walls of rock, carry bikes, perform handstands, back flips, climb trees, build things,, drive cars, to the things I’ve taken even more for granted….brushing my hair, eating, dressing, hugging friends, picking up a cup of tea, writing, rolling over in bed. I realise now there is not a single task I don’t rely on her for throughout each and every day, or where she is not somehow involved. Even things like walking, she’s moving a little bit to balance, or standing still, I constantly adjust her or use her for expressions without realising…..Until now. 

I know I've got another shoulder, but we don’t have the same relationship…..its not her I automatically turn to for every single thing each day. I’ve also never had an injury that took me out of sport for longer than 5 or 6 weeks…it’s already 6 weeks since I dislocated my shoulder, and recovery from this surgery is at least another 12….realistically I’m bracing myself for being told it’ll be longer…..I hope my mental strength can hold out that long.

In my lowest moments since the op, I've missed Gareth more than ever. His giant hugs and the way he made everything feel like it'd be ok in the end I could really have done with at many times in the last week. He was there through all the other injuries I’ve ever had, and I feel like it’s a much harder challenge facing this alone than any of those felt. The day of my op was 4 years to the day since Gareth's accident, and whilst I didn't have chance to dwell much on that this year due to being in surgery or recovering from it, I'm know how low I've felt in the week since is partly down to thinking of those traumatic 10 days following his accident.

Bored, in pain, and feeling pretty rubbish!

By day 3 I'd imagined the pain was going to have settled, especially with the Canadian drugs I'd taken....It hadn't. Another night of little sleep and day of intense pain that didn't seem to be easing at all. I kept telling myself it was bound to be painful after what had been done to it, and I just needed to man up and get on with things....but I was sliding further into depression. I'm used to pushing my body through physical pain, carrying on when everything is telling you to stop, it comes with the territory in many of the sports I've done over the years. I managed to ride a whole season last year with 3 breaks in a bone in my hand....it was painful, but tolerable. But the pain from my shoulder has been on another level. It was relentless, doing anything I felt miserable, and everyday tasks were taking forever. Reading, watching films, wandering round in a drugged haze from room to room for a change of scenery, never able to find a comfortable spot but trying all the same. My days were governed by the times I could take the next drugs, even though they gave little relief, or by the next time I could put my magic “cryo-cuff” ice bag on my shoulder for some more temporary relief. I felt like an old person, shuffling round, trying to move as little as possible. In bed I slept, or at least tried to, with 4 pillows propping me up into a sitting position,with another pillow behind the right arm to stop the weight of the rested arm tugging or resting on the places where the drilling and stitching has been done.

I was exhausted, weepy, nauseous, achy, and felt like I was wandering around in a slightly detached world from the rest of reality. 

It was impossible not to get down about things…the road to full function and recovery stretched a seemingly endless distance ahead, and the thought of how far away doing any of the things I love and that keep me happy are, was scary. I felt myself becoming anxious that something was wrong, an infection, one of the bone screws pulled loose...the thought of having to face even more pain was too hard to think about….

By day 4 I'd reached breaking point. I couldn't stop bursting into tears, I felt so low, it’s a long time since I’ve felt like I can’t see an exit from feeling so down, but at that point, that's exactly how I felt.

After breaking down in tears of pain for the hundredth time since the op, my mum and a couple of other friends suggested I should ring Mr Walton’s surgical team to check whether this amount of intense pain was normal for this long post op, and showing no signs of easing. The nurse on the phone was fantastic, even though she probably struggled to understand me blubbing away. She agreed I shouldn’t be in so much pain, and whilst it may just be a case of not being given strong enough painkillers to deal with the pain of the first few days, which has never been brought under control, it could be an infection in the arthroscopy sites or some other damage….certainly worth a check with Mr Walton. 

An hour later I was seen and checked over. The op sites are healing fine, the arm is moving as it should, everything is going to plan, and it's bound to be painful after what's been done…I just needed stronger painkillers to take the edge off it.....if only I'd been given them from the start!! 

