Six Rides Under
With each Tour de Cure that I participate in I know that we’re getting closer to a cure. With each ride, I like to think that the life of diabetes becomes increasingly shortened. One day I know that I will get to bury my diabetes and that at it’s funeral, there will be a joyous celebration. The only tears shed will be tears of happiness.
I’ve shed a lot of tears over the last 16 years where my diabetes is concerned, but last year I said “NO MORE!” (Well, not exactly, but close enough. There’s still been tears, but not as many) Last year, after 15 years of battling diabetes, the disease that had controlled and changed my life, I decided that 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 my first 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.
My sixth ride takes me to Las Vegas, NV. And while I know that 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.
For the Las Vegas, NV Tour de Cure, I’m going to do another Metric Century, just like I did in Phoenix, AZ two weeks ago. For those of you that aren’t familiar with metrics (that would be most of us that were educated in the US), a metric century is 62.5 miles. I know that the elevation is a little higher in Vegas than it was in Phoenix, and being near lake mead there’s likely to be a lot of hills, but I believe that I can do it.
My goal is to have my ride time come in at no more than the 4 hours 30 minutes and 27 seconds that it took me to complete the Phoenix, AZ Tour de Cure. I would also like to cut my break time down from 10 minutes to 5 minutes if that’s possible. If I can do that, I’ll be completely done with the ride in about 5 hours. That’s my goal.
My other goal is to raise $200 for this ride, I’m already at $150 so I’m fairly close. If you’d like to donate, your donation is welcome.
Leave a Reply