Movers and Shakers: Alison Anderson

The Cyclopath takes on her biggest challenge yet.

As walking gets a bit more challenging, with age-old back problems combining with Parkinson’s to slow me down, I am finding I am hopping on my bicycle more often. I use it to pop to the shops, get to our nearest local Tube station, even cycle a whole two miles to my Saturday morning Pilates class and back. That does however leave me feeling I need to lie down for the rest of the day

So I am in awe of what the subject of our latest Parky Profile has achieved. Alison Anderson also likes to hop on her bike from time to time but rather than popping to the shops, she is more inclined to cycle across Vietnam and Cambodia, from the UK to Barcelona or from John’o’Groats to Land’s End.

Alison Anderson, AKA the Cyclopath

Now she is in the middle of her biggest challenge yet, a coast-to-coast ride across the United States. Alison joined us in the pub just before she set off on her epic 4,000 mile journey. Brought up in Dundee, where she trained as a nurse, she and her husband, a doctor, moved down to Cheltenham when he got a job at the hospital there and have stayed ever since.

After twenty years of nursing, Alison went into management and was running a GP practice when she was diagnosed with young onset Parkinson’s ten years ago at the age of 46. She had suspected something was wrong for some time, finding it increasingly difficult to use a computer mouse or type at work or wield a bread knife at home:

“I had to pluck up the courage to go to the GP, and she knew straight away there was something neurological,” she remembers. “The GP referred me to a neurologist. There was a 28 week wait, so I went privately to see somebody the following week.” The same story of an unacceptable wait for an appointment that we have heard from so many people, but somehow all the more shocking when it involves a family of health professionals who, one imagines, know their way around the system.

We were surprised to learn that before her diagnosis Alison had only been an occasional cyclist. It was, at first, just a way of getting the exercise she knew she needed:

“I had previously worked as a nurse in cardiac rehab, where we used to teach people who had heart problems about the benefits of exercise, and I saw first hand what a difference that made.”

But when she gave up work a couple of years after her diagnosis, cycling took on a bigger role:

“A friend said to me, you need something to focus your energy on, something that gives you a challenge. And I think she was thinking “couch to 5k” and we googled challenges, and up came Vietnam to Cambodia cycling.”

She booked places for 16 people, her husband and a whole band of friends came along, and it turned into a great bonding experience. The 500 km trip from Phnom Penh to Angkor Wat also got her started as a fundraiser - in fact, the £45,000 she raised for Cure Parkinson’s made her the charity’s fundraiser of the year

Now, these long trips sound quite gruelling for a fully fit person - we wanted to know how someone who had found office work too challenging could cope with long days in the saddle:

“It was different, cycling. I feel like it gives me headspace. When I'm cycling, there's no noise, there's no mayhem. I find it quite relaxing.”

Like many of the people we have met making the podcast, from golfers to pingpong players, Alison seems to be able to transcend her declining physical condition when enjoying her favourite form of exercise : “I think I can feel the Parkinson's getting worse, but I feel that the exercise, psychologically and physically, helps me hugely.”

She tells us that when she was first diagnosed her memories of working as a student nurse with people with very advanced Parkinson’s were not a very helpful image to have in her mind:

“It is still not the nicest image for any of us, but I don't spend a lot of time dwelling on what might be. I try very hard to focus on now, and concentrate on what I can do.”

After all, as she says to Paul Mayhew-Archer, she might get knocked down by a bus tomorrow, so why worry about something that may never happen.

UPDATE

A few days ago, I caught up with Alison Anderson, now more than halfway through a journey which started in Portland, Oregon, and had taken her and her three companions 2,350 miles to Minnesota, right in the middle of middle America.

It sounded as though the sheer vast emptiness of what are sometimes called the flyover states had proved a little trying at times:

“There's sometimes been no shade for 100 miles, absolutely no shade. So we've had to stop in the blazing sunshine, drink warm water and soggy, wet sandwiches that were purchased two days before. So we've had less than optimal food and drink at times.”

But Alison seemed undaunted, insisting that every day had brought something interesting to see: “It just feels like it really is the experience of a lifetime. It was a crazy, crazy idea two years ago, and we're actually making it work, and it just feels fantastic.”

If you want to follow Alison’s progress she has a blog called Ramblings of a Cyclopath - the rather excellent soubriquet given her by friends. And if you want to help them raise money for Cure Parkinson’s click here.