Ride of a Lifetime!

My very first, and definitely not my last, JDRF Ride to Cure was this past weekend!  I felt so many different emotions throughout the whole extended weekend that I have no idea where to start... and yes, this will be long winded!

I'll start with the fundraising - I had to raise $3,000 to be able to participate.  I had hoped that this would be easier than it was, but I struggled and was afraid that I wasn't going to make it. After talking and reading from others whom have done these rides, they say that the fundraising is the easy part, and I don't think that I agree with that! I had met a lady on a ride very early in the spring and come to find out that she was riding with our group on occasion and was very interested in doing a National ride next year!  Long story short, she made a very generous contribution to help me reach my goal!  I had no idea how to thank her for what she did, especially when I thought she was just going to pass around the link for my donation page and help get me get donations.  I decided to express to her how much this meant to me by telling her what JDRF meant to me and why I support them so much!  Ask anyone who has been diagnosed with T1D or had a child diagnosed and they will tell you how alone in the world they suddenly feel.  JDRF was my life-saver and brought me a little bit of sanity!  I also believe in their research in areas of Prevention, Curing, and Improving lives with Type 1!  This ladies response was very emotional as well and I am looking forward to riding with her next year, because she is wonderful!  She told me that she wanted to help remove the pressure of the fundraising so that I could concentrate on training and "My donation is small in comparison to what you accomplish everyday with and for your daughter."!  After she made this donation, I received a few more here and there, so to pay it forward, I put money towards other riders to help them meet their goal!

Training:  Last year was my first year of cycling, I was more worried about learning the etiquette and rules of the road, finding a comfortable seat and shorts!  The furthest I rode last year was 65 miles and the last 15 of that was a struggle.  This year I concentrated on training and listening to my body.  I struggled with dehydration and endurance, doing many 50 mile rides and I either felt great afterwards or completely exhausted!  I paid attention to what I ate and drank before and during the ride to see if that made a difference.  Every ride was a new experiment. On July 4th, I did a ride with some team mates and those 60 miles were a struggle at the end, on the verge of dehydration. Afterwards, I had a few 50 mile rides and I felt fine.  The week before Wisconsin, we had a team ride of 50 miles and again I struggled with dehydration.  At a week out I was scared to death that I would bomb on this ride.  With all the miles and training I've put in, even though it wouldn't matter to anyone else, I would feel let down with myself that I didn't do 100 miles.
Dan, Kelly, and a few others that I've been riding with this summer have been telling me that if I can do 60-65 miles, to do another 40 is purely mental for this ride.  I told Coach Dan that I'm hoping the adrenaline from the start line will fuel me for the first 30 miles and the last 20 will be easy because I know that the finish line is around the corner!  The climb of the bluff half way through would be a different story and I told him "I know that for those 10-15 miles, I will be cursing him and wanting to crawl into a ditch and die, but once I get through it, I'll be fine!"  As you can see from the elevation above, the bluff is an intimidating climb! It is a loop and I knew that the worse case scenario is that I could just head back to LaCrosse and skip the loop if I wasn't feeling up to it.

GranDad's Bluff - 2.5 Mile Climb... Our Training Ride on Friday!

The Ride:  The only thing that I will say about the drive up there is that 12 hours with about 3 hours in a heavy down pour were NOT fun!  A few days before leaving, Coach Julie sent out an email saying that our team was going to do a training ride on Friday up GrandDad's Bluff and that it was higher and harder than the bluff on the ride.  Thursday night I was talking to Dan and few others about climbing it and a few of them were trying to talk me out of it.  Later I told Dan that I wanted to try it - I knew that if I could do it on Friday that it would let me know what I was in for on Saturday and hopefully ease my mind.  And I was right!  Our training ride on Friday was 9.8 miles and took an hour.  BUT... I felt very confident going into the ride on Saturday!  It was 2.5 miles of an uphill climb.  It was hard and I just took everyone's advice of putting my bike in the granny gear and just spin my way up!  I found that if I concentrated on calming my breathing, that it made the exertion more bearable!  I'm glad I was determined to make this climb, it was a spectacular view from the top!