Massively reassured  by my lovely surgeon, and armed with some tramadol, I left feeling less worried, and within 10 minutes of taking the drugs, in blissfully less pain for the first time since the operation. Suddenly life didn’t feel so bad, I felt more acceptance of my current situation, and able to deal with the long road ahead, now I wasn’t in agony every minute of the day. 

It’s amazing how much pain impacts on you and your mental state. Now the pain is at a more tolerable much lower level, I feel so much better in myself, I don’t feel like bursting into tears every other minute, and I am calm and relaxed about having to rest and be patient….

Drugs....a concoction of which are coursing through my body each day!

It is like a switch has been flicked and life is ok again!

I had been putting up with such high levels of pain thinking I was just being a wuss, and I had to man up and deal with it….when actually if I’d just asked for stronger drugs at the start the pain would not have spiralled out of control and got myself into the state of chronic pain and depression I was in…oh well, lesson learned. Hopefully from here I am back on track.

It's now a week post-op, I've been able to walk for an hour or so each day, and start a routine of core work sitting on the gym ball, and a few lower limb stretches, gradually introducing my body back to exercise and moving in the way it’s used to! It felt good, I can’t describe how much my mental state has improved since getting the pain under control! 

This last week is one I'll be glad to put behind me, but like any experience, good or bad, there are things to learn from it. I’m so active normally that I expected to bounce back straight after surgery, but I’m learning that whilst the scars from keyhole surgery will eventually be small, what has been done to my body and how much it has to try and heal itself internally is massive. The effect of a general anaesthetic I’m realising is significant too…2 hours of anaesthetic gases will take up to 2 weeks for my body to fully recover from I’m told, and the strong drugs, whilst now keeping the pain under control, are leaving me feeling like a bit of a space-cadet! I did not think this would be the way I felt…with plans for walking the day after the op, the bike set up on the turbo trainer ready…..maybe things would have been a little less tough if I'd got the pain under control from the start, but even so, I completely underestimated the effect of the surgery on my usually bouncy self. I know my body will tell me when it's ready to get back to doing more, but at the moment it’s telling me it can't do much except rest, relax and heal....and (maybe thanks to the drugs?!)....I'm ok with that for now.....

The Ups and Downs of a Summer in the Mountains!

Looking back at my previous posts it seems the last time I sat down to write was early June! It has been a really busy summer (in a good way!) with less time than ever to sit and put pen to paper, and on the short occasions when I have, it has been to write blog posts for one of the companies that support me.  Have a read here if you’re interested!

The World's best MTB Destinations

Staying motivated whilst injured

But finally the season is at an end, and I have time to sit down and write ….although I have to say it’s not entirely in the way I’d have wanted!

With just 7 days of guiding to go until the finish of the season, I took a little tumble. When I say little, I mean the slowest speed, smallest, softest little crash I’ve ever had. I could literally throw myself off my chair as I sit and type this and land harder on the ground than I fell off my bike.

Oops....

Minutes from the road on the way to lunch, after another awesome morning out on some beautiful but challenging trails, I managed to let my front wheel come up against a small rock hidden under the blanket of fallen autumn leaves on a trail I’ve ridden dozens of times before, and it slowly tipped me over the bars. A careless mistake from a body and brain tired at the end of a long season….in all-likelihood, if I’d been riding faster, it probably wouldn’t have happened, as my speed and momentum would have carried me through. But I was guiding, and as a guide, you ride at the pace of your group.

Inconspicuous trails, always the places where accidents happen....(It wasn't this one by the way!)

Now, going over the bars might sound alarming if you’re not a mountain biker, but believe me, it’s a fairly frequent occurrence when you ride technically tricky trails, and normally results in a few grazes and bruises, some banter from the people you are riding with, and a bruised ego for all of about 5 minutes. Then you get back up and carry on, forgetting it even happened.

