Five For Fighting
eh, their music is ok, but that’s not what I’m talking about.
Tomorrow I will ride in my fifth Tour de Cure ride. Five For Fighting, seemed appropriate, fifth ride, fighting for diabetes, are you following me? (Did you just shake your head “no”? Come on now, this is gonna be good).
I’ll be riding in the Phoenix, AZ Tour de Cure. It was very much a last minute decision as I only just registered for it last Friday. (I’ve got this addiction to riding in these rides, but can you really blame me, we’re helping to find a cure.) I plan on riding in the 35 mile ride, but a part of me says, “push yourself, do the metric century” (for those of you that aren’t familiar with the metric ways of measuring, that’s 62.5 miles). I really think that I could do the metric century, if I ate well I think I’d be ok. I’m fully aware that I haven’t trained, the only riding I’ve done was the Orlando Tour de Cure three weeks ago and an hour and 15 minutes on a trainer when I was in Denver (and that exhausted me). By the same token, if I don’t start pushing myself, I’m only ever going to be a 35 mile rider, and I know I can do better than that.
Recently I’ve discovered that there’s just not motivation in riding alone, there’s nothing really to push me, but I’m really hoping that I can find some people to ride along with during this ride, similar to what happened in Orlando. I know that as long as there’s some one in front of me that I can see, that I’ll push myself to catch up with them, and I think if I can find that in Phoenix, I can make it through the 62.5 miles. The worse that can really happen is that all of the sudden I’m all alone and then I freak out, but realistically, that shouldn’t happen. If I do the 62.5 mile ride, that will give me a gauge for how I need to train to be able to do the same distance in Colorado this summer (at an average of 15mph so that I can get back to the start to ride in the 12 mile ride with Molly and Beverly). I think I just need to not get discouraged, I need to not worry about how far I’ve gone, I just need to go. Keep on riding.
Ok, now that I’ve given myself a nice little pep talk, we can move along now. On the right you’ll see the bones of Stegosaurus, he lived 150 million years ago during the Jurassic period. They could grow to be 29.5 feet long and 6000 pounds in weight (that’s very heavy). They were vegetarians, so if we were to live back in the day with dinosaurs we wouldn’t have to worry about the Stegosaurus’ eating us, but you gotta watch out for the tail, they have spikes…Ooops, sorry, totally fell into my museum tour guide roll. Back to biking…
So, the story still remains the same as it has been for the last 3 rides. The only time the story was different was on the first ride. But here we go:
Five For Fighting
Less than a year ago I made a change in my life that was going to impact that which had impacted my life at a young age. After 15 years of battling diabetes, the disease that had controlled and changed my life, I was going to control and change it. What began as a goal to ride in one ride to show that I was ready to be in control of my diabetes quickly expanded.
When I was finished with the Tour de Cure in Long Beach, CA, I knew that one ride wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough to fulfill my craving of being an athlete, it wasn’t enough just to show once that I could take care of and control my diabetes, it wasn’t enough to bring a cure to the disease. It was only hours after my first ride that I decided that I would be riding in a Tour de Cure in every state.
The Phoenix, AZ Tour de Cure is my second Tour de Cure event for 2008, and my fifth ride in meeting my personal goal. Although my personal goals are secondary to the primary reason I ride - for the cure to diabetes - I consider them an important part of fighting this atrocious disease.
I ride for myself, for my family members with diabetes, for all my friends with diabetes, for those with diabetes that I don’t know, and for those that will be saved from the torment of diabetes when a cure is found. And I will continue to ride until that cure is found, whether it be before I’ve ridden in all 50 states or long afterwards.
One Response to “Five For Fighting”
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March 14th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
DO IT! You are totally ready for a metric century. I really think you’ll be surprised by how easy it is to double your mileage. And worst case scenario, you can always hitch a ride with a SAG wagon.
Just make sure you have lots of food on hand for when you get back!