During dinner on Friday, they said that we had between 410-425 and we raised $1,020,000!!!  It was also very encouraging to hear that other families deal with the same issues that I do with Ellee.  Through out the whole summer, the girls kept wanting to ride with me.  It was heart breaking to tell them that they couldn't, but also knowing that in 6 years Ellee will be eligible for her first ride! I loved hearing how others handle their sugar on rides so that I can prepare myself for when she starts riding!

Keep in mind as you read this that it was an out and back trip.  They had 3 rest stops set up and when I speak of the number of a stop, it's from the way out.

They sent us out in 4 waves of about 100 rides and we staged it so that we were at the start of the second wave.  As I sat there anxiously waiting for them to release us with our police escort through the few blocks of down town and across the bridge over the Mississippi River, all I could think about the extra worry that a T1 rider had to go through.  What was it going to be like when I am finally able to proudly ride with Ellee, then Dani by my side?!  This is going to be my furthest ride ever and the worry of getting dehydrated was weighing on me heavily.  Normally I eat a bagel the morning before I ride and I was only able to eat half of one because my stomach felt like it was in knots.  So much to think about! What struck me the most was that 3 years ago, right after Ellee was diagnosed, I had read about these rides.  I knew in the back of my mind that I wanted to do one of these, and if I did it, I was going to try for the full 100, but realistically I knew it would be many years before I was ready for one.  I made myself put this on my list of things to do and gave myself a time frame of 5-10 years.  Here I was... 3 years later, not 5-10!  The girls love my bike, seeing me in my riding clothes, and I think have even come to grow on the volunteering at rides...and that made me wish that they were there with me to share this moment with me!  This is one of my greatest accomplishments in my life and I didn't have anyone to share it with.  It was bittersweet, just like living with T1D - there are others going through the same thing you are, but at the same time you can't help but feel all alone.

It was very chilly and the fog over the Mississippi was beautiful! They finally released us and we were off!  About 8 miles in, the group I was riding with started to slowly pass me, I panicked thinking that I can't run out of energy this early on!  The best advice is to just go at a pace you are comfortable with, even if you are constantly getting passed, so that is what I did.  When we made it to the first rest stop, about 14 miles in, I was surprised to see that I made it in about an hour! A lot of team members were telling me about ShotBlocks and trying to get me to try GU.  I had packed some to try, but at the rest stop, they had another brand and I decided to try them.  Some one had mentioned if you do the SB, use take one or two at each rest stop, so I decided that was going to be my game plan for the day. I had lost the other SW Ohio team members that I was riding with, so when I was ready, I headed back out.

The second leg went fast also - I was two hours in, had 30 miles done, and surprisingly felt great!  The group was thinning out so I had fewer people passing me, but I was also coming up to few people.  I was traveling at a pace of 16-18, which is a good bit faster than my usual average of 13-14. I even managed to get in with a pace line averaging around 20 mpg and kept up for a little while! It felt right, so I stayed with a faster pace.  Any time I passed some one or was passed, we had a brief conversation - either where are you from, how are you feeling, or a comment about the weather.  I came to realize the numbers they gave us to pin on our jerseys were a blessing!  They had our names and our JDRF Chapter so you could call some one by name or even talk about where they were from!  Even better was when you came up to some one who was struggling a little bit, you could encourage them a little bit more by calling them by name!  I think my adrenaline rush came from knowing that we were all out there for the same reasons!

