Introducing Purlpower!

Greetings, I am Purlpower, aka Ricey, aka Helen and I make up the third strand of Team4ply.

Until last year I had not competed in a sporting event, willingly, since primary school. This is me, coming second in Portway Junior's egg and spoon race circa 1983:

Somewhere around puberty I stopped enjoying pretty much any physical activity apart from walking. I contrived to avoid every PE lesson by fair means or foul. In my twenties I started having trouble with even the walking and 'normal' everyday life. I had joint pains and muscle aches and increasingly I found myself unable to stand on the commute to work due to chronic fatigue and pain. I was fainting more frequently too and breaking out in heat rashes. It took nearly ten years for me to get the diagnosis that made all these things make sense: I have the genetic condition Ehlers Danlos Syndrome and the associated problem of PoTS.

But during those ten years, before getting diagnosed, my world became smaller and smaller. I spent five years unable to work and doing less and less and less. Knitting was really important to me; it gave me something constructive to do with my hands and it was something I could do while stuck at home instead of being sucked into the dangerous realm of daytime TV.

In April 2011 I was admitted for intensive rehabilitation at Inverclyde Hospital and at that point I needed to rest after everything; even making a cup of tea was an almighty task. But whilst there I learned some important lessons from the physiotherapists and occupational therapists and faced some hard truths. The most crucial thing, for me, was to accept that I was not going to just wake up one day and feel better, the way you do after a bad dose of the flu or a dose of food poisoning. Chronic illness isn't like that: the less you do, the less you become able to do, without intervention - for most of us - it's a downward spiral. Once you realise this the question has to be 'how can I reverse this spiral?' and the answer, for me, was 'do more physical activity'.

After the crisis point of hospital I had the great help of a community physiotherapist and I set about restoring the muscle strength that had withered away. The exercises were simple, repetitive and boring. Really boring. But they worked. And after about six months of doing exercises at home and combined with controlled walking I was ready to take it to the next level. For me that was swimming - one of the best exercises if you have sore joints as it is low impact and your weight is supported by the water.

On my first swim I managed to do just one length. The following swim I did two. I kept going swimming for a few times a week, very gradually building things up until the day when I did 30 lengths without really thinking about it. That's when I knew it was time for a new challenge and coincidentally I saw a poster for an 'all abilities triathlon' and, on a whim, decided to enter.

So the summer of 2013 saw me choosing to cycle, jog and swim on a regular basis. And to my astonishment I found that I actually enjoyed the running! I also met the lovely Paula (Team 4ply's fourth strand) and found that running with a pal suited me very well indeed. The triathlon day was truly one of the best days of my life and made me think 'hm, I wonder what I can do next....'

Doing a marathon though...even a bit of one...well, that's still quite a daunting prospect. One of the things that will keep me going is knowing that the MS Society is doing hugely important work. Scotland has one of the highest incidences of MS in the world but the reasons for that are still unclear. You can read more about MS Society Scotland and how to get involved here .

And please do visit our sponsorship page today - it's February, yesterday it was sleeting and hailing and we really do need all the encouragement we can get!