The Boss'

Well, the ride has come and gone and I have the pictures to prove it. Oh yeah, and the world is a better place. Did I mention that? The sun is brighter, the grass is greener. The picture below links to my album of photos from the ride.

The one regret that I have is that I did not take nearly enough photos. It’s very hard to stop riding and snap a photo once you’ve got a head of steam going. I’m hoping that once everyone on the team starts sharing their photos, I’ll be able to put together enough images to give everyone insight into the ride experience.

The Ride

Leaving the lodge, I immediately became aware that I did not have enough clothes on. I had arm warmers, leg warmers, and a wind breaker, in addition to the normal gear of shorts and jersey. Some riders reported the morning temperature at 41 degrees. All the riders were pretty bunched up starting out, which led to a couple of near wrecks and constant shouts of “slowing!” or “stopping!”. I was waiting to hear “crashing!”, “bleeding!” They released us in three different waves which were labeled, kindly enough, Fast, Faster, and Fastest. I went out in the final group because I knew that I would not be riding very fast.

The first 25 miles flew by pretty fast just getting settled in on the bike and trying to stay warm. Half of the first route was cut off because of forest fire danger and more miles were added on to one of the later routes. According to people who know, the miles that were cut off contained a lot of climbing. It would be interesting to know how I would have turned out if I had done a whole bunch of climbing early on.

The Whitefish Lake route had a few nice climbs, some being pretty steep. Of course the route also contained some nice descents as well. I think my max speed was achieved on this route. 32.5 MPH or something like that.

Tough decisions had to be made at the 80 mile break point. Four or five Herman Miller riders headed for the lodge 12 miles away with the intention of turning around and coming back to the breakpoint after 4 miles, then heading back to the lodge, again, for a total of 100 miles. I knew in the back of my mind that I did not want to turn away from the lodge when I was within 8 miles of being finished. As I watched the others turn around I knew that I’d be on my own. Once the decision was made, however, I felt pretty good. I had to come to grips with a little bit of guilt at failing to achieve my 100 mile goal. In my mind I made finishing the ride under my own power my new goal. A stiff head wind had sprung up and it was really taking it’s toll on me. There were long stretches where my speed was in the single digits. Climbs had me wanting to stop altogether.

In the end I was able to finish the ride smiling, and under my own power, and ended up logging 93 miles.

Post Ride

The finish ride celebration was great. People were hugging and high-five’ing and hooting and hollering and just generally carrying on. It was great. After about 2 minutes nobody cares how many miles you rode. The people you rode with matter. The adults and kids that have to live every single day with this disease matter. Finding a cure matters. I will tell you right now that I am considering doing the ride again next year. I feel like I should do the ride. I have this feeling that if I don’t do the ride, if I don’t raise the money, who will?

This is the sort of thing that I’ll be telling my children and grand children about for a long time. Don’t pass up the opportunity to do something like this. The fund raising scares a lot of people, but it shouldn’t. Is it  easy? No. But hey, things that are worth doing are usually hard. Do something hard. The Ride To Cure Diabetes will give you goose bumps. It will definitely make you laugh. It might make you cry. Physically and mentally, this ride can change not only your life, but the lives of others.

I’m working on a complete wrap-up of the ride, but for now you can enjoy some pictures that I’ve added to my gallery.

I don’t have a ton of energy right now to be expounding on what a great experience the ride was. It was truly awesome. What a cool bunch of people rallying around the elimination of a terrible illness.

I was able to complete the route, but I fell just short of my 100  mile goal. I rolled across the finish line with 92.9 miles on the odometer. I was VERY glad to be done. I had decided that the whole doubling-back-to-get-the-whole-hundred thing wasn’t for me. Any pedal stroke that took me away from the lodge was not a good thing.

I called Lindy and the kids when I got back and it was very emotional for me. A number of riders on the team, many without a real direct connection to Juvenile Diabetes found themselves choked up. It’s a hard thing to describe.

Then the vomiting started. I got pretty ill there for a while. The ride medical director even got called in on the action. Yeah, I guess I’d have to pick that as my low point.

Suffice it to say that I improved enough to attend the big awards dinner, though I didn’t have very much to eat.

Now it’s off to bed in order to get up at 4:30 am to make th 5:30 shuttle to the airport in Missoula. Not looking forward to that very much.

This morning I headed down to the JDRF pavilion with my roommate and had breakfast around 7:15 AM. The benefit of traveling west is picking up a couple of hours, thereby making early risers out of all of us Michingan’ders. Following breakfast there was a mandatory safety meeting followed by a short tune up ride. The ride was just so everyone could make sure their bike was in working condition. It was not, as the JDRF coach said, supposed to be an individual 4.1 mile time trial. I must say, there are a lot of serious riders out here. Some of these folks looked have more money in their riding gear than I have in my car.

