How it started…
This time last year, I was sitting on the support van of the SIA Overseas Cycle Challenge in Italy with a broken hand, a battered head, and far too much time to think.
Day two of the 2025 ride had ended abruptly for me after a crash. One moment I was part of the challenge, the next I was out of it entirely, watching the rest of the event unfold through the windows of a support vehicle. Anyone who knows me well will know that sitting still and accepting defeat has never really been one of my strengths, so naturally my brain started wandering towards increasingly ridiculous ideas for the following year.
Somewhere on the roads of Italy, sat on that bus feeling sorry for myself, I started thinking about handbiking.
When I got home, I messaged Gary Dawson. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t crossing a line or doing something unintentionally insensitive. I also wanted to know whether it would genuinely work as an awareness piece or whether it was just another one of my questionable endurance ideas.
Gary’s response was immediate. He said it would be brilliant.
He also told me something else.
Every year, somebody says they’d like to do the challenge on a handbike, and to date nobody had even made it to the start line.
That probably should have been the warning sign.
Instead, it only encouraged me further.
A couple of months later, during a sales and marketing call at MedBrief, I floated the idea to the wider team. To my surprise, people were overwhelmingly supportive. Nobody told me it was stupid. Nobody told me to rethink it. In fact, most people thought it sounded like a great idea.
Unfortunately, that support removed my ability to quietly back out of it later.
Because one thing led to another and before long I’d bought a handbike.
At that point, there’s really no turning back. I’d already publicly said I was going to do it. People knew. The idea had escaped into the world and now I had to follow through with it.
There was only one small issue.
I had never actually ridden a handbike before.
That changed in January 2026, when I brought the handbike home.
I took it out immediately. The plan was simple enough. Ride from my house to the local park, do a few laps somewhere traffic free, get a feel for it.
My local park is only a few hundred metres from my front door, separated by what I would previously have described as a gentle incline. Not a hill. Barely even a rise in the road.
That tiny incline nearly broke me.
Within minutes my arms were screaming. I remember thinking, “What have I done?”
I got to the park and did a loop around it, but suddenly the place felt mountainous. Tiny gradients that I’d never even consciously registered before now felt enormous. That was the moment fantasy collided with reality. Up until then, the idea of completing the SIA Overseas Challenge on a handbike had existed quite comfortably in my head. Now it existed in my shoulders, elbows and back.
And it hurt.
What surprised me most was just how weak my arms were. Cycling fitness doesn’t transfer at all. I’ve done endurance riding before. Long days in the saddle don’t scare me. But this was different. Completely different.
Still, by this point I was committed.
The handbike went onto an indoor setup in the garage and I got to work.
Four months of training followed. Looking back now, four months was nowhere near enough. Honestly, I probably could have done with four years. But you work with the time you have, and I convinced myself I could get fit enough to survive it.
What I didn’t understand then was the scale of the challenge I’d actually set myself.
The 2026 SIA Overseas Cycle Challenge would take us from Toulouse to Bordeaux. Roughly 300 kilometres over three days. The route profile was described as pan flat, and in fairness, compared to most cycling events, it was.
But gradients feel different in a handbike.
Tiny rises become energy drains. Small bridges feel like mountain passes. Long false flats become mentally exhausting because your speed slowly disappears while your effort continues climbing.
Where the riders on traditional bikes enjoyed flowing roads and gentle descents, I often felt like I was grinding uphill all day.
Day one was always going to be difficult.
115 kilometres.
My longest ever handbike ride before this event had been 82 kilometres during the Ride for SIA warm up ride from Preston to Southport and back, organised by Gary, Julie and Rick. That had already pushed me close to my limit.
Still, the first day of the overseas ride was net downhill on paper, so naively I assumed I’d move reasonably well.
I averaged around 11 kilometres an hour.
You can do the maths yourself.
We rolled out of Toulouse along canal paths. It was picturesque. Traffic free. Calm. The surfaces were mostly good. The weather was perfect. Honestly, conditions couldn’t have been better.
But somewhere around the 90 kilometre mark I entered the deepest part of what I call the hurt locker.
That was the point where I genuinely wasn’t sure I’d finish the day.
My shoulders and elbows had been screaming for hours. On subsequent days the pain stopped feeling like pain because it simply became normal. You get comfortable being uncomfortable. That’s really what endurance becomes after a while. Your body repeatedly tells you to stop and your job is simply to keep moving anyway.
I broke the route down into five kilometre blocks because thinking about the whole distance was overwhelming. Five kilometres at a time. Twenty to thirty minutes of effort depending on terrain. Reach one marker, then start again mentally.
At one point I found myself chanting out loud:
“My arms are strong. My grit is strong. I will finish today.”
Over and over again.
Probably for three or four kilometres straight.
Because physically and mentally, everything in me wanted to stop.
Toward the end of the day, even tiny rises became impossible. Some of the small bridge climbs along the canal path defeated me completely. I’d get to the point where the cranks physically would not turn anymore. So I’d stop, climb out of the bike, drag it over the top of the bridge, get back in, and carry on.
