Guest Post 1: Jo McRae

I am happy to present the first guest blog post, written by the lovely Jo McRae (Twitter – @JoMcRae1) who is an exercise professional of many years. What do you do when you simply can’t ride? When injury or illness prevent you from even getting on the bike? Here Jo shares her personal experience punctuated with professional observations. SS

Taking the Piss.

Having missed the much talked about gig at Look Mum, I’m keen to keep the ball rolling in sharing some of my own brain and bike experiences via this blog. Only problem is, though this ball may be rolling, the wheels on my own bicycle are not going round and round at all. I’ve been grounded by one of the worst things a cyclist can have to deal with – an actual physical reason for not being able to ride the bike.

Like many mentalists with a therapeutic love-hate relationship with the bike, I’ve sometimes not wanted to ride the damn thing at all, the biggest hiatus being a five year divorce. Sometimes, the hurdles have been insurmountable, the pressure I put on myself too great, or the general lethargy or depression too much to swing my leg over the cross-bar. Frustratingly many of these aspects of my own mental health are rather well in check just now, so the Universe has sent me a different kind of challenge just to check I’ve really GOT IT.  Due to an ongoing bladder infection and subsequent complications, I’ve been off the bike completely for about six months now.

A chronic bladder infection sounds like nothing much I know, but this is a bona fide, albeit not too common problem that really can become pretty serious if untreated. In practice, it means daily and even hourly changes in bladder problems, pelvic and urethral pain, dysfunction and all manner of awfulness that I won’t go into here. The main symptom for me has been bladder pain, something I didn’t know you could even have, let alone would have to learn to manage for more than a year.

Helpfully the centre for anxiety in the brain is right next door to the one receiving feedback from the bladder, so needless to say, the anxiety I have been experiencing has at times been pretty much off the scale. I’ve experienced crippling anxiety before, but usually associated with no REAL cause, or rather one magnified and exacerbated by thought processes themselves. This whole experience takes moment to moment management to a whole new level, and several of my usual coping measures are currently off the table. Riding my bike would be one, and lifting heavy weights would be another. Both are, for the moment, off limits. Almost uniquely amongst the exercise options available, these two favourite things are most like to make pain and physical symptoms worse. This feels like a particularly cruel blow.

Luckily as an exercise professional myself I’m not short of movement vocabulary, so I’ve been embracing ‘BEING IN THE NOW’, and doing whatever I can on any given day to keep moving and keep healthy in both body and mind. One day that might mean having a swim. Another it might mean a light gym circuit. And one mental health technique that I’ve used in the past is really coming into its own. ‘Goal chain-ing’ is when you don’t look too far ahead, but instead prepare for an activity step by manageable step, in order to avoid being overwhelmed by the size of the challenge or floored by the disappointment of failure. You might focus on putting your exercise kit on before you decide what you’re going to do, or ride the first 15 minutes out of town before deciding if you want to go any further.

Fortunately for me I have access to several gyms, so I’m able to chop and change my activity at the drop of a hat and still get something useful done. I’ve been trying to keep my hand in a little by including short half hour/40 minute sessions on a watt bike. At least by cycling indoors I’m not in the arse end of Kent with a sudden onset of pain and no way of getting home in a hurry. I don’t want to induce pain, but some days I don’t have any problems at all so having no set goal in this instance is helpful and important, but it is hard to swallow. I like to have structure to my work-outs. Training is my business after all, but for now I just want to use exercise to stay sane. Surely that’s achievable with goal-chaining and a flexible mind set. After all, who cares if I get on a watt bike for 15 minutes only to get off and have a super comfortable row with a lubricated padded chamois.

So I’m doing my best and I’m managing, and there have even been some unexpected perks, for example I have improved my running. But what I’ve remembered the most is that I like to ride my bike. Just for the pleasure in that. And I’m looking forward to a time when I can get the wheels turning again, at whatever speed.