Riding to Save Lives

Welcome to our Team In Training home page.

Richard and Aaron are training to complete the 2010 America's Most Beautiful Bike Ride, a 100 mile bike ride around Lake Tahoe on June 6. We are doing this to raise funds for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's (LLS) Team In Training. All of us on Team In Training are raising funds to help stop leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin's Disease and myeloma from taking more lives. This will be Richard's 11th Team In Training century, but for Aaron this is his first! Read on to learn in whose honor we are riding, and to learn more about who we are and the nature of our relationship.

Richard is riding again in honor of Sue Garrision, a former TSPMG colleague. Fortunately Sue is doing reasonably well at this point, now 30 months since she was diagnosed with AML. She still has a long battle ahead of her, but because of state-of-the-art treatments funded in large part by events like this, she has done remarkably well. People like Sue, who are battling these blood cancers, are the real heroes on our team, and we need your support to cross the ultimate finish line - a cure! The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society is consistently rated as one of the top charities in the nation, with over 90% of raised funds going directly into research or patient benefit.

Now a little about Richard and Aaron. Richard became a big brother to Aaron when we were matched by Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Gwinnett County (GA) in early 1996, when Richard was 39 and Aaron was 7. We have been "brothers" ever since. Aaron and his older sister were raised by their grandmother. We saw each other almost every week while Aaron was growing up. Then, at age 15, Aaron and his family moved to Kernersville NC. We remained in touch, and have continued to see each other several times per year. Aaron is now 21 and a junior at Wake Forest Univ (thus, our team name "Demon Deacon and Doc"). He is planning to major in exercise physiology and is the leading high jumper on their track team. After graduation he plans to pursue an advanced degree in his field. For the past 10 years he has been hearing from Richard how great the TNT program is, and how the 100 miles around Lake Tahoe is so challenging, yet so much fun. He has always wanted to join Richard on the ride, and this year we are teaming up to do so! This picture of us was taken when Aaron competed in the high jump at Clemson Univ last April. Yes, he towers over Richard!

Our training is rigorous. In Feb and Mar we generally ride about 40-60 miles per week, regardless of rain, cold, or snow. As we get into Apr and especially into May, we increase our mileage to 100-150 miles per week. Fortunately the weather is usually more accommodating by then.

Over the last 10 years you have helped Richard raise over $95,000 for LLS, and we hope you'll consider helping us this year. Please make a donation to support our participation in Team InTraining and help advance LLS's mission.

We hope you will visit our web site often. Be sure to check back frequently to see our progress. Most of all, thanks for your support!

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