Day 34: St Weonards to Chepstow

It's now day 34 and we are in Wales. I didn't actually know we were coming to Wales but it's nice to see another part of the country I've never seen before. Not that I actually see much other than the road in front, but I do see some parts occasionally, when the road has a very slight decline and I can safely afford to take my eyes off the surface in front for a second.

I was writing this whilst sat watching the USA v England women's rugby game, which is a brilliant game so far! I'm digressing again... So today was definitely, definitely the worst day of all the days that I've done so far for difficulty.

So I've had one of those days cropping up here and there along the way. The most difficult days, which are usually with very steep inclines. These are the ones like the 14% for the first time, which I had no idea if I was capable of pushing myself up. Today was definitely the most difficult day so far. My highest climb before this was on Day 21 where I climbed 1854 feet, and today this went up a huge amount, I climbed 2530 feet. So that's about an extra 700 feet. I managed to do 45km in distance today as well. I genuinely have no idea how I kept going. One of the steepest climbs so far that we know that I've done was 16%. Then, we think 17% and 18%, when we were going over the Cumbrian hills. That was almost impossible. The front of my chair kept kicking up and almost tipping over. The pressure I had to push through my arms and chest made me feel like my pecs (chest muscles) were tearing, my wrists felt like they would snap and my thumbs worked their way through the lining of my gloves. But these inclines were short and sharp, which went on all day, but I had relief!

Each one of those was probably about 3-400 metres long. Today we had started off at about 16%, then went to 17% & 18%, and then ended up at a massive 20% incline that went on for possibly about 6 or 7km. This hill was like something I've never seen before. It seemed to go on and on and on. It was ridiculous. The little brakes on my chair, which are not brakes at all, they are basically handbrakes which are there to stop you from moving on a flat surface, were failing. I put them on and they were failing. My chair was still moving backwards, & there was a noise to suggest that they were under such strain that they could snap. That has never happened at all throughout the whole journey so far. If I was to push with those on, it's almost impossible, and they would probably break. So there was a risk there of having them on and them snapping and, if one of them snapped, I would have just rolled down this massive hill backwards, which would be a nightmare and I probably couldn't have stopped myself. On top of this, the front wheel was lifting up massively. I was bending so far forwards that my chest was on my knees, but it was still lifting up. I'd already climbed quite a way up this until I reached a point that I just couldn't keep going safely. So I had to stop and zig zag my way up the road. Inch by inch. Every push was like doing press-ups with someone on your back. I can just do a press-up with Cat on my back and she weighs 9 stone, and this was much harder. I genuinely thought some part of my body was going to tear, snap, give way... It was absolutely terrifying. Every agonising, soul-destroying inch felt as if I wasn't moving at all because it was so slow going. But I kept going. Somehow! The thought of giving up never comes into my head. Not ever! And it didn't with this either. It was just very slow and painful. I've never put so much effort into anything in my life. I think this hill was possibly the category 7 climb. The ones you hear about on Le Tour De France. When I saw it, I thought it must be steps!

Some cars went past and slowed down and clapped me. It was really appreciated, and definitely helped me to keep going. Then Sharon put the Rocky theme tune blaring out of the car. It was really amazing and quite funny. This tiny lane in Wales in the middle of nowhere with houses either side, and this mad person in a wheelchair and a car blaring out Rocky... can you picture it? I wish we filmed it!

When I eventually made it to the top I broke down in tears, and so did Sharon. It was so lovely. She said she was shocked by how steep it was and my stubbornness at not wanting to give up! I never know what to say when people say things like that to me. I won't give up. It's that simple. I owe it to the charities. To the support crew. To the female rugby players. To everyone who sent supportive messages, to literally every person who helped, to not give up. So I didn't!

At the end of it, there was a small downhill. It was great to have a bit of a rest, and then it was straight back to massive uphills again, and they were all incredibly long and incredibly steep. Again, just like nothing I've done before, absolute hell on earth, it's all that can describe this. I felt very, very poorly by the end. I was very faint, very weak, very, very depleted and actually thought I was going to pass out which is a point in training that I've never reached before. I've never been that close to passing out, which was bad enough, and then knowing that I had to go straight to the Rugby club, well, I had no idea how I was going to manage it? To be honest, I was sat in the car, and if I had the energy, I would have been in tears, but I could barely breathe. I felt just so faint and awful.

