Pushing Judy Woolfenden MBE

I’d been sitting in the car for the last four and a half hours; outside the rain was driving against the windows occasionally catching the light of a runner’s head torch as it splashed against the windshield as they loomed out of the pitch darkness that enveloped the car. I glanced down at my iPod and saw the battery indicator drop to one bar and turned it off. The sound of the rain pelting against the side of the car louder now as a gust of wind drove it home against the dirt on the bodywork. Surely she’d not be coming now? I cast my eye to my watch, 2am. As I opened the door the cold and wet squall hit me in the face, I climbed out and made my way back to Rory’s 4x4 “any news mate?” I asked him as I climbed in. Rory was wearing his trademark blue cap with his name on the front, a running jacket and a pair of shorts. I’d last seen him eight weeks ago in the middle of the Sahara desert, it looked like he hadn’t realised we were back in the UK and in the middle of the night in the deserted rain drenched Cotswold hills. “Shes come through CP4 Jim that’s all we know” he replied looking up from his laptop on the passenger seat.
The person I was waiting for was the disabled campaigner Judy Woolfenden MBE. A few weeks ago Rory had asked for volunteers interested in helping Judy complete the gruelling 100 Mile Cotswold Ultra-marathon, she would become the first wheelchair athlete to attempt it. Why wouldn’t I? I had thought at the time, after all if I could help her achieve her ambition then that would be fantastic. I’d contacted Tom Fitzsimons and asked if he’d be up for it and being an all round good egg he’d agreed at once.
Unfortunately the plan hadn’t gone as expected, John who had organised Judy’s team of six pushers had contacted me to let me know that Judy was running behind schedule, around four and a half hours behind schedule. More worrying still was the fact that when I had last spoken to John he’d told me that Judy was very cold and that a decision would be made at CP4 as to whether she would be able to continue or not.
She was wearing an arctic down suit, which covered her but unfortunately was wearing it over her waterproofs. When down gets wet it loses its insulating properties and her body suit was now just a giant cold wet sponge sucking her core body temperature down as she sat immobile in the driving rain and wind. My phone rang and I answered it pretty sure it would be John telling me that Judy had been pulled from the race. “Hey up, any news?” Tom asked, in his hybrid Belfast Wakefield accent. He had also been waiting for several hours now about ten miles away. I updated him and hung up. Climbing out of Rory’s car I walked back to mine before getting in and turning on the engine for some heat. Gradually the number of weary exhausted runners coming through the 50 mile check point where I was dwindled until there were none for half an hour. Several had already dropped out unable to keep up the relentless pace required or unwilling to carry on in the terrible conditions. If Judy had come through CP4 then she was still in the race, my biggest concern was that she’d arrive and be hypothermic. The hills in the Cotswolds are many and steep and mobile reception is patchy at best. I half expected that when she arrived at the fifty-mile mark she would be unable or unwilling to continue, but that’s before I’d met her.
After half an hour, out of the darkness coming up the hill in front of me a head torch bobbed rhythmically. I flipped on the windscreen wipers and gradually I began make out a dark area under the light, slowly it took form as the rain glinted off a wet silver foil space blanket and the reflective strips of her arctic suit. She’d arrived.
I jumped out of my car and locked it and made my way over to Judy. Behind her chair was a lean runner soaked to the bone, he’d rang me earlier in the day and I knew his name was Joe, he looked like he was on his chinstrap. I introduced myself to him as he fumbled in the wet with an electrical flex tied around his waist. I squatted down and said hello to Judy introducing myself, I asked how she was and she said she was OK but needed some dry gloves and balaclava from her support car. I got out a spare space blanket I had with me and opening her drenched arctic down suit to check how dry she was under it then wrapped the space blanket around her under the suit before closing it up again. Having got her something to eat and checking that she was cold but not hypothermic I turned again to Joe. “Down the hills are the worst as there is no brake!” he informed me. It began to dawn on me what the electrical flex was for; Joe had tied it around the chair and then around him to help control the decent down the steep wet hills. I began to tie on hoping that Joe was exaggerating how tough it had been but had a nagging feeling as he didn’t strike me as a whinger. As I began to push and Judy and I ran out of the checkpoint and down the reverse side of the hill my suspicions of Joe’s nature were confirmed he hadn’t been bumping his gums. The chair with Judy in her soaked arctic suit and equipment including a crash helmet and bag weighed what must have been around 80-85Kg. The hill was steep and long, the road potholed and slick with rainwater pelting against it as well as sluicing down it in small torrents. A large wheel in the centre rear of the chair made it difficult to run behind. Each puddle had to be avoided as it may well have been a pothole, which would throw Judy from her chair. The strain around my waist from the electrical flex cutting in was soon matched by the ache in my quads, shoulders and arms from attempting to stop Judy from flying down the hill to her doom. My grip on the handle vice like in the rain for fear of slipping. As I ran I asked Judy about her day she was happy enough and chatted away as we went. I struggled to hear her over the sound of the rain but just hearing about her day so far told me a lot about what kind of person she was.