Over the years I’ve been riding, I’ve had high speed crashes where you know whilst you’re in the air that hitting the ground is going to hurt, big tumbles that scare you and require a little sit down to recompose yourself, and heavy landings on big rocks where you get up and can’t believe you’ve got away without damaging yourself more. And yet this crash was none of those. I expected to get up and walk away…in fact I did get straight up, having not really felt anything when I’d landed and “tucked and rolled”, thinking “Well that was a daft little crash!”. It was then I noticed my right shoulder felt a bit weird….

A glance down at it confirmed that it was indeed looking a bit weird too, in fact the ex-physio in me kicked in immediately as I recognised it was dislocated…..bugger.

At least I'm in good company...turns out there're plenty of MTB pros who've dislocated shoulders in the past!

Unfortunately I couldn’t relocate it myself, and my main priority was to get my group safely down to lunch before the pain started to kick in, which I knew it would. My group were brilliant, did exactly as I asked, and told me afterwards they couldn’t believe how calm, and in control I’d remained despite clearly having part of my body in a position it should never normally be in! It was a good job they didn’t see me an hour later, lying in the back of an ambulance, alternately screaming, swearing and groaning with the most intense and all-consuming pain I’d ever felt in my life…I definitely didn’t look calm or in-control then! To my dismay, the paramedics would not relocate my shoulder, and anyone who’s had this injury knows the pain gets worse the longer it has been out, as the muscles around it spasm and pull it harder, pushing the wrong bits of joint against each other. It was complete agony…I never want to experience pain like it again! Morphine and Gas and Air were having absolutely zero effect at all, and my hand was losing circulation. Faced with another 2 hour drive in an ambulance when every little bump sent nauseating pain coursing through me, I just would have done anything at that point to get the pain to stop. Amazingly I was still understanding and speaking in French despite thinking I couldn’t focus on anything except how much pain I was in…guess my language skills are continuing to improve then!

At some point around about 90 minutes after I’d had the crash, I heard a helicopter arrive nearby and the next thing I remember was a doctor entering the ambulance and telling me he was going to put me to sleep and put my shoulder back in….I could have hugged him (if I hadn’t been unable to move or even open my eyes due to the pain!) I have no idea what they use to put you to sleep but I remember nothing except slowly coming around and seeing and hearing things that seemed really kaleidoscopic and distant and blurry…must have been some good drugs! Anyway, when my vision cleared I realised I was lying down in a helicopter and my shoulder was no longer hurting….possibly the most amazing realisation ever after the mind-numbing pain I’d been in before!

(NOT my helicopter, or even in France!....turns out getting a ride in a chopper when you're injured is nowhere near as fun as when you've chosen to go up in one!)

Anyway, a quick x-ray to check it was back in the right place, and instructions to wear the sling I’d been given and keep the arm immobilised for a few weeks until I could see an Orthopaedic consultant in the UK, and I was allowed out of the hospital. I must have looked a bit of a sight, still in riding clothing and my knee pads still on, with a slightly vacant and spaced out look after the concoction of strong drugs I’d been given in a short space of time!

Back in it's rightful place! Medics...spot the damage!

Aside from feeling bad about being unable to work the last week of guiding for Ash and Melissa at Trans-Provence, I was able to relax and get used to using my left hand for daily tasks whilst in the sun of southern France. My pain was kept under control with a concoction of red wine and codeine, and to be honest I was ready for a bit of a rest at the end of a season so didn’t feel any desire to be out on my bike (I’m not sure how long that will last….) I did lots of walking to stay sane, enjoying the autumn sunshine and changing colours, and thinking about things whilst drinking coffee in the sun…there are definitely worse places to be convalescing! I was lucky to be able to stay with Ash and Melissa, who looked after me and made me very welcome whilst I waited for my awesome dad to fly out and rescue me by driving me and my van back home!

