" HAVE PERPECTIVE"

Augustus Farmer, 45

CYCLING PHOTOGRAPHER

The little issues – missing a workout, rain on a training ride – worried about over the years are brought into perspective when you experience real catastrophe on two wheels on a foreign road. I learned this lesson abruptly during my ongoing recovery from a horrific bike accident that nearly took my life last summer.

I read that around 50 per cent of people with the brain injuries I sustained don’t even make it to hospital. And about 50 per cent of the remaining half have a hard time making it out of a hospital bed. Those stats are from just one of my injuries, but if ever there was a set of odds to beat, they’d be a good start. And if reason were needed to put a lack of sleep or back pain or how to get back into a size small Gabba next month into perspective, the beating of those odds would be a contender.

I currently seem to be in what feels like a living nightmare, but when things feel desperate, I think, “You’re not in a helicopter ambulance or 10-week coma or intensive care now.” Being relieved those things are past tense helps create hope for what comes next in this script.

I think if I were to reflect on this experience and have a chance to use it for good, I would simply try and explain to a younger me not to sweat the small stuff.

Perspective is to be watched out for, respected and accepted; and crucially, understood. It has been my saviour in this experience and would probably be the one area of self-awareness I would share for a smoother cycling journey to middle age and beyond.

That, and I would give my younger self a larger credit limit for the local bike shop that I still remember was selling off their old stock of aluminium frames cheap in the mid-’90s.