The race had begun at midday and it had been raining all night and some of the afternoon. She had been sitting in the chair for fourteen and a half hours by the time she had got to me. It was so cold and wet that the runners had been dropping like flies unable to cope; yet they had been running and able to generate some body heat. Judy had just been sitting there immobile. Some of the people pushing her had not even spoken to her as they ran and most if not all were total strangers to her. Imagine sitting in a chair in the driving rain and wind for fourteen and a half hours straight with the prospect of continuing to do so for another seventeen hours. Now imagine that the chair is on pitch-dark unlit country roads covered in potholes up and down hills that would put a rollercoaster to shame. To top it off you are trusting your life to someone you have never met before and you are unable to use any brakes on your chair and you have osteoporosis. It brings a new definition to inner strength, courage and determination.
As we ran I listened as Judy unfolded her remarkable story. Judy was diagnosed as having spinal muscular atrophy a degenerative muscle wasting disease along with several other life threatening diseases and was told that she would not live to see her 40th birthday. Judy being Judy she set out to prove the Dr’s wrong and set herself a challenge every year to in her words, ‘to prove the doctors predictions wrong; raise money for individual charities; and promote positive awareness of disability’. Well that was over 20 years ago now and in that time shes done more than most able-bodied people. Her achievements include a wheelchair push from North Wales to Norfolk, riding on a Harley for 1000 miles, being the top person in a motorcycle human pyramid with the Army display team. Shes climbed mountains, won gold medals for indoor rowing, been the first disabled person to complete five days dog sledging through the arctic, competed in a trans continental car rally. In the process raising thousands for charities, in 2007 she met the Queen who awarded Judy with a MBE. And that’s only a few of her accomplishments.
The miles ticked by as I listened to her many stories often alternating between surprise and laughter. Occasionally I’d have to dig deep on particularly steep hills but as the sky grew lighter the greenery of the surrounding countryside developed around us like a photo washed in developer to reveal unimaginable scenery of a timeless nature.
I was pretty tired as I came around a bend in the country lane to see Toms 4x4 parked under an oak tree in the distance. It was a welcome sight, I’d been running for two hours forty minutes when Tom took over. The plan was to take his car and meet them in fifteen miles at a checkpoint where I’d take over again. We’d made this plan before we’d arrived and having just run across the hills in the rain and wind and not having realised that the chair had no accessible brakes I decided that I’d wait for Tom at the ten mile checkpoint as ten miles pushing and pulling 85Kg on those hills was more than enough without a break.
I slowly drove away and passed Tom in his shiny 4x4 I wound down the window “I could get used to this” I laughed as I went past, he gave me a look that made me laugh again and off I went. I met Tom and Judy again after two and a half hours or so. They’d been lucky as it had stopped raining as he’d taken over and I had been glad to get dry. We’d agreed that we’d do five miles each so off we went as Tom drove onto the next checkpoint.
I hadn’t slept since Thursday night (it was now around 9am Saturday morning) so everything was beginning to feel a bit surreal. Occasionally I’d make sure that Judy had a drink or a snake but otherwise we kept on going. There was one other disabled runner in the race, a blind man who was running with a team of companions who were taking turns to do a leg with him. The courage of the man was amazing. Unfortunately he dropped around the 80mile point but what a superhuman effort.
Judy had developed a nagging pain in her elbow; which was causing her problems and I suspected that I had some micro tears to my left Achilles tendon, which was now a bit sore and had a swollen bump on it. I’d made the decision the night before to run in mountain boots as they would afford me better grip and be waterproof. It was the right decision I think but the back of the boots had rubbed against my Achilles every time I flexed my foot on a hill. Either way I wasn’t about to stop. I felt that I had accepted responsibility for ensuring Judy would get to the finish and that was my first priority second only to her safety. So on we went.
Now that the weather had improved we managed to pick up some speed and even began to overtake some of the runners, making up for earlier lost time. After several killer hills we eventually made it to the checkpoint where Tom was waiting to take over again. I handed over and then took Tom’s car five miles down the road to the hand over checkpoint where some time later Judy and Tom arrived.
That was it for Tom and I, between us we had covered thirty miles with Judy who now went on with another runner John.
Judy made it at five o’clock that afternoon having covered 100 miles through driving rain and gusting wind, pushed by strangers on dangerous roads and very steep hills. Her spirit is as indomitable as that of any ultra-endurance athlete you care to mention and tougher than many of them. As for Tom and I we left with a great feeling of accomplishment having helped Judy to achieve her ambition. Later that evening I eventually fell asleep and slept for fifteen straight hours but when I woke that sense of accomplishment was still there.