Exploring Sospel's hidden streets whilst injured

So, injuries suck, and it’s frustrating that such a small tumble could have such a big consequence, but as the French say "C’est la vie". With the job I have, I’ve done pretty well to avoid any big injuries up to now….this one is just mildly frustrating that I don’t even have a story of the gnarly riding I was doing when it happened…I must start concocting something for when I’m recounting it in years to come! As Gareth always said whenever I hurt myself before…”It could have been worse” and eventually “I’ll be alright”.

Things are always more obvious in retrospect, and I guess as I’d been thinking about getting private medical insurance for a while, I should have done it ages ago. The NHS is great and we’re lucky to have free healthcare, but it has it’s limitations, and when you are a self employed person who relies on a high level of functional use of their body for their livelihood, and life enjoyment, you cannot afford to wait months for appointments, or go with the “we’ll leave it and wait and see what other problems you have with it in the next few years” approach that unfortunately the doctors I saw seemed to have.

Hmmm...it could be some time before I can do this again!

You need a prognosis promptly, and to take action quickly to allow yourself to recover and get on with life. The knowledge I have from formerly working as a physio meant I knew as soon as I dislocated my shoulder, I needed a scan to know what the damage was inside the joint, and the likelihood therefore of it healing to the point of being able to continue doing all the things I do without further instability and dislocations, or not. When I managed to arrange this privately through the specialist sports physio that I eventually saw, it confirmed that surgery is the best option, and the sooner the better. Current NHS waiting times for the surgery I need extend until next February/March but waiting until the start of my main summer season for treatment is not even an option when I can have something done immediately and be hopefully able to work again next season. So any savings I might have put aside this year are now being spent on getting my shoulder fixed to the level I need it to be able to work in the future. It’s a lot of money but what’s the point in having savings if you don’t use them to pay for something that will enhance your life, and your happiness! As I write this I’m waiting for my surgery tomorrow, and will then start the 3 month recovery process, which by my reckoning should still allow for a little bit of winter mountain fun before starting the biking season.

Chloe enjoying amazing conditions on a walk up Snowdon....I may be injured but my legs still let me get into the hills!

The plans I’d made for this Winter are therefore on hold and I’m trying to think of things to keep me busy that can be done with one arm…any one who knows me knows how difficult that’s going to be! At least I’ll be able to walk, and I’ve already rigged up a static bike trainer that I can use one armed! 5 weeks on from the dislocation, with religiously doing my rehab exercises (it helps having been a physio and having a bit of knowledge!), I can actually do quite a lot again with my arm currently, (although I am still weaker than a baby kitten)….although all that will change obviously when I go under the knife!

Walking & taking photos....soon to become the things that will keep me sane through the winter!

Back to the summer though, and what a great one it was, full of fun trips and guests and with incredibly dry, hot sunny weather.

The TP was once again one of the best weeks of the year. I was the sweeper and sign-clearer this year, so got to ride the whole route, following at the back of everyone.

Clear views behind when you're riding at the back1

It was great to have a Mountain staff role, although I found the job harder than actually racing the event! All the stop-starting, the weight of the bag with all the signs and tape in, and the combination of a very hot week in which lots of racers suffered, meaning very long days out as the last person on the hill, combined to make it a tough week. I’ve already agreed to go back next year as Mountain staff again though….it’s such a fantastic week I can’t stay away!

The usual obligatory epicness of the TP!

 After the race I spent July working for Ben Jones in the Savoie. The riding here is very different to the Southern Alps but it’s just as fun, and the scenery is stunning in a different way.

High on a col above Valfrejus

Snow and glacier capped mountains, including Mont Blanc, are visible most days, and there is a lot of open flowing singletrack through high alpine meadows where you’re accompanied by the sound of cow bells from the cattle grazing on their high pastures. It’s not a bad place to call your office that’s for sure! The weather was stupidly hot which made some of the big climbs we do over high cols pretty hard, and even the fittest guests suffered.

