As a player, Lewis Moody never stopped, never rested, never relented. The same indefatigable spirit still flows through Moody, but the former England flanker is slowly learning his body\u2019s limits since his diagnosis with motor neurone disease last September.<\/p>\n
Last month, Moody took part in The Race to The Slater Cup in which a team of former Leicester and Gloucester players cycled from Welford Road and Kingsholm respectively, to Villa Park before the Prem Rugby fixture. Ostensibly, the race was to raise money for both Moody and Ed Slater\u2019s foundation. Yet, as soon as the \u201crace\u201d element was introduced among a group of former professionals, Moody says it was inevitable that the \u201ccompetitive juices suddenly went into overdrive\u201d.<\/p>\n
Specialists had cautioned Moody that his condition meant he would fatigue quickly, but it took a command from Martin Johnson, his long-term captain with England and Leicester, for that message to be received during the ride. \u201cJohnno was fantastic when we did the Ed Slater ride about being really aware and seeing the level of fatigue that hit me as we were going along, and being able to say, \u2018Mate, it\u2019s OK, take a rest\u2019\u2026\u201d, Moody tails off as he takes a moment to compose himself.<\/p>\n
\u201cAh, yeah, the emotions randomly kick in when I\u2019m talking about Johnno, he\u2019ll be delighted by that,\u201d Moody continues. \u201cBut just the words saying, \u2018Don\u2019t worry, we\u2019ve got it from here\u2019. That understanding that it is OK to take a rest now, and I can come back to it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I went to get back on the bike and asked if it was OK, when you feel like you\u2019ve not been fully in it all the way through, and you\u2019re going back to a training session, he was like, \u2018Don\u2019t make me punch you in the face again\u2019. He was referring to an old-ground incident<\/a> where I\u2019d done that after being out injured for a long time, it made me laugh.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s Moody in a nutshell: pathos mixed in with a punchline.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As a player, Lewis Moody never stopped, never rested, never relented. The same indefatigable spirit still flows through…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":545421,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,46723,3900,23451,217,101,5438,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-545420","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-leicester-tigers","10":"tag-motor-neurone-disease","11":"tag-rugby-union","12":"tag-sport","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-standard","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=545420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545420\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/545421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=545420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=545420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=545420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}