Interesting absolutely nobody but me, I am sure, I’ve decided not to use my Freewheel attachment in the Sheffield half marathon on Sunday.
Freewheel
I did a five mile training push today, starting with the Freewheel on. But then I ended up going back over two ~one mile stretches with the Freewheel both on and off: one stretch with horrible broken pavements and a terrible camber and one nice smooth bit.
The verdict, as I’d expected, was that the Freewheel is great on the dodgy parts but slows me down on the smooth. It’s not even just the weight: when the wheel wasn’t fitted to the front of my chair it was clipped to the bar on the back. I just didn’t quite get the pushing efficiency I’m capable of without the Freewheel.
Great accessory for off-road and dodgy pavements, probably not for roadraces where, I’m trusting, the surfaces will be a lot better.
There’s still time to sponsor me for the Sheffield half marathon on Sunday 27th March to raise money for nia, a women-led, women-only, secular, rights-based registered charity which has been delivering services to women, girls and children who have been subjected to sexual and domestic violence and abuse, including prostitution, since 1975.
When I got my new chair, I also got me one of these:
Freewheel wheelchair attachment
It’s called a Freewheel, and you can get one at Invictus Active where I got mine. Also see that link for some other, unbearably cool motorised stuff.
The Freewheel attaches to the footrest, as you can see here:
Not me
It lifts your castors off the ground and provides a third front wheel which is more able to deal with rough terrain.
I’ve used it quite a lot, now, and I really like it. I recommend it even for general pavement use, providing you’re not going into any shops or twisty passages, all alike. Manoeuvrability certainly takes a hit, you take up a hell of a lot more space and you can’t stop without putting on the brakes as the front wheel is (deliberately) unstable. But it sails over small kerbs and bumps in pavements and makes it much easier to get up onto larger kerbs. I really wish I’d taken it with me when I went to Glasgow, but it would have been awkward on the train. It does make pushing significantly more difficult when there’s a steep camber, however. Watch out for that.
The Freewheel is meant for offroad use, though, and I generally use it with a set of offroad wheels to get into the nature reserve close to my house. Unlike the guy in the picture, I haven’t done any wheelies at the top of mountains, but I’ve travelled along some dirt tracks and gone up and down some pretty steep and uneven paths.
And it’s a lot easier. The problem of rear wheel traction doesn’t go away, of course, so you need to be realistic in your expectations, but overall, and if you have the upper body strength, I recommend getting one. If there’s ever another sunny day around here, I’ll try to remember to take my camera with me and post pictures of the sorts of terrain I’m talking about. You won’t be terribly impressed, but it will give you an idea of what sort of surfaces the Freewheel can and can’t cope with.
Attaching and removing the Freewheel is very easy from inside the chair. It just clips on with a lever and when you move forward the front wheel swings into position, lifting your casters off the ground. Do the same in reverse to remove it… but then you’re left with a bloody great wheel and chunk of aluminium to cart around. I understand there’s an attachment you can buy for your pushbar to hang it from, but I haven’t seen one actually for sale and I imagine it would play havoc with any bag you have attached to the back of the chair.
The engineering on the Freewheel is very nice, from conception to build, but you can tell it’s built and sold by engineers. Adjustment is a little fiddly and seems over-complicated until you understand it. The instructions are awful. Don’t even look at those, find a YouTube video instead, there are plenty out there.
Like everything wheelchair-related, of course, the Freewheel isn’t cheap. At time of writing, Invictus Active is selling them for £375 (in a variety of colours, should you be inclined). I paid a little less. Before you buy, make sure you have the right sort of footrest. There are adaptors for the various different kinds, but they cost extra.
You might be able to get a free trial of the Freewheel, if you shop around. I’d recommend that.
Predictably enough, the chair I chose was not available and I had to choose another. To be clear, I knew that the original Kuschall K-Series had been discontinued by the manufacturer, but that there were still some examples available to buy. However, the retailer I chose, Invictus Active, doesn’t have any in stock. I’m sure I could have found one elsewhere, but it turns out that:
Invictus are a little cheaper than most of the retailers I’ve found
They are currently offering a set of free offroad wheels with some new chairs, and
I’m lazy
So I chose another chair instead. As I said in the previous post, there isn’t a great deal to choose from between chairs at this price range (as far as I can tell) and I applied the same criteria. This is what I’ve ordered:
Quickie Helium
It’s the Quickie Helium, and while the brand name is as lame as I am (Quickie? Really?) I am assured that the chair is not. It’s a little lighter than the Kushall at 6.8KG (without wheels), which is about the same weight as my (admittedly monstrous) cat. Let’s hope it’s a good choice. It was a little more expensive than the Kushall, costing just a little over £2000.
Monstrous cat
The next step is to customise the chair (colours, options, accessories) and to have it built to my measurements and specifications. Much and great importance is placed on measurements when buying a wheelchair of this sort. I’m not sure quite how important that really is, though, since the instructions for measurement are fairly fag-packet, blind-man-on-a-galloping-horse in nature. We’ll see, I might get told off for saying that. Here’s Invictus’ instructions, which are much the same as others I’ve seen.
Invictus will be in contact in the next day or so to take those measurements and it might turn out that they’re really, really important after all, so be prepared for a grovelling update. As for other specifications, other than colour (of which there seems to be a bewildering array) the most interesting to me is the seat angle, which determines the centre of gravity. This seems to be the main factor in choosing between stability and manoeuvrability. On the face of it, this seems like a no-brainer; I’m always going to choose manoeuvrability over stability. But I suspect that it some configurations might be better than others for the kinds of moderate distance (half marathons, to begin with) I have in mind, so I’ll be taking advice on that. I’ll report back if and when I learn anything about that.
I still have a lot to write about wheelchair accessories. It’s a singularly frustrating topic and there’s very little advice to be had (hence this blog). But before I post at length on that subject, I should mention that I also ordered this thing:
FreeWheel attachment
It’s an attachment rather than an accessory, I suppose; It fixes onto the front of the chair, where the footrest usually attaches. It’s for offroad and uneven conditions. Given the state of the pavements around here, I suspect it will get a lot of use.
