Feature: Lynn Hamel
In her own words. Lynn describes how cycling has transformed her life.
With her sights set on the 2012 Olympics Lynn Hamel is a young cyclist who has battled
against the odds.
“Aspergers Syndrome, what’s that?” people ask me!
Aspergers is used to describe the more able end of Autism.
It’s not how you imagine a lot of people with autism are, often - withdrawn and uncommunicative. I actually enjoy socialising although will admit to struggling a bit in larger groups. It’s the high anxiety levels that cause the most problems for me and many others with Aspergers.
We try to control this to some extent by routines and familiarity in an attempt to keep some order in our daily lives, thus reducing the anxiety to a more acceptable level.You might think “How does this affect my cycling?” Well, no two days are ever the same and things have a habit of cropping up, forcing you to alter your plans. This can be surprisingly hard to cope with and few people really understand how much it affects me every day! Autism makes it harder for me to understand and predict others thoughts and actions. This, combined with anxiety makes it difficult to ride within a large group and hold a wheel closely.
However some things that have been really important to me have forced me to try really hard and persevere to improve on such as riding the track at Manchester velodrome.It’s not all doom and gloom though as autism can be my strength as well as my weakness. It helps me to focus when riding time trials and training hard. The exertion of a long ride helps to burn up some of the excess adrenaline and thus reduce anxiety levels, if only short lived.
I get a real buzz from achieving and doing well in my sport and always have high expectations of myself. My aim is to compete in the London Olympics in 2012. My achievements this year have included gaining second place in the BBAR, two team golds in the National 10 and 25 plus an individual silver in the National 50 and bronze in the National 100.
Although I don’t consider myself to have a disability in the same way as someone with blindness or a limb deformity, my autism does affect my everyday life and hinders my independence. Hence, all my training has been on local, familiar well known roads until a few weeks ago when my coach took me to Citrus Cycling in Spain for a fortnight. Having experienced the benefits I intend to broaden my horizons by further training on the continent and race with my team mates abroad.
Lynn has riden 60 time trials this season and excluding national events she has won all but 2 in the women's catagory.
20th May 2007 - National 10 mile Time Trial - Team gold and 7th individually
3rd June 2007 - National 25 mile Time Trial - Team gold and 7th individually
17th June 2007 - National 50 mile Time Trial - Individual silver
15th July 2007 - National 100 mile Time Trial - Individual bronze
23rd Sept 2007 - Duo Normand, France - 3rd place
British Best All Rounder (BBAR) 2nd place - average speed of 25.2 mph taken from fastest 25, 50 and 100 mile time trials
North Lancs Time Trials Assosiation (NLTTA) Best All Rounder - 1st place
Fastest time trial results to date:
16th Sept 2006 - 10 mile time trial - Time 21mins.33secs
11th Aug 2007 - 25 mile Time Trial - Time 56mins 44secs
24th June 2006 - 30 mile Time Trial - Time 1hr 10mins 30secs (NLTTA record)
17th June 2007 - 50 mile Time Trial - Time 1hr 59mins
8th Sept 2007 - 100 mile Time Trial - Time 4hrs 09mins 51secs
6th Oct 2007 - National Track Championships - 3ooom pursuit - 7th place.
2007 - Three Open Hill Climbs - 1st place
Lynn Hamel (age 22) has Aspergers Syndrome (a term used to describe the more able end of autism).
Her ambition is to compete in the London Olympics in 2012.
Due to her autism Lynn suffers from very high anxiety levels. In order to cope with this every day, she tries to stick to routines in an attempt to keep some order in her life. She struggles with change and unexpected circumstances.
At a young age she discovered that exercise helped to reduce this.
A friend would take her out for long hard tandem rides and she would return a much more relaxed person (if only short lived!)
It took Lynn longer than her younger brother and sister to learn to ride a bike but once mastered there was no stopping her!
She needed accompanying everywhere during her cycle rides to keep her safe on the roads. Traffic conditions are never the same, constantly changing. Every new situation needing to be learnt. Even now roundabouts and junctions can be a worry for her as she despirately tries to predict what the traffic will do.
Now she has ridden many thousands of miles in our area she is able to go out for training rides alone without getting lost. (Mending a puncture herself however is something we are still working on!) She carries a mobile and some money and we keep our fingers crossed!
The skills Lynn has had to master to compete in her sport at the level she does have taken her a lot of time, effort and determination. From simply becoming confident enough to stand out of the saddle on hills and take her hands off the bars to signal, to later on learning to ride the track at Manchester Velodrome, warm up on rollers and use the electronic starting gate.
Autumn 2008
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