” Trust yourself. Go on your way by listening to your heart. This was the message from Hugo Lambert’s mother before she died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in 2020. He listened to her.
Posted at 6:00 a.m.
When his mother passed away, Hugo Lambert went to the seaside. He looked at the horizon and a thought crossed his mind: “Hugo, you are going to cycle around the world. »
To get there, you have to start somewhere, practice. The 24-year-old cyclist had a few ideas, “like impulses from the heart or from instinct”, he says. One of them was to cross Canada, from Vancouver to Montreal. A distance of 4657 km. All in 50 days.
“Little by little, a dream can become a reality if you break it down into objectives and that’s what I’m doing,” he explains.
As long as you’re at it, might as well do it for a cause, right? The native of Brittany, France, and student of the University of Montreal for six years therefore decided to undertake this cyclonomad adventure for the benefit of the ALS Society of Quebec and the Association for ALS Research in France.
My mom fell ill at 48 and died at 50. We are told that there is no cure and that is a bit hard to accept. If I can get involved with the crossing of Canada to support those affected, I do so with great pleasure.
Hugo Lambert
“Besides, it asks me almost nothing. I really do it from the heart,” he adds. From the heart, as his mother proposed to him…
When talking with The Press, on July 18, Hugo Lambert had just landed in Calgary and was waiting for his flight to Vancouver. It was the next day, July 19, that he officially began his adventure. Alone with his backpack and a “more or less traced” route in mind.
PHOTO FROM INSTAGRAM ACCOUNT @U_GO_TRAVEL
Hugo Lambert
Closing the mourning period
This adventure, the 24-year-old athlete also realizes it a little to “close this somewhat difficult period of mourning”.
It was in 2019 that his mother fell ill with ALS, a neuromuscular disease that attacks neurons and the spinal cord and gradually leads to paralysis of the body, according to what can be read on the website of the ALS Society of Quebec.
Lambert was already studying in Montreal at that time, but he returned to see his family in France every summer. At first, he didn’t really understand what was happening to his mother.
I will always remember: she was on her bike in Brittany and she fell. We didn’t quite understand why. She was starting to have a problem with her ankle. In fact, it was the disease that was beginning to attack the muscles of his body, of the leg.
Hugo Lambert
When he returned to Quebec for the winter, the disease continued to wreak havoc.
“Each time I came back to France for the holidays or the summer, I saw my mother even more diminished,” he recalls.
She first ended up on crutches, then in a wheelchair. His arms then stopped working; she could no longer feed herself.
“The really difficult moments are when it attacks the vocal cords because at that moment, speech is affected. In fact, you are a prisoner of your body and, moreover, you have your whole head through all that. It’s bullshit. »
“My father told us that it attacked the muscles and that the muscles lead to the heart. Maybe we were in denial. But when I returned in the summer of 2020 and saw her voice change, she had lost almost 20 pounds, I realized that the family unit was changing. It was super hard. And it’s still hard today. That’s why I’m doing this project. »
This is not the first time that Hugo Lambert has embarked on this kind of adventure. He has covered the distance of 2000 km twice in recent years, from Montreal to Washington and then from Saint-Michel, in Normandy, to Santiago de Compostela, in Spain.
Cycling is his thing, what he is “best at”. This time he wanted to use it to help others. A little in continuity with what her mother did, she who still wanted to get involved in associations even at the height of her illness.
“We children can embody a part of our parents when they leave,” says Hugo. It’s my way of doing it. »
PHOTO FROM INSTAGRAM ACCOUNT @U_GO_TRAVEL
Hugo Lambert
$15,000
Even before starting his crossing, Hugo Lambert had raised $7,500 in Quebec and 8,000 euros in France on the jedonneenligne.org platform. This is already well beyond his initial expectations, but he hopes the sum will continue to rise. “If I could reach $50,000, that would be amazing,” he says.
The cyclist invites anyone who wishes to follow his adventure on his Instagram account and the polarsteps platform.
The Frenchman also hopes to meet people who are suffering from the disease on his way. He also invites caregivers who ride a bike, “or anyone who wants to support the cause”, to pedal with him for a few kilometers. For this, he relies on word of mouth.
“I will try to go at my own pace, it will be 125 km per day. Every four days, I will take a short day off. I will try to do yoga to stretch well and maintain good hygiene. »
He will have to show resilience. Like his mother. “She developed a certain faith in life and in others. I think that’s a bit what I want to put forward through this project. »
And he wishes, at the same time, to send a message to young people: “We must follow our hearts. “Reminds you of something?