I’m delighted to have been awarded the Jon White Trophy for this year’s Devizes to Westminster Canoe Race, awarded to ‘the disabled paddler displaying exceptional determination or resolve over adversity’. This is in recognition of the challenge I faced racing the 125 miles with type 1 diabetes.

Jonathan William White is an inspiration and it’s an honour to be awarded a trophy bearing his name. Jon lost 3 limbs whilst serving in Afghanistan. Just to live with Jon’s injuries is an unimaginable challenge. But Jon doesn’t just live. He achieves incredible feats like completing DW twice, racing surfskis on wild oceans and paddling 100 miles up and down a ditch on Christmas day to raise money for the Royal Marines charity. Yet he is the most humble and down-to-earth guy you’ll meet. What a remarkable outlook on life he has.

I only see the surface of Jon’s life. Only he knows all of the frustrations. For me it’s the sugar spike that just will not come down, the cgm alarms waking me up all night, the hypo that ruins the occasion. The worry that someday I’ll go blind, the fear of having a hypo in the night and never waking up, the insecurity that type 1 diabetes makes me weak.

Yes, living with T1D can be hard. This is a condition that requires 24/7 management for the rest of your life. There are no breaks from injecting insulin, monitoring blood sugars, going high and low. Look at any T1D support group and you’ll see people are really struggling. Some are too afraid of the consequences to eat out at a restaurant or go for a 5km run. Others are living with those consequences – blindness, brain damage, kidney failure, the list goes on.

Personally I can’t let struggle define my life. Life is too short and unpredictable for that. Embrace opportunity and positivity. I think you must accept this condition and work hard at it, but not let it limit you – get on with life and the added challenge will only build your resilience.

I won’t go into how I managed my T1D for DW. You can read that on my DW post. But it could have all gone wrong. Keeping blood sugars in-range is like trying to follow a compass at sea – you’re off the bearing more than you’re on it, constantly making adjustments to correct your course. Getting down the course required an amazing support crew of which Jon was an indispensable member. Thank you team, you were brilliant. It also required an understanding partner who was prepared to take the risk of paddling with me, knowing that my T1D could end our race. Billy Butler is something of a T1D expert now and I’m reading up on ultra-endurance-induced blindness in preparation for the next attempt!

Check out this video of Jon White made by photographer Alice Bray.