A post from Dion

I'm reposting this update from my old school friend Dion as I want as many people as possible to read it. It's my reason to swim, bike and run. And support.

"People regularly ask me what happens when Jodi is sick? I.e. What symptoms occur?

 
MS is a strange disease. It effects its victims in different ways. Jo deals with the daily aches, pains, tingles, forgetfulness and fatigue well, in fact, people are often surprised when they find out she has MS. If I had a dollar for every time someone said, “Oh really? She looks fine?”, I wouldn’t need to host a GoFundMe page. Maybe that’s the problem, maybe she just doesn’t look sick enough?

At times when Jodi is really ill, she hides away from society, normally too tired to leave our bed, let alone host friends. However, on her recent month long stay in hospital, many visitors got to witness the Jodi that Rachel, Abbey and I often see. The zombie-esque Jodi, high on a cocktail of drugs that are required to quell her MS symptoms, minimise pain and assist her to sleep to get through the next day.

This disorder has introduced me to a world of things I never expected to deal with in this life. Constant shopping to replace the broken plates & glasses, smashed due to the loss of coordination. Fighting with the people I like to call the “ACROD Police”. Those who make visual judgements on whether Jodi is really entitled to an ACROD bay at the supermarket (despite having one displayed) and want to fight me when I tell them what I think of their visual appearance in my own special way. The role of “bathroom door counsellor”. Yep, thats right, I have had times (especially in the early days) where I have had to stand outside the bathroom door for hours, listening to Jodi cry as she tries to build up the courage to give herself that daily injection. Hopelessly trying to convey words of advice and encouragement for her to “just do it quickly”, “it won’t hurt” or to, “think of something else”. All those tidbits of encouragement that I never believed, necessary for her to carry out something that I would struggle with doing myself. The role of “toe holder”. See, Jodi is claustrophobic and terrified of MRI’s. Unfortunately that is a common way for neurologists to monitor the progression of the disease. So against the radiologists better advice I would put on my radiation fall out jacket and hold onto Jodi’s toe, the only part of her body sticking out of the machine. Oh, and then there were the lumber punctures. I shudder to even recall the thoughts.

Still to this day I hear stories of the “funny” things Jodi did or said in hospital. The crazy texts received from a bored patient who went in to hospital suffering the MS symptom of temporary blindness. It is the not so funny things that seem to stick in my mind. The times I have sat up with the kids whilst they cried through the night because, even though they know Mum was "drugged up", they never thought she wouldn’t recognise them. The manic screaming from Jodi to “get her off of me” and “who is that” that reduced Abbey to tears for days. The scared sensation of watching your wife unable to feed herself. That helpless feeling of watching your wife admit defeat at times when she is too weak to even pretend to be strong. Probably the one thing that I found hardest of all was trying to settle Abbey down after she came home from school one day. One kid had asked if Abbeys mum was better. Abbey said, "no, she’s still very sick in hospital". The young boy said, “she will probably die. My grand dad died and he was only in hospital for 2 weeks”. That part shook her up. His grand dad died after 2 weeks in hospital and Mum was already up to 3 weeks? I explained that different people go to hospital for different reasons etc, not all die. She bought it. But what happened next still replays loudly in my brain in a way I can’t seem to forget. Abbey, placid, tiny, 6 year old Abbey, called me out. She looked at me with a face of pure hatred and said, “You said your job is to protect us, that you wouldn’t let anything happen to your girls, SO FIX MUM!” in a scream that still shakes me up. So that is how this page got the title of “Fix Jo In Moscow”. I told Abbey I would FIX it and FIX it is what Im going to do!

I can post this picture because I'm currently 4000km’s from home, just outside of Jodi’s reach. I don’t post it to embarrass her but more so to show those people who haven’t seen Jodi during the hard times, just what they are missing out on. This is the reality of MS. It needs to be FIXED! "

You can support Jodi by crowdfunding for her treatment at  http://www.gofundme.com/7jygyg

Racing for a reason

It has been quiet on the blogging and twitter front as Beardy Guy and myself wrestled with the concept of events we had entered, an obligation to train, and our desire to actually live a less disciplined sporting life. While I am still heavily involved in Freedom from Torture, the fundraising activities needed to take a rest for the sake of my amazing donors if nothing else. I felt like an athlete without a cause. Swimathon was the first activity in my calendar and while I attacked swim sets and coaching with gusto there came a point where the whole thing felt a bit pointless. I felt like I had been here, and done this. Yes, while I was not gifted with sporting talent, I was endowed with ridiculous stubborness, so enter me in something and I will do it, even if I don't quite complete the training. So what was there to prove? 

Enter Jodi. 

