When Alex and her husband moved from London to Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, in 2006, she felt a bit apprehensive. “It was daunting to go somewhere we didn’t know anyone, but we had a young daughter and couldn’t afford a house with a garden in the city.” She was still commuting to the capital for her job in children’s publishing, and was worried she would struggle to meet new people locally.
But the day they arrived, a friendly neighbour came to say hello. “It was Jules. She had two children and had recently moved from London, too, for the same reasons as us.”
Straight away, the pair clicked. “I thought Alex seemed very friendly and someone I could get on with,” says Jules. “I was a teacher and busy finishing a contract in London. Although my husband and I had been living in Leigh-on-Sea for a few months, I’d only had time to meet a few people through our children’s preschool.”
The pair soon became friends and regularly met up for children’s activities. “We celebrated things like pancake day and we’d organise Easter egg hunts. We also went trick-or-treating with the kids,” says Jules.
In 2007, Alex gave birth to her son, and by the time he was a toddler decided she wanted to go on a fitness kick. Jules had started cycling and recommended that Alex join her. “It was hilarious because we didn’t know how to work the gears on our bikes at first. We were clueless. But it was a really nice way to spend time together,” says Alex. They began taking long bike rides by the seafront or through the Essex countryside and found they were able to chat to each other on a deeper level.
Callout
In 2011, they entered the London to Southend bike ride. “We both thought, ‘Well, we can ride a bike, so 52 miles will be easy,,’” laughs Jules. “We soon learned it was much more strenuous than we had expected! But it started a bike race journey for us. It was a shared sense of achievement and it gave us a real buzz.”
Then in 2013, just after they joined the London to Brighton ride, Jules was diagnosed with breast cancer. “It had already spread to my spine and pelvis, so it was stage 4. Alex was a really good friend to me, always phoning to see how I was.” She underwent a double mastectomy followed by chemotherapy, and has been managing the condition with targeted hormone therapy ever since. As soon as she was well enough, she got back on her bike.
“We started to take on bigger challenges,” says Alex. “I’m not sporty, and would always be picked last for PE at school. So when Jules suggested we cycle from London to Paris in 2016, I never thought I’d be able to do it. But how could I say to my friend with stage 4 cancer that I’m too lazy?”
The pair used it as an opportunity to raise more than £9,000 for a breast cancer charity, through sponsorship, curry nights, quizzes, a raffle and a New Year’s Eve ball. “It was really hard but so much fun,” says Jules.
As well as supporting each other through their sporting goals, they’ve also been there through other big changes. Alex retrained as a nutritionist in 2015 and has since set up her own nutrition business, while Jules medically retired from teaching last year and is now doing an Open University degree in history.
During lockdown, Jules discovered that her cancer had spread to her brain and she began having regular Cyberknife therapies. “It was really difficult because Alex had been really ill with Covid, too,” says Jules. “There were so many phone calls to check up on each other. As soon as we could, we met up in the park, standing two metres apart.”
Determined to keep up with her sport, in 2022 Jules asked Alex to join her in doing RideLondon, an annual elite race. “Jules is astonishing. She’d already run the marathon when her children were young and swam the Serpentine. Doing RideLondon meant she could get her London classics medal [awarded to those who have completed all three].” Jules found it incredibly hard and says she could not have completed it without Alex. “It’s the only event where we’ve been crying when we got across the finishing line, holding hands.”
Having something to aim for has kept her positive throughout her illness, and she’s grateful that Alex has been on the journey with her. “She’s agreed to these long and arduous bike rides for me and I know she did that to support my mental health as well as my physical health,” she says. “Alex is such a high achiever; so determined and passionate.”
Alex loves the honesty in their relationship. “There’s a real level of trust from all those hours spent together and there’s never been any drama. It never ceases to amaze me how much Jules manages to achieve. I find her attitude to life so inspiring.”