Mont Blanc standing guard above the Chamonix valley

One of the nice things about working out of Chamonix is that each Saturday there’s a day off, as guests can make their own way to and from the airport with the multiple companies offering transfers, instead of us having to do it. I took the opportunity to get into some open water swimming with Alison, a friend who lives in the Chamonix Valley, who was training for a 10km swim later in the year. We headed down to the beautifully scenic lake at Passy each week and swum a few kilometre laps. I haven’t swum like that for years and I was reminded of the sheer joy of the sensation of moving smoothly through the water that I used to love about swimming. I’m not as strong or fast as I used to be but it was nice to find my technique is still pretty good and I could comfortably manage a 4km swim without using too much energy. I love swimming outdoors, and would definitely like to do more of it, my only problem is that I’m terrible at swimming in a straight line! Years of following the lines on the bottom of a pool means when I’ve got nothing to follow it turns out I swim all over the place! I did manage to get a little bit better at “sighting” after a few swims with Ali, but it still feels quite unnatural!

Alison on the summit of the Grande Floria

After 5 weeks working with Ben, I took a bit of time off to go climbing in Orpierre with Jonny, Jo and Simon and Team Chaos (aka Ellie and Jessie), as we have done for the last few years. Once again it was an awesome week and a half of croissants and coffee, swimming at the reservoir or the gorge, afternoon cranking on the routes at the crag, and tasty dinners eaten outdoors with large quantities of red wine, followed by star watching in the amazingly dark skies above the gite we rented. A perfect rest and holiday with great friends, in a place that's also full of incredible memories of the long hot summers Gareth and I spent there together....next year's trip there is already being planned!

Yes that does say 47 degrees.....it was hot like this all summer!!!

Feeling refreshed, I then headed back to TransProvence Country. Again it was still hot and dry but a bit more tolerable! The route from this year’s race is in my opinion the best ever, and it was fantastic to get to ride the trails each week…they are the kind you never get tired of!

My office view....

It was also really nice to see how different they looked at the end of summer as opposed to the start. Each week the leaves were changing to the most beautiful autumn colours and the long grass was dried out, golden and shimmering in the breeze.

Just another mildly distracting piece of scenery to stop and stare at!

The last week that I worked we even had some snow flakes falling and the tops of the nearby hills covered in a dusting of snow, showing the seasons were changing. I was really tired by this point though, and in retrospect that’s maybe why I crashed. In previous years we have guided half day on, half a day off, or sometimes a day on/off, but this year we guided all day every day which starts to become a bit too much on a tough trip like the TP when you have done it 4 weeks in a row. The physical tiredness I can deal with, it’s the concentration and mental fatigue that I think caused my crash.

First snow dusting of the year...Norwegians and Swedes feeling right at home!

I did have lots of plans for an Autumn of enjoying myself after working hard all summer, but I guess that’s not to be this year….or well it is, but just in a different way!  

It’s funny how life has a way of bringing you down when you’re up….a reminder that we have less control of our life than we think, we just need to go with the flow, and deal with whatever life throws at you as it arises, and remember that sometimes opportunities can arise out of life circumstances that you could not have predicted before. We all face tough or difficult times in our lives at certain points, but it’s how we choose to approach them that leads to whether anything positive can come out of a potentially negative experience.

There are worse times to be injured in terms of the working year, but from a personal point of view it’s not the best. November is a tough month anyway…one that leaves me feeling down, on the edge of tears many days, and with a veil of sadness, remembering that whilst I’ve rebuilt a life I love, it’s not the one I really wanted to be living, at least not without Gareth here with me. I miss him most at this time of year, as I’m reminded of the events of 4 years ago and how perfect and carefree our lives were to that point.