The game plan for the bluff was that when I reached the second rest stop, I would text Coach Dan to let him know where I was to see if he was around the bluff to ride up it with me.  He knew that since I am from NW Ohio, hills are NOT my specialty and he wanted to be able to encourage me on this leg because it was either going to make or break me!  At the second stop I had text him saying that I was getting ready to head out and that I was averaging an hour between stops.  When I got to the third stop, right before the bluff, I had a message from him that he was riding up with another group and that I should go ahead and head up when I was ready if he wasn't back yet. I checked my computer and I had to do a double take... I had made it to the rest stop in 40 minutes!!!  That means I was doing 20mph average! That gave me such a boost of confidence and since I didn't know what he was planning, but I was anxious to give this hill a shot and wanted to get gioing!  I got in with other SW Ohio teammates, along with Coach Julie, and 3 others from another chapter (with one of them being another coach).  We all took off and I happened to be the first person out, so I took the lead!  It was a few miles out to the start of the climb and by that time, the 3 others and I had gotten ahead of the other SW team members. About the time I started to tucker out from a faster pace, I saw a red jersey coming down the hill so I hollered out "Is that my Dan?!?!"  It sure was, and he swung around to ride with me!  As the other three passed, the other Coach told me that I did a great job leading the pace line!  Who knows if he meant it, but for some one who feels like they had a crummy training season it was a tremendous ego booster!

At this point, I was so glad I made the climb the day before because it made that moment feel like a walk in the park!  When I felt myself lose steam, I just concentrated on spinning and calming my breathing. Taking deep breathes to help lower my heart rate and calm my mind.  On past rides, doing hills after 30-40 miles had killed me, my legs were jello and I had zero energy by that point.  This ride was different and I was on cloud 9!  I felt so good that when I hit the top of the main climb, I didn't stop like many others to suck down a GU or ShotBlock!  My theory when riding has been "If I am feeling good, I'm going to going with it for as long as I can!"  Once at the time, we had rolling hills before we started our winding decent down.  Once we hit that decent, it was just Dan and I. At one point he looks over at me and says "You are being awfully quiet, are you okay?"  I just smiled at him.  "I'm just enjoying this moment.  There is nothing better than enjoying a decent decent because you know that you've earned it after putting all the effort into the climb!"  We haven't experienced it yet, but I imagine it's the same feeling a parent gets when they get a really good A1C result from the doctor!

Dan and I left that far rest stop and discussed that since we had good tailwind and such a fast trip out, that more than likely the trip back will be slower.  We had till 5pm to make it back and at that point I believe it was only Noon!  As a coach, Dan was obligated to stop and help anyone, especially if it was to change a tire.  Between the second and first stop some one had a flat, so he had to stop and I went on, knowing that he'd probably catch back up to me in no time!

I caught up with Vicky, Emily, & Mo at the first stop.  Mo's sugar was dropping fast so they were hanging out to make sure she was going back up before heading back out.  Dan and I had a few conversations about how much it would mean to him to be able to cross the finish line with a few different people that he's been working with all season, especially his step daughter, Emily, who just started riding.  Knowing this, I talked them into waiting till Dan got there so that we could all ride back together!  Coach Julie and a few other SW Ohio Team Members ended up catching up with us and we all crossed the finish line together!   My final stats of the ride... 101 miles in 7 hours 15 mins!!!

I don't know how to sum up this ride.  I was a little disappointed in a few ways, but in other ways, I was completely blown away!  Saturday night we met as a team and everyone took a turn telling of a memory that they are taking away from this weekend.  I think Krista summed it up best when she said "You never forget your T1 diagnosis date, it will forever be one of the worst days in your life... but this - you will always remember this ride as one of the best moments in your life!"  I couldn't agree more!  Our D-Day was April 21, 2009, but August 18, 2012 was one of the greatest accomplishments in my life!  And truth be told, there will be a date in 2018 that I be even more memorable for me, and that is when Ellee gets to do her first national ride!

It's hard to believe that I was able to do this great of a distance in 3 1/2 years after diagnosis when I originally thought it would take me every bit of 5 years to be able to do this!  If there is one thing that I learned from this experience, it's that the spirit of finding a cure makes you forget about any pain or discomfort you may be feeling... Or maybe it was just all the cowbells as you hear people cheering you on EVERY mile of the way!  =)

I'm definitely looking forward to the inaugural ride in Nashville next year!!!