The First Ride
June 16, 2023. 54 miles. 4 hours 45 minutes. An old self-adapted hybrid bike. Eight months earlier I was a full-time wheelchair user.
This was not a carefully prepared return to sport. There was no structured training programme, no professional bike fit, no support crew. I began 2023 having to rebuild my leg muscles from scratch, learning how to adapt a standard hybrid bike so I could ride with my specific physical constraints. The adaptations were practical and self-taught. The bike was old. The point was to ride it.
The BHF London to Brighton
The BHF London to Brighton is one of the UK's most established charity cycling events. 54 miles of closed and open roads from London to the South Coast. For most riders it is a challenge. For me it was proof of concept.
The question was not whether 54 miles was manageable in good condition. The question was whether the framework I was building — what would later become Prosthetic Physiology — could hold across a full day's riding on a body that had not ridden seriously in nearly two decades.
It held. 4 hours 45 minutes. Completed.
What This Proved
Three months after this ride I completed 197 miles over 4.5 days for Race the Ship. The BHF London to Brighton is the data point that made Race the Ship credible. Without it, the trajectory from 19 years in a wheelchair to 197 miles in a single event has no intermediate reference point.
June 16, 2023. The first proof the trajectory was real. Everything that followed was built on this day.