This post is about wheelchairs, my first (and current) wheelchair in particular. I’ll write another post about other types of equipment you might need.

When I first started to rely on a wheelchair, there was nobody to give me advice. In fact, I hired a wheelchair to get to a hospital appointment because I knew I wouldn’t be able to handle the endless corridors. The consultant was surprised and asked where I’d got the chair. Naively, I thought he was surprised that I needed a chair at all and thought it bode well for his taking my condition seriously.

I now realise that he was surprised because the chair hadn’t been issued by the hospital. I’ve had a similar reaction from every consultant I’ve seen since; I should have been assessed and, since I obviously need a wheelchair, I should at the very least have been given advice about where to get one, what type to get and what funding might be available to help me.

I didn’t. But I forgive the NHS for this since it all happened at the height of the first COVID lockdown and the NHS was chaotic and fragmented. It meant, though, that I was on my own when it came to buying a wheelchair and I had no idea what I was doing. One of the reasons I started this blog was to document what I’ve learned, so this is what I learned about buying my first wheelchair.

It’s important to note that I’m still very new at this and I still have a lot to learn.

This is what I bought. It’s described as “Excel G-Explorer All Terrain, Lightweight, Folding, Manual Self Propelled Aluminium Wheelchair”, although it’s also available under other brands and names. It cost about £350. The first order of business was to take off the crappy orange panels. You might have different priorities. I also cut off the seatbelt because it was annoying.

The Excel G-Explorer is a perfectly fine wheelchair as far as I know. I haven’t tried any others in anger since I was eight. It meets my daily needs adequately and I doubt £350 would have bought me a significantly better chair. It comes with the off-road wheels pictured. My first piece of advice if you want to be active in your chair is to get both off-road and regular wheels. The off-road ones are great on mud, grass and (light) gravel and the tyres are difficult to puncture (needless to say, I managed it anyway) but they’re heavy and generate a lot of friction. When I bought a set of regular wheels, I wasn’t quite prepared for how much of a difference they’d make on floors and pavements. Get both, if you can afford it. I now use the regular wheels all the time, unless I’m likely to be on rough ground. Badass though the off-road wheels undoubtedly look, you’re going to need regular wheels too. And – at the time of writing – they are not easy to get.

This is actually an important point: manual wheelchair wheels are quick release and can be swapped over easily by anyone sufficiently able-bodied. But there are some issues to watch out for when you’re buying wheels that are far from obvious. I’ll be posting about this soon.

The things I complain most about are the footrests. They are flimsy, plastic things. They haven’t failed yet, but it seems only a matter of time.They’re also huge and they’re annoying and they’re constantly in the way, but that’s more to do with the design of this kind of footrest in general than with these particular ones. Better chairs have better footrests and I’ll discuss that in another post. I’m just saying that however good your imagination, you probably can’t imagine how annoying crappy footrests are.

Back support is… meagre. It’s a folding chair so the back is made of fabric like a director’s chair, stretched between two supports. This is fine when I’m out and about, but I spend a lot of time in the chair and while I use an additional back cushion for support, it’s not really adequate. If you’re going to spend considerable amounts of time in your chair, I suggest looking at something more expensive. Back support is one of my motivations (because “motivations” sounds nobler than “justifications”) for buying a better chair.

One further point is that this chair requires quite a lot of (very minor) maintenance. The bolts that hold on various non-vital parts such as the footrest straps and the catches that release the spars that hold the footrests are prone to working loose, falling off and getting lost. Yes, the footrests managed to find yet another way to confusticate me. Keeping the bolts tight is a trivial matter for me because I have enough mobility in my body and fingers, but others might find it difficult. Either way, buy some spare bolts because you’re likely to need them.

Apart from those issues, the chair is fine for daily use. I’d go so far as to recommend it, since it hasn’t let me down yet. But I don’t think it will stand up much longer to the grief I’m putting it through and I don’t think it’s suitable for half marathon distances. Here’s why.

My training regime involves a minimum of two hours full tilt on Rollo, my rolling road, in addition to any other exercise or activity I do that day. If I exercise outdoors, I do between three and a half and four and a half miles, depending on what route I take. The rolling road is more strenuous because I can work faster, but the outdoors is more demanding in other ways because of the poor condition of the pavement and especially the camber. The camber alone is worth another post, which I’ll do soon.

This is causing wear and tear because the chair is a regular folding one. It isn’t designed for the stress I’m putting it through. When I’m going flat out on the rolling road, I can feel it start to warp a little, especially when I’m working each wheel alternately.

Due to all this stress, one of the wheels has developed an annoying creak. I’ve traced this to the axle mounting: a slight warp – or perhaps some imperfect engineering – has caused a small misalignment of the axle with the mounting, so when the wheel spins, the retractable pins on the chair side that hold the axle in place are rubbing against the axle mounting, causing the creak. I know this isn’t very clear, but the specifics don’t matter: suffice to say, the stress of significant training is slowly damaging the chair. I expect the damage to be cumulative, so I need anew chair that’s built to handle that kind of punishment.

Besides, I’m sitting in this chair most of the day, when I’m working as well as when I’m exercising, socialising and often when I’m relaxing. I need something that’s more comfortable, better for my back, better able to take the stress of training and that looks cooler and more badass.

Next: what I’ve learned about buying a better wheelchair.