I tried to get a drink into me and tried to eat some Haribo, just to get some sugar into me. We ended up driving away quite quickly because we were late to get to the Rugby club. When we got there, I still felt dreadful, but somehow, and I don't know how? I managed to hold it together.

The team at Dragons Rugby club, Chepstow were incredible. They gave the most amazing welcome I've had so far and I've had some amazing welcomes. They did a guard of honour, where they were all there with flags and were cheering. It was just absolutely amazing. I don't even know how to describe it. I felt really overwhelmed. My weird impostor syndrome really kicked in there! I think that I'm not worthy of that kind of thing. But you kind of just go with it and smile, and it's very emotional and incredibly wonderful and what an amazing thing for them to do. I went into the club and chatted to a couple of people. My wife, Cat and Karen came up today. Karen is the fifth team driver, so Sharon is due to go home today, which I'm really gutted about because I absolutely adore her and she is lovely and so much fun. But I'm really happy that Karen's here as well, she's really awesome and we got on really well and she's really cool. She's got a bit of a baptism of fire tomorrow when we show her how to do everything and the driving of the car and things like that, but I know she'll be absolutely fine.

I'm digressing again! I was chatting to people and I had a lovely surprise. Cat said 'oh I think someone is here to see you!' I looked over and it was Liza Burgess, who is a former Wales international and is in the Rugby hall of fame as one of the most amazing rugby players of all time. She used to play with Susie and Sue Dorrington. I saw her and I was totally blown away that she would even think about coming to see me, to be honest! Her nickname is Bird, which I love. She brought with her a signed Wales ball and shirt, which again totally blew me away!

She said 'the team tells me there is an auction for the charities' as she handed over the gifts. So yes, of course they will be auctioned off. No matter how much I would really, really love to keep the ball. It's really difficult to let something like that go. I absolutely love the team, but the charities are in more need than I.
This club gobsmacked me again later on when the chairman gave a lovely speech and then he presented me with 2 medals from the club, which was just absolutely phenomenal as well. I was certainly not expecting anything like that, and then he also gave me a signed shirt.

It had been signed by all the players. So again, I was just overwhelmed. It was an absolutely beautiful, absolutely wonderful thing to do. And that's definitely going to be popped in a frame. We'll be joining our other shirts and our wall and I can't wait for that to be there.

We then did the ball handover, which was really lovely. The whole women's team and disability team were there, which was really special.
We did a question and answer session, which was great and I was asked some really, really good questions as well, which was unexpected considering none of them were prompted. None of them knew it was going to happen so they didn't really have much time to think of anything.

It was quite sad saying goodbye to my wife and saying goodbye to Sharon as well. She's been here for almost 9 days and it's been really lovely to see her. I know she's going to miss Neil lots and Neil's going to miss her as well, but he should see her again fairly soon. So, we're now off to Bristol tomorrow, which is really surreal that we're that close now.

A particular team member keeps going on about the West Country and how difficult it's going to be, which doesn't help me. She was asked not to do that, but didn't listen to those instructions either! Psychologically, I'm already feeling quite a bit of pressure at the moment, so her talking about that quite a lot really doesn't help. I prefer not to know and not think about these things. It's a lot easier for me to deal with. But it seems like almost every other sentence at the moment that the difficulty of the West Country is being mentioned!

The route tomorrow, I'm not particularly looking forward to. We've got a bit that's on a cycle path and where Karen's got to join me on a bike later. Those sorts of bitty days are not very good for me, the long pauses where I have to hang about are dangerous when it comes to injury prevention.

I'm definitely not good at all, not when it's really awful weather, like we've had today. It was raining, then it was absolutely freezing one minute and warm the next. It was a nightmare, really difficult to handle, so when you don't have a car with you, these things become incredibly tough to manage. So there's a lot of planning that needs to go into that sort of thing that we don't have time to do. I'm hoping that would be the last day that's like that.

I'm hoping I'll get better sleep tonight. Because my entire body is hurting like mad, my lower back is really bad right now, which keeps waking me up every night and it's causing quite a lot of problems actually. There's quite a nasty swelling on the lower back right side of my spine. I think my disc is out and out again? Actually, I know my disc is out again, I can feel it, and I'm getting a bit of weakness in my right leg as well and that happened last time. My body's pretty trashed as well from the climbs today. I feel very, very tired, very lethargic, which I'm not allowed to say anything about, or I get snapped at, but tomorrow is another day closer to the finish line!