Graeme Simpson: Many riders to face personal Everest

Super-mum Sarah-Jane Lowrie will take on the challenge of the NZO Whaka 100 this weekend. PHOTO MEAD NORTON

There is a cure for the common cold, after all. It comes with two wheels and pedals.

I dodged the "flu bullet" through winter with just one minor tickle. Then spring arrives and boom: bunged up like a drain and keeping the makers of Lemsip and Strepsils in profit.

The cold clung on for 10 days. However, on a balmy, gloriously sun-drenched evening last week a bike ride beckoned. There was lots of hawking and spitting. However, the next morning I woke up cold-free. Was it an injection of adrenalin and endorphins, or maybe just almighty great lungfuls of crisp, clean air? Who knows? The most important thing was I was cured. Time off the bike, for whatever reason, is never a good time.

This weekend is an important anniversary for me. Labour Weekend in 2012 was the first time I'd swung a leg over a bike in six months. This was after a wretched winter: seven weeks of radiotherapy and chemotherapy, dramatic weight loss, nausea, third degree burns on my neck and shoulders and the inside of my mouth and throat was like boiled fish.

One thing that I was told repeatedly, before and during treatment, was that recuperation would be long and hard. I never really believed it until it was true - every single, bone-weary day.

It started with baby steps - Steel Pilates with Ian Loveless at Te Ngae Physiotherapy. This is a programme specifically designed for people recovering from cancer. The lack of strength was a shock. Slowly it came back. One advantage of being a mountain biker is I carried basic core fitness into the whole process.

Next up was walking in the forest and light loads on a static trainer.

The goal was to be back on the bike by Christmas. I was two months ahead of that schedule when I rolled out into Scion on Labour Day, 2012.

A kilometre loop of flat track later, I was breathless, worn out and elated. I did manage to roost off a berm and get both wheels off the ground for a nano-second.

Even now, I struggle on long extended climbs but, being back on a bike, any bike, any trail, any day, is a crucial component of my recuperation and reintegration into normal life. Not just physically, but mentally and emotionally.

There were milestones all along this particular path. The day of diagnosis, first and last days of treatment and the day, a couple of months later, when a specialist announced, with a reassuring smile, that the cancer was gone.

I knocked the bastard off, to paraphrase the late Sir Edmund Hillary. My own personal Everest.

After much consideration, I've decided that Labour Day will be my re-birthday. The day I got back on a bike in a forest.

The Nzo Whaka 100 is this Saturday - October 25. It's a very big challenge and lots of riders will be facing their own personal Everest. One of those is remarkable Hamilton mum-of-five Sarah-Jane Lowrie. She only discovered mountain biking a few years ago. It has helped her overcome the pain and discomfort of scoliosis or curvature of the spine, always with a smile.

The race is almost a sell-out but you can still enter at whaka100.com.