On one hill during day two, “The Hill”, I knew before I even reached it that my arms wouldn’t get me to the top, so I got out and jogged up the hill holding the front wheel.
I could walk faster than I could climb.
When I finally got back to the hotel after day one, I went to my room and cried.
Not dramatically. Not heroically. I just completely emptied emotionally for ten minutes because I genuinely believed there was no way I could do day two.
Then I started preparing for day two anyway.
Water bladder filled. Recovery drinks sorted. Kit laid out. Sweets packed into the frame bag.
I trusted the process because I’d already planned it all in advance. Even though mentally I believed I was finished, I still did all the jobs needed for the following morning.
Dinner that evening was delayed slightly and I think I was barely functioning as a human being at that point. People joked that I looked like I might fall asleep in my food. They probably weren’t wrong.
I don’t think I’ve ever been that physically drained in my life.
And yet somehow, the next morning, I rolled out again.
That’s one thing I’ll say about the riders on this challenge. Every single person checked in on me constantly. Every rider who passed asked how I was doing. Everyone encouraged me. There was never a moment where I felt alone out there.
The conversations became almost comical at times.
“How are the arms?”
Eventually I considered just putting daily arm status updates into the group WhatsApp each morning to save everyone asking individually.
But that support mattered.
So did the reactions from the public. Handbikes are unusual enough that people naturally notice them. We’d roll past Joe Public and people would wave, cheer and stare in amazement at what the group was doing.
Day two was shorter. Around 65 kilometres. Everyone kept telling me “it’s an easier day”.
Nothing feels easy in a handbike.
But after surviving day one, something shifted mentally. My wife had given me a simple pep talk the evening before:
“Just get the miles done.”
So that became the entire focus. No hanging around at stops. No unnecessary delays. Keep moving forward.
And surprisingly, by the end of day two, I actually felt… decent.
Not good exactly. My arms were still completely destroyed. I couldn’t get my jumper on properly. Basic tasks became ridiculous. But mentally I felt stronger.
That was also when another conversation with Gary really hit home for me.
At the end of a normal ride, I can sit down and still use my arms. I can feed myself, shower myself, carry my bags, climb into bed.
For someone relying on a handbike because of SCI, the effort doesn’t stop when the ride ends.
They still need their arms for everything.
That was one of the many moments where my respect for Gary and Dave grew massively.
Because handcycling is brutally hard.
And I did it on easy mode.
That’s the truth of it.
I could stand up whenever I wanted. I could stop and stretch. I could get in and out of the bike unassisted. I steered using my feet, which meant I could keep cranking continuously through corners without fighting the bars using upper body strength alone.
That’s essentially a cheat code in handcycling.
Gary and Dave don’t have that option.
I watched them transfer in and out of their bikes. Watched them strap themselves in. Watched the preparation required just to start riding safely. Their legs need securing because at speed, a bump in the road could cause serious injury if they came loose.
Even simple things became glaringly obvious to me during the ride.
If I needed the toilet, I could stop and disappear behind a bush.
If I needed water or food, I could pull into any café or shop without even thinking about accessibility.
I could drag the handbike out of my garage at home without navigating life from a wheelchair first. I could throw it in the car myself. I could walk away from it all afterwards.
Every single part of my experience was easier.
And despite all of those advantages, I still found it unbelievably hard.
That’s what stayed with me more than anything.
Not my own struggle.
Theirs.
Before this ride, I naively assumed I’d probably be able to sit on Gary and Dave’s wheel and ride alongside them.
I couldn’t even come close.
Their average speed was nearly double mine. Watching them ride was honestly remarkable. Every turn of the crank seemed to carry them five metres further than mine did. They make it look effortless, and that’s part of the problem.
People living with SCI often become incredibly skilled at making extraordinarily difficult things look ordinary.
From the outside, it’s easy to underestimate the amount of effort sitting behind everyday life.
That’s why awareness matters.
Not because people with SCI want sympathy, but because most people simply don’t understand the scale of adaptation, resilience and effort required behind the scenes.
By the time we rolled into Bordeaux on day three, I should probably have felt elation.
Instead, if I’m honest, I felt slightly deflated.
I’d taken the support bus through the hilliest middle section of the final day so I could still start and finish alongside the group. Logically, I know now it was the correct decision. I still completed something incredibly difficult. Day one alone proved that.
But standing there alongside riders who had completed every kilometre, especially the SCI athletes, there was still a small part of me that felt like an imposter.
That’s probably the competitive side of my brain talking.
Maybe there’s unfinished business there somewhere.
Maybe not.
Would I do it again?
Honestly, no. Not particularly.
I’m glad I did it. I’m proud of what I achieved. But I won’t rush back to doing it again.
Although, if someone offered £10,000 in sponsorship tomorrow, I’d probably find myself back in the handbike next year.
What this challenge gave me wasn’t some dramatic transformation or life changing epiphany.
It simply gave me perspective.
A new understanding of a different kind of hard.
And above all else, it reinforced something I already suspected but now understand far more clearly:
People living with SCI make the impossible look ordinary.