The Bionic Woman

No, not me - although I do feel like I could do with playing swapsies on a few bits today.  The bionic woman I'm talking about is Claire Lomas, a former equestrian eventer who suffered terrible injuries in a fall from a horse back in 2007.  While most of those injuries healed well, a broken vertebra left her paralysed from the chest down.  Claire is absolutely determined that she will walk again, under her own steam, but in the meantime, she has been finding other ways to get about.

Some of you may remember Claire from last year's London Marathon.  She completed the course (a feat in itself under normal circumstances) in 17 days using a "bionic" walking suit that enabled her to do the marathon on foot.  She came in last, and because she was outside the organiser's cut-off time (usually about eight or nine hours) she was initially denied the reward of a finisher's medal, but Sir Richard Branson stepped in to award a medal to her personally when she finished.  In her marathon challenge, she raised over £80,000 for Spinal Research, a charity which funds medical research around the world to develop treatments for paralysis caused by a broken back or neck.

If all that wasn't inspiring enough, Claire fancied a new challenge this year, so she took up cycling.  Or, rather, she continued training on a static bike she already had before transitioning onto a hand-bike.  Claire aims to cycle 400 miles around the country with a few stops along the way to raise awareness for spinal injury charities and to talk to schoolchildren about how they can achieve anything if they put their minds to it. If anyone can inspire children in that way, it has to be Claire Lomas.

When I look back on my achievements over the last year (and even further back to when I completed the London Marathon in 2010), they seem enormous to me, but when I compare them to the achievements of someone like Claire, I am in complete awe.  Claire is just a year younger than me, and I am fortunate enough to have the use of all of my limbs, so the least I can do is, well, use them.  I'll be cycling to work tomorrow and thinking about Claire's challenge.  If I see her on her travels, I'll be stopping to cheer her on.

You can sponsor Claire's cycle here (though don't you dare forget about mine, here!)