Ahead of her biggest challenge yet, world ranked Para-cyclist and Hand cycling Triathlete Liz McTernan tells her inspiring story of how she’s facing adversity head on through cycling, following a life-threatening spinal cord injury.
Like most people, I learnt to ride a bike as a child, but being one of five children, and being very petite, my older brothers’ hand-me-down bikes were never suitable for me to ride, being ten-speed with drop handlebars and a horizontal crossbar and impossible for my short legs. It was not until adulthood that I actually owned my first bike, and that was sadly short-lived. My reliable Raleigh was stolen after I left it at Reading station one day, having been offered a lift to work from a passing colleague. My daily commute from Chilworth, outside Guildford, to Reading College then involved speed walking in order to catch my train on time, as I couldn’t afford to replace it and I didn’t want a daily commute by car.
On June 19th, 2005, six months after my 40th birthday and less than a year after buying a new home in Lincolnshire, I had a very traumatic accident which very nearly cost me my life and left me a C7/T9 incomplete paraplegic.
I spent four months in hospital, missing my daughter’s 10th birthday and my son starting at Secondary School. I came home to my inaccessible house in a wheelchair and thought my life as I knew it was over.
If someone had told me then, that within five years I would be representing Great Britain internationally in sport, I would never have believed them.
How bikes came back into my life
After sustaining a life changing spinal cord injury (SCI), bikes eventually came back into my life in 2011, but not in any shape or form that I was familiar with. In fact, my first handcycle was secondhand from America and arrived in a box, looking like a mechano kit. As I had no idea how to put it back together, I took it along to my local bike shop and they commented that it was ‘upside down and back to front’ which referred to the way the drivetrain is set up.
On a hand bike, the derailleur is on the front drive wheel, with the front mechanism for the chain rings under the hand pedals. Pedalling is done symmetrically, which allows the rider to steer and pedal at the same time and put more power into the revolutions.
The first time I ventured outdoors on my hand bike, I asked my daughter, then aged 14, to accompany me. I’d made sure that despite being a single parent, they always had bikes of their own, even if they were secondhand. We lived in rural Lincolnshire and having bikes meant they were able to cycle to see school friends who didn’t live in our village, avoiding me having to be a constant car taxi service. Despite choosing what I considered an easy route, I barely managed 3km that first day, which was a frustrating start to what I hoped would be a new sporting lifestyle to enable me to lose weight, get fit and get outdoors.
I’d bought the hand bike to compete in Para-Triathlon, where the use of a recumbent hand bike is mandatory in my classification category. A few months later, I added another set of wheels to my collection in the shape of a racing wheelchair, kindly part sponsored by the sci charity Aspire. Much to my amazement, six months after starting the sport, I beat the current World Champion in both the swim and the bike sections at my first European Championships and my second ever Para-Triathlon race.
Representing Great Britain
After two years of representing GBR at International level and winning medals, I was itching to tackle the Holy Grail of triathlon, a full Ironman, but it would be five years later that I actually started training and racing the full distance. In the meantime, I’d switched to Para-Cycling, as my Para-Triathlon category was not chosen to make its debut at the Rio Paralympics in 2016. I became European Champion in 2015 and won double bronze medals at a UCI World Cup in Bilbao in 2016, as well as numerous Podiums at International races round the world.
In 2017 I qualified for and raced at the Ironman World Championships in Kona, Hawaii. I had been confident that my training had been good enough to tackle the arduous 112 mile bike course, but I sadly missed the combined swim/bike cut off by only 1:51 minutes and was not allowed to continue the race. Absolutely gutted, I immediately signed up for Ironman Cozumel six weeks later and smashed out a world record time for a female handcyclist of 13:01:16hrs. But of course this wasn’t enough for me, there was still Kona to conquer, the mecca of triathletes.
This year, I had to go through the qualification process again, and I am due to fly out to Hawaii at the end of September to race the biggest race of my life on October 13th. I’m training hard to be the best I can be, putting in the miles on the hand bike on the roads of Lincolnshire and on the indoor trainer. Tackling 112 miles on any bike is hard, and the course in Kona is hilly, hot and humid, but I’m feeling more confident in my abilities to tackle the race again this year.
It’s been quite a journey from my first tentative 3km ride, to completing my first Ironman, and competing in Hawaii, but wheels really can take you on the best adventures.
Hear other inspiring stories like Liz’s at our Cycling to overcome adversity: an evening of inspiring talks with Sustrans event in London on Thursday 27 September 2018.
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