I’ve thought a lot over the past four years, what it would be like the first time I injured myself without Gareth being around…How I’d cope without his support? Well, it’s been ok. I’m lucky to have a fantastic relationship with my mum and dad, who help me out in so many ways more than I could ever ask for, as well as a wonderful support network of friends all over the place. Of course none of these is the same as having your husband there, and I know I’ll miss his support through my recovery, and the reassurance I used to feel from him…the companionship that a close partner gives you can not be replaced. When someone knows you so well they know exactly the right words or actions or gestures that will help at any given time. I miss that most…

But in a way it feels like he is still here.

Happy days together in the mountains...

Not in a physical way, which obviously would be the best way possible, but because I can remember and imagine what he’d be saying, what his advice would be, the banter and jokes….and because I know  I’m stronger as a person because of everything he taught me and that I learned from him. Our relationship and love was so strong that I’m learning I will still be able to feel that in so many different ways as I go through the rest of my life. His spirit and the energy he had when he was alive, I can sense so many times a day, in so many of the things I do….and that gives me the inner strength and reassurance to know that things will always be alright, one way or another….

Hoping normal function can resume soon!

Well, here’s to a fun and busy early winter that will be somewhat different from planned but hopefully still full of new experiences and a new and improved shoulder!

As ever I’m massively grateful to Juliana Bicycles, Sram, Invisiframe, Sweet Protection and Bikmo Insurance for their support throughout this season. I’ve also been using some Maloja casual clothing this summer which I love. It’s a small but great brand with a huge range of high quality women’s clothing which is really refreshing and nice to find, and I hope I can continue as an ambassador for them into next year!

Summer mountain dreaming already!

Bank Holiday Bothy Adventures

A few weeks ago, adventurer Alastair Humphreys released a beautiful video online titled “Mountain Bikes and Bothy Nights” following an imaginary journey linking bothies in the wildest parts of Scotland by bike. I can’t believe anyone who loves the great outdoors didn’t watch it and think longingly of the mountains and start planning their next adventure…..which is exactly what Andy, Aneela, Anna and I did!

Mountain Bikes And Bothy Nights

For those not in the know, or who haven’t yet watched Alastair’s film, Bothies are simple, rustic, rudimentary shelters in remote places, left unlocked and free to use by all those who enjoy wild and lonely places.

They can range from small huts, to 2-storey cottages. There are no facilities, just a dry space, often with a fireplace or woodburner, and sometimes a sleeping bench on which to put your mat. You must take in (and out) everything you will need, including food, sleeping equipment, fuel for cooking and the fire, and anything else you need to be self sufficient.

They are not 5 star hotels, they are not even ‘glamping’, but they are usually in beautiful places, there are rarely others around, and I love them.  

Armed with a trolley full of food from Aldi, kit for every weather eventuality and our bikes, the four of us headed north from the Borders on Bank Holiday Friday. Feeling smug whilst we cruised along with few other cars on the roads as we listened to a 30minute bulletin of Bank Holiday traffic chaos in the south of England, it felt good to be going further away from the crowds!

Our plan was loosely based around heading North West, checking the weather, and deciding on a one or two night bothy trip with some exploratory mountain biking in between. Despite the fact that Andy and Aneela know most of Scotland like the back of their hands, there are occasionally still trails they haven’t explored, and bothies they haven’t stayed in, and whilst I’ve done some riding in the North West Highlands, there are many many trails I’ve yet to discover there.

The weather forecast was terrible, we hadn’t sorted out bags or kit, and there were a whole load of reasons and excuses we could have come up with for not setting out on Saturday morning. But ultimately, we all knew that the hardest part of trips like this is getting started, and once you’re on your way, you’re so glad you are…so we summoned up some motivation and got ready to go.

A couple of hours of kit packing followed….This may sound excessive until you realise what needed to be carried, and carried in a way that it was still possible, and enjoyable, to ride a bike on some technical terrain!

