The Sheffield half marathon is at the end of the week (Sunday 27th March)!

I think I’m about as ready as I’ll ever be. I’m pretty sure I’ll get around the course, barring incident or injury, but I’m not expecting to set any records. I (already) broke the steering assembly on my racing chair (it’s fine, I’m just waiting for a part), so I’ll be using my day chair. That’s probably safer for everyone concerned anyway, as I haven’t managed to get as much practice in the racing chair as I’d have liked.

It also makes the logistics easier. I can fit both chairs in the car, but not if I also want to fit my wife in the car. None of the choices are very good: take two cars, have one of us use the train, hire a trailer, hire a van. The van hire option sounded good, but (unsurprisingly) hiring a van with hand controls is not a particularly straightforward process, so my wife would have had to drive both ways.

Training-wise, I feel in decent form. I had the weekend off and my schedule this week is only moderately intensive. I have a slight strain to a tendon from weight training last week and I don’t want to aggravate it. It won’t get in the way of my pushing action anyway, but It’s best to be on the safe side. I’ll be alternating between training with the rolling road:

And an actual road, which I assume you don’t need a picture of. The difference is like that between an exercise bike and a real bike. The former is good for building strength and endurance, but it doesn’t really prepare you for real race conditions. Not that I really know what real race conditions are, of course, since this will be my first.

I’ll also make the final decision on whether to use my freewheel attachment or not:

The Freewheel attaches to the footrest, making the chair into a kind of trike. It has several advantages, particularly in dealing with bumps and dodgy cambers, but it also adds a fair bit of weight. I’ll do the same 7-mile course twice this week, once with the Freewheel and once without and make my decision after that. It’s not that I haven’t tried the same a few times before, this is just a final assessment.

My only real concern is that pain can fluctuate wildly with my condition. This doesn’t affect performance directly (in fact, exercise is about the only thing that helps the pain) but it does affect my sleep, which can hit performance a lot. I’ll just have to see what happens, although I’ll drag myself around the course no matter what.

I’ll let you know how the final week of training goes!

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