Cyclist
‘I’ve got an intense relationship with cancer’: Juan Dual Q&A
Cyclist: You’re an endurance cyclist and runner, competing in some of the toughest races in the world, and yet that’s only a small part of what you’ve overcome…
Juan Dual: My background is quite difficult. Let’s say I’ve got an intense relationship with cancer. I have a rare disease [familial adenomatous polyposis], which develops cancer through most of the digestive system. So in order to save me from the cancer I have had the four biggest parts of my digestive system removed. It’s why they call me Empty Juan.
When did you get diagnosed?
I was 13. The doctors tested for this condition because my grandmother and uncle had died of colon cancer so they realised it could be a genetic condition I had. In a way it’s a great thing that I was diagnosed so young. I’ve seen it happen to people where their life is more established, and it’s like a punch in the face. But at 13, so long as I could run with my friends, still go to school, it’s like no problem.
For the first years I just had to have repeated tests, but when I was 19 years old I had to have my large intestine and rectum removed. I came pretty close to dying. Then when I was 28 they removed my stomach and gallbladder, so that was the second and third time I nearly died. But apparently it wasn’t my time.
How did it affect those early adult years?
The big issue was that the first surgery came between high school and university so I was worried about it interrupting my education. I really wanted to be a doctor, but after the surgeries I switched and trained to be a nurse because I felt so well treated by the nurses in hospital. I never thought people I didn’t know could take such great care of me. So I did it, I became a nurse. But then I had to stop. The second big surgery came into my life and recovery was incredibly hard, and I lost everything. It was impossible for me even to walk, let alone work.
How did you make it through such a tremendously tough situation?
My friends – they saved my life, because you can recover from surgery but that’s only part of it. It’s like a bike. You have a mechanical issue, you go to the shop, they fix it, another issue, they fix it again – great. You can fix the bike, the doctor can fix you, but my friends’ support gave me the power to be able to ride the bike again. Sometimes they were like, ‘Slow down, do it bit by bit,’ then other times it was like, ‘Come on! Move!’ I didn’t have the mental strength on my own.
I wasn’t a sporty kid really, but after the big surgeries I looked around me and realised the positive people, the people who weren’t always complaining about things, had one thing in common: they were sporty. So I thought, ‘OK, I’ll try to be sporty too.’
It was hard because at the time I couldn’t even move, and my brain was saying, ‘You won’t do anything ever again.’ But my friends who ran encouraged me, and over a ten to 12-year process I’m where I am today, where I can jump on a bike for 12 hours, ride 200km or run a full marathon. Without my friends and family, if the surgeries didn’t kill me, I would have killed myself.
Over the intervening years you’ve done all manner of endurance events, from cycling across South America to competing in Kilometre Zero, an 800km unsupported bikepacking event from Madrid to Galicia. How different are things such as fuelling for you compared to other endurance athletes?
In a way it’s easier for me. I don’t have to train how to eat and ride, because my daily basis is literally eating all the time. I don’t ever need to think, ‘OK, it’s been 45 minutes now,’ because on the bike I’m eating all the time. I have to because my body only absorbs 60% of the calories I eat. That also means it’s impossible to gain weight. Pro cyclists are 4%-5% body fat, I’m 2%.
Sleep is also very different. I take power naps over ultra-events, five minutes here or there, which is like in normal life. I have to take a five-minute nap after every meal of the day because then my body digests better. But I digest it so quickly I need to go to the toilet more, so during a 200km race that can be three of four times, or in my daily life it will be at least seven times a day.
I remember this one race, afterwards there was a pasta buffet and I was literally sat at the buffet eating pasta for four hours, and people were like, ‘Are you gonna move?’ But I was eating, chatting, going to the toilet, eating, chatting, toilet…
How did you get to the point where you’d relearned how to do these things?
To start with I had to put alarms on my watch to tell me to eat. I don’t have the hunger hormone or a stomach that rumbles and says, ‘Hey we’re empty, we need to eat.’ So in the first three months back home after the last big surgery I fell unconscious two or three times [because of low blood sugar]. My parents found me on the floor and I couldn’t tell them if it had been minutes or hours that I’d been there.
Now I know the signs. I can feel my blood sugar dropping, my wrists are different, my tongue feels ‘thick’ when I need salt. That means on the bike I’m never worried about the hammer coming down like other cyclists, because these signs mean I eat and drink well in advance.
My biggest problem is racing in hot weather, where I have to drink more. If I eat, I can’t drink, and if I drink, I can’t eat because I don’t have enough room inside me. So although I’m Spanish I want to do races like the Pan Celtic. I also lived in North Yorkshire for two years and I loved the weather.
Along with ultras you do a lot of motivational speaking. What’s your main message to those who come to see you?
Life is a gift. Terrible things happen, we lose people we love, and one day we are gone for good ourselves. But until we are, there are lots of amazing things we can do – the human being is amazing. So if an empty human, crossed with scars like me, can do this stuff, then what are you capable of?
For the full interview, listen to episode 124 of the Cyclist Magazine Podcast, also available on Spotify, Apple and all the usual places. Thanks to Juan Dual’s bike sponsor, Vielo, for facilitating this interview. See vielo.cc
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