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Why did we believe in ‘the ride?’
During chemo and cancer treatments, there is often an overwhelming desire to step back from life; your body heavy and your mind exhausted with anxiety. There is a fatigue in trying to manage not only your own emotions but the emotions of those around you who love you and don’t want you to go through all this nasty stuff. We wanted to do something for ourselves in the middle of being disempowered in so many ways; it would be our ‘adventure’ and the more we researched the importance of sustained physical exercise to manage side effects of cancer treatments, the more we believed that this was the right adventure. We felt well and positive on our big cycle ride. The tiredness we felt was from cycling miles and miles every day but the well being, especially at the end of our ride was extraordinary.
In our day to day lives, trying to fit in work, life, family and fun we know we can’t cycle 70 miles or so each day, but we can make that bit of extra effort to include some exercise as part of our daily lives.
We are not elite athletes in any way. Sometimes we pushed our bikes up hills in tears of frustration, sometimes we sat by the side of the river with our picnic lunch and willed it to be the end of the day, but it didn’t matter. What was important was that we were pushing ourselves as far as we could go and that little bit further. We did it in a spirit of love, friendship, determination and bloody mindedness!
Réka and Penny x x