Jodi is the wife of a primary school friend. Yes primary school, where I wore wrapround netball skirts and sneakers with ankle socks - all held together by velcro. Where you get picked on (a lot) and have a crush on boys with freckles that are shorter than you. I didn't keep in touch with many people from primary school because I moved out of the area, didn't go to the state high school and most of them turned into rednecks that call you names like towel head.  

I saw Jodi in the facebook photos of my school mate Dion. Smiling against Perth's sunny skies, in the warm embrace of family. What I didn't know was that that Jodi had MS. It knocked me for six to know that this bubbly family, full of domestic challenges (Dion often works in Perth's nearest city, ie in Indonesia) had this disease to deal with as well. 

MS is an autoimmune disease that attacks the central nervous system. As a result, Jodi battles severe pain, fatigue, loss of balance, eye discomfort, hearing & vision loss, muscle spasms, depression and memory loss. The treatment she hopes will prolong her quality of life is not available in Australia and the family have made the decision to have the treatment in Russia. They are crowdfunding the cost of this as they can't bear it alone. At present, $98,000 stands between here and her recovery. 

There are people who crowd fund to make movies, there are people who sponsor a child they will never meet, people who put coins in collection boxes without thinking. There are people who put "pay it forward" memes on their facebook page. Now is the time to get a little closer to a cause, and help give a family back its mother and wife. 

I'm dedicating my sporting events this year to crowdfunding for Jodi. This will be a 5km pool swim, a 3.8k open water race, a middle distance triathlon (1.2 mile swim, 56 miles ride, 13.1 mile run) and a century ride (100 miles). In return I'd love you to come with me on the journey. I can't tell you how many people write to me and tell me they don't have money - and that's ok (though I urge you to consider that if we all donated a pint or glass of wine we could raise $1000s). But if you've made it this far down the page you are a person of tolerance, compassion and intelligence. Share some fundraising ideas with me: cake stalls, those parties where people come to your house and buy stuff, lamington drives (do they still have those in Australia!?), quiz nights. You may even feel inspired to organise one yourself... Or share this post and follow Jodi's news. Sign a petition for her treatment to be available in Australia. Learn more about the disease. Why? Why should you, why should this matter? It's an awful thing to consider, but if one day it came to my awareness that it was you needing help, I would swim, bike, run and fundraise for you. 

With love
Rowena

Support Jodi at http://www.gofundme.com/7jygyg

Life and Death after Half Ironman

This is a belated blog. I wrote many versions of it riding on buses, walking to work, swimming laps etc. It was all about life after half ironman. The more I didn't write it, the more it changed. So here is the journey of this blog post, triathlon related and not.

I was never a natural athlete, so completing any one of the single disciplines of a half ironman was never a given - not even the run. As a result, training consumed my life. The fear of failure was a big driver for this, but also, so was the amount of change in my life. Living Up North as Ms Beardy Gal and step mum, unemployment, a change in work, country living - everything was different and triathlon seemed the one thing that was constant.

The race itself was great. Seven hours of pure fun. I'm glad I am slow - if I was fast I would have had less hours of fun. It was so much fun that I came home and put every 70.3 race in the UK in my calendar. I knew I could do it, I knew I could do it faster, or I could do it with less "fear of god" training. If the first half Iron was a leap of faith, then the second and the next, and the next was a redefining of myself. I was not a One Challenge Pony, I really felt like I loved middle distance triathlon. I returned to training with zeal, especially as Jon had his eye on lots of races that would take him away from home. I needed that constant again so I didn't feel lost at sea.

Then there was Freaky Friday. On Freaky Friday, I learned my dad's wife had cancer. I learned when she was already in surgery as my poor dad had also learned in that same period that his mother had dementia, and had threatened to harm herself and my grand dad. She had been sectioned. It was a lot to take in from a distant phone call and series of text messages. I set about the long distance telethon that is ringing one part of the family to the next to find out what is really going on. If you know a little about me in real life, you'll know that making these phone calls can often be the first contact I've had with family for years at worst, months at best. After one of these 1am calls I sat typing to my mum, musing how these sorts of things make you question your life's priorities, question how much time you give your family, amongst other Big Thoughts. It hit a note with my mother, and when I woke after a few hours sleep, I read an email from her, an outpouring of things I needed to know before it was too late. It's been great to have that honesty and intimacy with her, so fresh after her great support role at the race in Mallorca. But of course revelations like that knock you for six. I spent most of the week reeling with the Big Thoughts in my head. They are louder and bigger when you are in the countryside away from friends and family, I am sure.

On Sunday I attempted to cycle from Mossley to Liverpool. I got lost in Salford for about an hour. While this was happening, I realised that I needed to address some of the things that could make me more happy. I was missing the spontaneity of life, and the finances to do things - be it visit my friends in London or further afield, go to dinner, make a load of long distance phone calls and so on. Saving for a house, while taking part in a very expensive sport was taking a lot of resources - not just time and energy. I decided not to do the Middle Distance triatlon I had entered.

