Stuart Sykes Aylesbury to Edinburgh ride - 16th - 20th June.

I wanted to do something challenging this year, so decided to cycle 500 miles from Aylesbury to Edinburgh from 16th to 20th June. I couldn't do that without doing it for a just cause, so I chose The Pace Centre, a charity for children with physical disabilities, such as cerebal palsy.

I went to visit The Pace Centre a few weeks ago and met children like eleven year old Jason, who has attended PACE since he was a baby. Jason, in clinical terms has Quadreplegic Athetiod cerebral palsy. In every day life that means his physical disability affects all his body; uncontrollable muscle spasms and unpredictable movements of all four limbs. He has very low muscle tone making his body very floppy and unable to work against gravity but on effort his muscles tighten and he can be ‘as stiff as a board’. Additionally Jason has no speech. As a baby he was unhappy and miserable most of the time. When he first attended PACE he was unable to communicate, have any functional use of his hands/limbs, sit or walk. The only thing he could do was lie on his back.

Jason is now a happy, motivated young man with a lovely smile and a brilliant sense of humour everyone who comes into contact with him can’t help but love him. Nearly ten years of hard work has enabled him to do facilitated walking, sit unaided for a short while, roll from his front to his back, help dress himself, use a rocker switch with his hand to access Information and Communication Technology (ICT), and use his hand to operate his electric wheelchair.

Although he will never be able to speak like most people, he has learnt to eye point to communicate with his symbol book and has proved beyond all doubts that he is very academically able. Recently he has started to use a state of the art Voice Output Communication Aid (VOCA) using the ‘eye gaze’ system (a part of Jason’s body he can accurately control is his eyes). This will open a whole new world for him. And this is just the sort of equipment the riders to Edinburgh will be raising money for.

Overall, the 25 riders are trying to raise in excess of £30,000 for a range of communication aids for the kids at PACE. These aids vary from Chewy Tubes costing £5 each (which allows a child to practice biting and chewing, thus developing jaw motion) and Communication Vests costing £14 (worn by staff to create an instant secure background for communication symbols) to Computer Programmes costing £147 (that allow children to develop their imagination and create a narrative) and super interactive hardware such as the Tellus 3 plus PCS software and Touchscreen (£4-5k) and the My Tobii System (£16,500) - a communication aid that allows the maximum independent communication across home, school and community in a variety of positions.

I'm doing this ride after hearing about the great work of PACE. I've seen first hand what amazing work PACE do and how the dedicated staff can facilitate children like Jason and give them the determination to do things previously thought impossible. The way I can help PACE, is to try and raise as much money as possible. Children at PACE have to put in a lot more effort to do everyday things I take for granted and doing this ride might enable me to get an idea, well for 5 days anyway, how much effort children like Jason put in every single day.

So on June 16th, I'm cycling 500 miles in 5 days from Aylesbury to Edinburgh and wondered if you'd like to support me by taking a minute to visit and sponsor me to do this ride at http://www.justgiving.com/stuartsykes or letting me put your name down on my sponsorship form for an amount (email sykes.stuart@gmail.com )?

More details on PACE: http://www.thepacecentre.org/cycle.html
You'll be able to track us live by visiting http://www.trackr.eu/user/pace2edi from Tuesday 16th June at 08:30am!!!

Thanks for any support.