How does she do that ?

Jane Tomlinson - a remarkable lady.

Here in West Yorkshire we are well aware of this incredibly determined woman as she has dominated our local TV News screens for several years now, and quite rightly too, with her endless feats of endurance raising impressive amounts of hard cash for cancer charities.

Those outside the UK may not be quite so aware of her achievements and unfortunately it seems that the American media are not at all impressed with her latest exploits, full BBC News story here.

Why should they be so interested ? Many people cycle across the USA every year, many do it to raise money for their favourite charities and back in the 1980's a chap called Terry Fox ran across the USA with an artificial leg (lost through cancer) to great acclaim, raised a fortune, had an Elton John song written about him which was a huge hit for Rod Stewart, and probably milked all of the publicity that the news media wanted to give such an event, oh yes, he died of his cancer shortly afterwards.

Oh have I mentioned, Jane Tomlinson has terminal cancer too, her current endurance feat has had to be squeezed inbetween bouts of chemotherapy. Her first breast cancer diagnosis came at the age of just 26 years and in 2000 a scan revealed multiple secondary tumours, at that point the diagnosis was terminal with treatment simply holding the various cancer sites at bay.

Since that time she has competed in numerous marathons, triathalons and ironman events, she has cycled the legnth of the UK and from Rome to Leeds, all of these events dependant on her chemotherapy sessions working effectively, on the ride down the UK she had to break off for a cuple of days for as she was in the middle of chemo treatment.

The Jane Tomlinson Foundation has raised in excess of £1million for UK cancer charities, and a synopsis of how she has achieved this can be found here - the current ride across the USA is to raise funds for American cancer charities but as stated earlier, it has met with a wall of indifference from the media.

All of which is rather unfortunate as after every one of these fund raising events you can't help but think "surely she can't consider doing another one" and then every year the physicians prop her back up on her feet and off she goes again - but for how much longer ?

I take my hat off to the girl, as one who has cycled what I thought were long distances - the longest being a five day ride to Copenhagen - I know what its like to wake up each morning with the first thought "I've got to get back on that fuckin bike this morning", its the sort of journey you'd love to make in your dreams but deep down inside we all know that none of us could do it.