At the same time, as I was pedalling bored towards Merseyside, my grandmother died. I take some comfort that it was quick, that she didn't spend years wondering who the people were around her, that she was at least cleared from the mental health ward. I take little comfort that my granddad was ill-prepared and that my family did not have time to rally itself, that she died alone.

It would be easy for me tomorrow to wake up and choose some gruelling swim-set, disappear in the pool and then do a strength and conditioning session at lunch. That's what Tuesdays are for, right? But I hope that along with the realisation that I am a triathlete (and that won't change no matter what I do and don't do) I am also part of a strange group of disparate people called family, a clan of blood and tree-lines that don't speak much but have common links. And that if I can put as much time and effort into them as I do my attempts at sport, then maybe the next family member won't die by surprise or won't die alone. At the very least, I hope I'm not cycling the estates of Salford when it happens.

Hear for yourself: where your donation went

I've not forgotten how generous you all were with donations for Freedom from Torture North West so I really wanted you to hear first hand about the work they have done and you have funded. 

This interview is with Jude Boyles who greeted me with enormous warmth on 21 May when I returned to the UK to Freedom from Torture's Manchester offices to report on how the half ironman went, and how your support had helped me. 

http://vimeo.com/69233019

"It's hard to imagine what someone will look like when they smile... so when you start to see those tiny chinks... like when someone shakes your hand and says thank you when they have never looked you in the eye for months, those are the things you start to celebrate."

You can still support Freedom from Torture here at www.justgiving.com/halfirongirl

Race pics

How the other half viewed the half

If you've not already, I urge you to read this lovely blog written by my amazing supporter and partner, Jon.

http://musingsofarunner.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/how-my-girlfriend-became-half-ironman.html

Reflections on life after half Ironman

I started writing this post (in my head) to coincide with it being one month after my race. Instead that period got a bit distracted. I applied for a permanent internal promotion at work, the day after I returned from Mallorca, had the interview, thought I had bombed and instead got offered the job exactly one month after my race! In addition, when I got home, the law courts had issued a little bit of oddly worded legalese to confirm that the Beardy one was well and truly single. Cue many tears of joy because the life that had felt so vulnerable and temporary was now on its way to be nice and solid.

And in all of that, choosing  my next race seemed quite insignificant. Of course, racing and challenges has now become a massive part of our lives but there seemed so much more to decide on and act on right now. The last four weeks had really given me a taste not just of what I had been missing since 2009 (when I was first locked in a battle to finish some seemingly insurmountable challenge and have been ever since), but what I had been missing by not fully being embedded in family life, not being able to commit to future plans - and now all that had changed.

So here are some forward musings:

We love Ironman. Yes we love the brand. We love the slick organisation, the color-coded bags. We enjoyed following every rule to a T with paranoia (Jon wouldn't pass me a split time nor an Aussie flag!) because we wanted to feel that taking the start line with Lucy Gossage and Tamsin Lewis et al meant I really was worthy. We loved that I was part of something big. If I am to do another event, it's going to be Ironman branded. So to continue in this tradition, we're going to save up (because I can do that now with a permanent job) for a full Ironman in 2015.

It doesn't mean I am not competing this year. Oh no! I just don't want to compete or challenge myself with the level of intensity I have had to. While I am a very slow person, you may think that I don't need to train much but as I am so naturally unsporty and really not ergonomically structured for sport, I do need to put in lots of work on strength and conditioning and recovery to get where I am today! It's not the training that kills me, it's the planning for the next training and recovering that does!

I have really enjoyed swimming and want to continue open water adventures. I did have my heart set on Coniston 5.67 mile shore to shore but I hear that Buttermere is a bit shorter and that will be a great challenge for this year.

Jon is going to get a bike for commuting and some weekend rides together may teach me some cycling love if ever see a day with sunshine. And over Winter I will see if my heart and body have the energy to return to distance beyond the 26,2 mile mark. I never buy into this "once a runner, always a runner" thing! I think I got into it because it was accessible, not because it's in my DNA!

And so life after Half Iron will, in amongst this, return to the rich variety of things that made me tick: opera by homeless people, theatre by refugees, Freedom from Torture, and street outreach, volunteering and Doing Culture! Cooking and baking and making and writing and taking photos. Catching up with my friends in London and Finland and beyond. And of course my family, not just in Mossley and other places up north but in Malaysia and Australia, who need lots of time to cultivate and update so they are all ready for 2015 where I hope I can get many of them to cheer me at the full 140.6!

PSssstt you can still support the half and the great work of Freedom from Torture by going here.