Photo: Andy McKenna

 Along with sleeping bags, mats, dry clothes and warm jackets, food for 3 days, water, first aid kit, maps, bike parts and tools, a camping stove and fuel, pans and mugs, fuel for the fire, and headtorches, there was also the small matter of trying to fit in some beer and wine for a couple of nights for the four of us! I for one was adamant this wasn’t going to get left behind….we were going to need some nightly reward for hefting these heavy bags across the mountains on our backs! Some tough riding was going to follow for sure!

There’s a sense of setting out on a great big adventure when you take all your food and kit with you like that, even if it’s just for a night or two. Once you pedal away from your car and out into the hills it feels like you’re getting “out there”, away from it all….from people, from the noise of roads, from computers and smartphones and TVs, from the comforts of modern living, out of your comfort zone…it’s just you, your friends and your bikes in the great outdoors. If you forget something or break something you can’t just nip to the shops to fix it, you have to be completely self-sufficient.

Britain is not a particularly wild place when you compare it to the great wildernesses of the World, but “Wild” can mean different things to different people, and for most of us that aren’t explorers, there are plenty of places in Scotland where the ‘Wild Factor’ is pretty high. It is also a place where the wilderness is easily accessible. You just need to get inspired, grab a map, make a plan and go, and as we found within a few hours of effort, you can find yourself in a place that feels remote, lonely and isolated, where you are humbled by incredible mountains all around and few signs of human interference. No pylons and electricity, no roads, no phone reception, no houses, just the small trace of rocky singletrack you’ve followed to get here, and the sight of a tiny stone bothy nestled deep in the valley below.

Photo: Aneela McKenna

So we pushed and rode our bikes uphill and over a small pass, stopping to readjust bags so we weren’t unbalanced on the bikes. It was hard work, but then the harder you work to get somewhere, often the greater the reward is when you get there. It took a while to get used to riding with such a heavy bag, and there were a few boggy sections where we all only narrowly avoided being dispatched out the front door as our front wheels sank and the weight of the bags on our backs kept us travelling forward with more momentum than normal!

Photo: Aneela McKenna

But the weather was perfect, the views were stunning, and it felt good to be outside on bikes in an incredibly beautiful place. The descent to the bothy was superb, and became a whole lot more fun as we spotted 5 walkers heading across the valley floor to the same bothy we were making our way towards! Andy and I picked up the pace and began charging down, unsure of how much space was in the bothy and whether we’d get there and stake our claim first! Fortunately they were all staying in tents nearby and there was only one other resident for the night, and plenty of space for us all in the cosy little building.

As the gale force wind howled and roared outside overnight, sounding as though it would lift the roof off at times, the rain and sleet lashed down, and the rivers around us swelled to impassable torrents of gushing water, we stayed warm and dry sleeping inside the bothy after our feast of risotto with chorizo, washed down with a mug of French red wine, enjoyed in front of a roaring fire. We awoke to more of the same, gale force winds that would’ve made riding impossible, heavy sleety rain, and no desire to leave the warmth of our little shelter! 

Photo: Andy McKenna

So we drank tea, ate sweets and chocolate, played cards, talked about all sorts of stuff and put the world to rights, played rounders with scrunched up paper and a bottle, and came up with numerous other ways to pass the time. Apart from the rounders, most of the time we were sat in our down jackets and sleeping bags….like a kind of bothy-duvet day! It was great. 

It’s so rare that you ever find yourselves in that position, with no phones or computers or tv or indeed anything to do except talk and interact with other people who are equally undistracted! I think we all felt it was good for us! However, after 10 hours in a small room, we were all going a bit stir-crazy…fortunately, the weather had started to abate, the river levels were receeding and we decided that we might go insane if we stayed indoors any longer, so we packed up in record time, cleaned the bothy to leave it as we found it, and headed out at 7pm for a dash to another bothy. 

