Two Hats, One Mission: Kay Fairweather Rides 780km for Pain Revolution

That’s how Kay describes saying yes to the ride – after watching last year’s tour pass through the Sunshine Coast and being inspired by the riders. There was just one catch: she wasn’t (yet) a cyclist.

“At first I borrowed a road bike from a patient with really skinny tyres, and had to learn how to let go with one hand and look over my shoulder,” she says. She’s since bought her own gravel bike, and has been training in earnest since May – building up to rides of over 100km at a time, including a 123km ride the Sunday before we spoke.

Already giving back, before the ride even starts

Kay’s connection to Pain Revolution didn’t begin with the ride. She was awarded a scholarship through the organisation to complete two professional certificates in pain science and pain education, and as her return of service for that scholarship she’s spent September bringing that training back to Coffs Harbour.

Every Wednesday night, Kay facilitates a Local Pain Collective – a free online group bringing local health professionals together to discuss contemporary pain science and support one another to stay engaged and resourced to improve pain education and care in their communities. Psychologists, social workers, physiotherapists, osteopaths and nurses have all taken part so far.

“I have to spread the word of pain education locally — to health professionals as well as people living with pain.”

It means the ride isn’t really the beginning of Kay’s contribution to pain education in the region, it’s just the next, more visible chapter of something she’s already begun.

Why pain science needs a rethink

Pain Revolution’s core message is a hard one to sell: that pain is not a direct measure of tissue damage, but an output of the nervous system, shaped by everything else going on in a person’s life.

“We don’t have pain receptors in our body. The nervous system is the boss, and it will decide if we’re in pain or not – according to everything else that’s going on in life.”

It’s a message Kay has learned to deliver carefully. “The last thing we want is for somebody to walk out and say, it’s all in your head,” she explains. Instead, the goal is to help people understand that a scan showing “nothing wrong” doesn’t mean the pain isn’t real, and that a scan showing something abnormal doesn’t mean it’s the cause. “There’s no direct relationship between what we see in imaging and the amount of pain that we feel. We know this from a huge body of research.”

Kay first encountered these ideas through Pain Revolution’s CEO, Professor Lorimer Moseley, whose TED Talk on his own experience of a brown snake bite has been watched by millions. “That kind of drew me in,” she says. She has since brought what she’s learned into her work in the Endometriosis and Pelvic Pain Clinic, where pain is so often dismissed early – sometimes from as young as eleven or twelve – as “just period pain.”

“It wasn’t normal for pain to be that disruptive in your life. That becomes isolating, because you’re silenced. You don’t communicate your pain because it feels like people don’t believe you.”

“Have you got a nice soft seat, Kay? No – that’s a fallacy. Soft seats don’t work. You just need the right bike pants and to plant your sit bones on that seat.”

Asked what she’s most looking forward to as the ride approaches, Kay doesn’t hesitate: “Oh, day two!”, showing us that a healthy sense of humour is just as important as the cause and the training. The longest days of the tour – including a 151km leg out of Coffs Harbour toward Kempsey – are still ahead of her. But for a woman who took up cycling from scratch less than a year ago, that’s arguably the whole point.

---

Coffs Harbour Endometriosis and Pelvic Pain Clinic is funded by Healthy North Coast through the North Coast PHN Program.

---