I’ve already met some really cool people. Last night I told you about the couple from Wisconsin. Today I met a couple whose daughter was diagnosed at 13 months old. That’s the earliest diagnosis that I’ve heard of, personally. She is 6 1/2 now, just a little younger than Ben. It’s so cool to be able to talk to people who totally get what you’re talking about. People who have been there and know what you’re going through. It’s also great to be able to share ideas and encourage each other.

During my down-time this afternoon I caught a ride into downtown Whitefish and grabbed lunch with our team’s coach, Mike Clark. It was cool that I bumped in to him because I was sort of bummed that I had nobody to hang out with. We had lunch at Quickies, this little sandwich shop that was in an old converted house. Their slogan was, “The best 12″ you’ve ever had”. You could even get kids t-shirts with that on them. Not sure I’d want Emma running around in one of those. From there, I did a little gift shopping and walked back to the lodge, which was just over a mile away.

On tap for tonight is the big pre-ride dinner. I’m really looking forward to meeting more cool folks and eating a lot. Combined with an early bed time, I’ll be as ready as I’m ever going to be for a one hundred mile bike ride.

Travel day today. I started a Picasa Web Album of a couple of pictures that I snapped on the way over. Nothing too spectacular, but I just wanted everyone to know that I made it. I’ll be adding to the album as time goes on.
The flights/connections went well. I was able to spend some time catching up with a long lost friend in Missoula, and got a free ride to Whitefish out of the deal. (Thanks, Kerry!)

The evening kickoff/reception turned into a pretty wild affair, with a number of people consuming what appeared to be more alcohol than they could tolerate. It makes me wonder if other fund raising events get all crazy like this. Do people end up drunk and doing a Conga line at a Cancer Society or Heart Association fund raising dinner? I’m not saying that we should all wear sack cloth and ashes, but it seems like some restraint would be wise.

I sat next to a really cool couple from Wisconsin and got to know them a little bit. He has Type 1 and he uses the continuous glucose sensor along with the same pump that Ben has. (Paradigm 522) It was great to hear a first-hand account of using the continuous sensor technology. It sounds like it has a lot of room for improvement, but despite its drawbacks, his overall impression of it was positive.

This is my last post before heading west for the big JDRF fund raiser ride. I’m excited, and a little nervous. I don’t feel at all prepared to ride 100 miles on Saturday, but at the same time I realize that this ride is about a lot more than just the mileage. It’s really about raising money to fund diabetes research. And, thanks to all of the generous folks who made a donation on my behalf, I exceeded my initial fund raising goal of $4,000. (Check my latest total here)

The weather is looking good for this weekend, except for some possible smoke in the area from nearby forest fires. The temps look good…50’s in the morning with highs around 85. Perfect weather for a nice long bike ride. By the way, if you’re a total nerd, this is how you keep track of your training rides…an Excel graph baby…that’s how I roll!

I can’t quite get my head around the fact that it’s finally time to do the ride. I’ve met a lot of great people through the JDRF; all people who share my desire to find a cure for diabetes. A diagnosis of Type 1 diabetes is a tough pill for anyone to swallow, especially a little kid and their parents. Every day it happens to too many families. The only way to end it is for lots of really smart people to work really hard looking for a cure and, in the world we live in, that takes a lot of money. The JDRF is leading the charge, and I’m happy to be a part of that effort.

I’m hoping to update this site on Friday, after the warm up ride, and possibly Saturday after the ride itself, if I’m still conscious. I’m already hard at work on my book that I’m doing as a thank you gift to individuals that donated $250 or more. For this book, I decided to try using Blurb. I highly recommend checking it out if you’ve been thinking about doing a photo book. The thing that attracted me to Blurb, was the number of page layouts that favor text. iPhoto on my Mac is awesome for creating photo books that are, well, just photos. Text appears to be something of an afterthought. For this book, I wanted to present my motivation for doing the ride, namely Ben’s diagnosis of Type 1 diabetes in June of 2006. I want to use some of my blog entries that I’ve written leading up to the ride, and some of Ben’s own thoughts on living life with diabetes. For that, I needed a book making software that handled photos and text equally well. Blurb looks like it should do the job nicely.

Tapering is a term used to describe the reduction of intense training leading up to “the big day”. You could say I’m “tapering” in preparation for my JDRF ride coming up this weekend. But, rather than a gradual reduction in the number of training miles ridden, I opted for a wholesale stoppage of training. Yep, that’s pretty much it. As soon as my bike was dropped off for shipment, I forgot all about riding. I had good intentions of doing some riding while we were on vacation at a cottage last week, but then…well, we were on vacation, right? I’m not quite committed enough to say to the kids, “I know you want to go tubing, but daddy has to take a bike ride for a few hours…No, you can’t come along.”

Speaking of the cottage, here’s a little video montage from the week that we spent there. We picked the right week as far as weather goes. We got some rain on the last day, but most of the week was perfect. I’ll put up a gallery of photos at some point.