A half hour of river and saturated bog crossing, then a pedal on gloriously fast landrover track followed. The weather was continuing to improve, we were sheltered in the lee of the wind behind a big hill, and the sun was trying to come out, illuminating the new snow on the high hills above us. Maybe it was the effect of having been stuck indoors all day, or perhaps the quantity of sugar we’d consumed whilst sat around, or possibly the exhilaration of feeling so alive as the cold water filled our shoes and socks as we crossed rivers and bogs, and the wind and the sun hit our faces as we pedalled away, or perhaps even the vastness and emptiness of the place we found ourselves in, towering mountains all around, rivers full with rain water, the herd of deer that ran past…Whatever it was, it made me want to whoop and holler in delight at where we were and what we were doing! 

The bothy we arrived at was huge, it even had a toilet! Even more excitingly, there was masses of firewood to burn on the fire to try to dry our wet kit. We cooked another feast, drank some more delicious beer and wine, went out to look at the beautiful starry skies, threw logs on the fire until we were practically cooking from the heat given off, and then slept well again. 

Photo:Aneela McKenna

The next morning brought much better weather, and with packs infinitely lighter now our food, fuel, and alcohol were depleted, we headed off on an interesting looking trail on the map that none of us had ridden before. It looked on paper like it had the potential to be either completely amazing, or utterly soul-destroyingly boggy and unrideable! That’s the beauty of trail exploring, and what you have to prepare yourself for when you set off on a ride like that! 

We started by pushing and carrying our bikes up a boggy hillside on a barely-there trail through the tussocks and heather….you might be thinking this already sounds horrendous, but none of us are averse to a bit of hike-a-bike in the search for those ultimate trails! In fact, I often actually quite like that kind of suffering to get to a trail…it makes the reward of finding a good one oh so much sweeter when you get there, and knowing that most of the biking population won’t bother to put that kind of effort in to ride something makes you smile at the knowledge that you’ve found your own little secret piece of singletrack gold.

And find it we did…. 

A glorious ribbon of undulating technical rocky singletrack, followed by a fantastic technical descent, 99% rideable, 100% pure fun. It was the kind of trail you always hope to find when you’re exploring new trails, almost like it had been made for bikes. I was in my element. It’s for days and moments like this that I ride my bike….an awesome ride and adventure, on an engaging, exhilarating trail, with great, like-minded people, in a wild and special place amidst dramatic scenery. There were smiles for miles by the time we got to the bottom and headed back to where we’d left our vans a couple of days before.

It’s amazing how a few days living without the usual comforts of modern life can make you appreciate everything so much more…. clean clothes, dry shoes, food that doesn’t just need water adding to cook it, a proper bed, a shower…they all felt like little luxuries! 

Our trip was only a mini adventure, but that’s all we all needed to come back feeling refreshed, energised, and inspired for more. In fact, in 3 days we rode a grand total of 15 miles, but boy did it feel a lot bigger and like we got a lot further away. It just goes to show though, that adventures don’t all have to be huge, monumental, daunting challenges that take weeks to plan, to feel like you’ve had a giant break from normality. They may not even feel worthy of being called an “adventure”….but the beauty of adventure is that it means different things to different people. For me it means stepping outside of your comfort zone, away from the things you know and that make life easy, doing something different from your “normal”, challenging yourself, taking on something that scares you, going somewhere that excites you, that may have risks and almost certainly has an uncertain outcome. Something that you might not complete, or finish, where you may have to turn back, or alter your plans. Something that’ll leave you with a sense of reward or satisfaction, or achievement. 

Whatever and wherever your adventures are, they are always good for the soul, and we should all seek to take them once in a while. I think John Muir knew what I was trying to say about this….

“Keep close to Nature’s heart…and break clear away, once in a while, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.” 

Biking to bothies is a great way to have a micro adventure and a way to explore some of the wild places that do still exist in our little country. All it takes is a will to want to do it and the motivation to make it happen.

Selfishly, I’m not going to tell you exactly where we rode or on what trails….Scotland is full of spectacular places and half the fun of adventures is going to explore and find your own hidden gems! So get out there and go and explore!!