It was June 2002, I was stuck in a wheelchair, with a combination of M.E. and arthritis, very ill and without the slightest history of ever being a cyclist beyond peddling round the street when I was a kid, though I was very interested in the sport. Steve, my husband, had always ridden and indeed had once been a member of Seamons. I had just read his copy of Lance Armstrong’s “It’s Not About the Bike” and I was being pushed to the supermarket in my wheelchair, when I had a moment of epiphany and I had a sudden desire to ride a bike. I don’t know where it came from, whether it was Steve’s bad wheelchair driving or inspiration from Lance or a combination of both, but that day I promised myself that I would be riding a bike in a years’ time. Miraculously I started to recover and more or less a year to the day, in June 2003, I bought a second hand bike. It was an old shed and it only had 3 gears, but I set about riding everywhere I could, (my first ride was a whopping 6 miles). It was an exhilerating sense of freedom, to be able to propel myself forward at some speed and I got such a thrill from it.