Take for example my enthusiastic commitment to take on the London to Paris cycle! No, I’d never cycled before. No, I didn’t have a bike. No, I wasn’t fit; in fact I had just had a major knee operation, following a nasty ski accident! However, I felt I needed a goal to motivate me to get back on my feet and fully operational again, so it seemed like a good idea at the time.
I signed up to do it just 20 weeks after my op. I told my friends and family – who all thought I was a little short of crazy and urged me to wait until 2013. Undeterred, I bought a static bike / cross trainer to have in the house ready to commence my training. I had committed to raise £1800 for Children with Cancer and I was determined to earn it. 10 days after my knee reconstruction, I sat on my bike and cried as I turned the wheel for the first time. How can I cycle 320 miles when one pedal is so painful?!
Yes I had been bold, and not quite thought this idea through. It wasn’t just the pain and the fact that my knee was unfamiliar this new muscle that had replaced my cruciate ligament. It was the thought of the long hard training ahead. However, I had committed and I am not one to be beaten, so each day my cycling gradually increased. I went from 5 minutes to 7, to 9, to 12 and so on until I could do 40 minutes!
As I said, I didn’t actually own a bike, so it was off to the shops to put a large dent in my credit card – I had no idea how expensive a road bike was and if I was going from London to Paris, obviously I would need a good one – Ouch!
Then I took my first trip on the road. My lane is 3 miles long so when I reached the bottom, completely out of breath, panic swept over me. What have I committed to? A mere 12 weeks before I was due to cycle 320 miles and I was struggling to cycle just 3.
I had to give myself a big talking to. I needed to realise what I had done and understand why. I was really hating being injured and desperate to recover. However, someone said to me – you’re called ‘a patient’ for a reason. I had to accept that I was pushing to recover faster than my body could cope with.
The thing is, I didn’t want to prove everyone right and put it off until next year, so I wrote a training plan that would get me ready for the big one in 12 weeks. My husband was a big support – he went out and bought himself bike (a better bike than mine, grrr!!) and having his help gave me strength to hope it was possible.
Planning to fit in longer cycle rides was a challenge, as I have a 5 year old and at weekends when we wanted to get 50 miles under our belts it was getting costly with child care – but I was committed so that was what we did. Raising money was becoming exhausting but people were very generous.
I felt good most days – cycling from 10 – 45 miles a day 6 days per week with my knee holding up well. There were some days when it was so sore that I was not sure I could go on, but overall I felt ready for my trip to Paris – with just 4 days to go…..
There is a saying that God work is in mysterious ways – I had decided to put a challenge in front of myself to speed up my recovery and I had hit my target for raising money. However, someone somewhere didn’t want me to cycle to Paris because I fell off my horse on the Friday just days before my trip and broke my Tibia, 1 cm away from the pins which were holding my new muscle in place!! The result – I was instructed that I had to be non weight bearing for 6 weeks. Horror – London to Paris would have to wait for 2013 after all!!
I absolutely believe that it is important to have goals and be driven. However, considering all I teach – I obviously had a big lesson to learn about how to set milestones, create a workable plan and really understand the effort and cost (let alone who else may suffer for it) in order to hit this particular goal!
Watch this space…. I have signed up and persuaded a group of friends to join me for the challenge in May 2013 – look out Paris, there will be a celebration …..
Emma Littmoden is a partner at leadership programme provider, The Living Leader.
