Racing to Save Lives

Welcome to my Team In Training home page.

I'm training to participate in an endurance event as a member of 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 lymphoma and myeloma from taking more lives. I am completing this event in honor of all the individuals who are battling blood cancers. These people are the real heroes on our team, and we need your support to cross the ultimate finish line - a cure!

I've decided to reach out to you via email, in hopes of raising the funds I've committed to while using the least amount of paper . So, the first item to follow this introductory note will be my personal fundraising letter.

Then, if you would like, I'll take you with me on this amazing journey; training, meeting the honorees who are living with Leukemia and Lymphoma and eventually completing the 100 mile bike ride. Thanks for your support!

June 16, 2008

Dear friends,

I’m writing to let you know what is occupying my mind and body these days and to ask for your support. I have joined the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s Team in Training, an organization dedicated to curing Leukemia and it’s related cancers – Lymphoma, Multiple Myeloma and Hodgkin’s Disease, and to improving quality of life for patients diagnosed with these diseases and their families.

You know how life is……….you’re cruising along, attending to your responsibilities and pleasures, when there is a convergence of events that propel you in a direction that was neither on your short nor your long range map, and what else can you do but accept and embrace.

I have been volunteering in a Headstart class, playing with 3 and 4 year olds and teaching them a little about bones and hearts and lungs. Jeffery is a devilishly cute little boy who is smart and creative and comfortable with adults, having spent much of his time in the company of healthcare providers. Jeffery has leukemia. He loves to build with leggos and one afternoon, while the other boys were making airplanes, he asked me to help him make a hospital bed with wheels to go in the hospital room that he had made. No wonder. He has spent a considerable amount of time in the hospital, getting chemotherapy treatments, and also being kept in isolation when the chemotherapy has left him temporarily without the resources to fight a potential infection. Twenty-five years ago, only 5% of children diagnosed with leukemia survived. Today, 80% will live thanks to the research funded by projects like Team in Training. Jeffery’s mom says that he wants to be a doctor. With our help, his dream will come true and he’ll be caring for patients with a wisdom that only personal experience can give.

My neighbors, Mary Jane and Paul, are avid bikers and devoted Team in Training coaches. Being no nonsense people, they challenged me to step up to the plate, join Team in Training, support the goal of curing leukemia and related cancers, and ride 100 miles (in one day, that is). Their answer to each of my “I just don’t know if I can” worries,…..."You can.” They are supportive and generous and they live right next door so they know when I’m slaking.

So here I am, turning 60 in January, full of gratitude that I am healthy, looking out at a world that needs so much help, and wondering what I can do, and the opportunity seems to have found me. I am committed to raising $4,200.00 and oh my goodness, do I need your help!

I'm hoping that you will be thrilled to be able to contribute online, right here, on my fundraising page.

Thank you so much for supporting me.

Rebecca

July 6, 2008

The training is well under way and I have some catch up story telling to do.

Our 1st ride was on May 24th. I blissfully thought that it was on May 31st until my neighbor Paul came to the door to find out why I wasn't included in his list of registered participants. With little time to prepare, I assembled my most stylish biking wear. On a cold, drizzly (of course....) Saturday morning, I arrived at the designated spot sporting sweat pants borrowed from a friend who is considerably shorter than I, my green wool winter gloves, my dirty white gardening shoes, and thankfully, a rain jacket lent to me by my neighbor Mary Jane. I was introduced to a group of fit, spandexed bikers who must have wonderful parents because they had perfect manners and not one roared with laughter at the sight. I'm sorry that there isn't a photo. We took off on a 15 mile ride and the entire pack was out of sight in an instant. I mean just gone. WOW! When I finally pedalled in, bedraggled, the coaches all said, "great ride." Yah, sure...............

Saturday, May 31st -

In the morning I rode back and forth twice on a bike path that is flat as a pancake; boring, but 30 miles. In the afternoon I had my first bike gear shopping trip and came home with - you guessed it - spandex. It turns out that hours perched on a small hard bicycle seat is problematic and that the NASA grade, strategically placed, spandex bike pants padding is a life (well, butt) saver. I asked if they carried some kind of music stand like apparatus that I could attach to the handle bars so that I could study spanish grammer while riding. Eyeing me incredulously, the very nice young man said, "It's really better if you watch the road." In the evening, on, the way to the Crosby, Stills and Nash Concert, I parked at a restaurant in a space that was dubious but close and while backing out I tore loose one side of the bumper. So, I make an effort to ride 30 miles but I'm not willing to walk an extra 30 yards. Ridiculous. And expensive, by the way.

Tuesday, June 3rd

On Tuesday evenings the local team members ride through Howarth and Spring Lake Parks to the senior community of Oakmont where the roads are wide, the drivers slow, and where we always see deer and wild turkeys. Tonight I had to stop and shoo a mother duck and her four ducklings out of the middle of the road and I thought, that duck family is actually quite like us; our coach Mary Jane is teaching us how to ride as a team and we are doing our best to emulate her and pedal as fast as we can to keep up.

If anyone wants to go for a ride, it's a good one and I'd love to join you.

Saturday, June 21st

There's something new in the way of bike gear every week. This week, my big knobby tires have been replaced with "slick" (non-knobby) tires, which will, I'm told, make it easier for me to propel my heavy bike. This would certainly be good being that today's 35 mile ride directions included the word "mountain" (Sonoma Mountain Rd, that is) and that it was hotter than hell. We reviewed climbing at the base; how to pedal, and especially not to look more than 5 yards ahead because you just don't want to know that the road keeps rising forever. Personally, I've been distracting myself by conjugating verbs in spanish; hago,haces, hace................I was so spent by the time we rode back into the park in Sonoma that I could hardly lift my leg to get off my bike. We potlucked in Sonoma and listened to the personal stories of 4 Honorees (people living with a diagnosis of Leukemia, Lymphoma or Myeloma) Each ended with a thank you to all of us who are raising money to find a cure . In an instant my struggle with that mountain paled beside their battle with cancer and I felt honored to be helping.

June 28th

The ride was cancelled due to the poor air quality from smoke. I now have a "camelbak" It is a bladder that fits into your backpack and holds 2 liters of fluid (endurance formula Gatorade). From the bladder comes a tube that hangs chest level and gives you easy access for drinking. When not in use, I rinse it out and hang it over my kitchen sink and it looks just like an enema bag.

July 5th

Yountville. A georgeous ride with spectacular views and a viscious hill to climb on another hotter than hell day.. Fabulous. We practiced "pacelining." Think geese flying in formation. If you ride close enough to the bike behind you, clearly a risky procedure when performed by a group of novice bikers, that bike blocks the wind and cuts your workload tremendously. Leading is exhausting so you only do it for a short time and then drift to the back of the line to recuperate while the other members of the team, one by one, take their turn as lead. Pacelining is teamwork at it's best and when done well, it is as awesome as a precision dance routine. With 5 miles to go, the mountain behind us and the faster riders way ahead of us, the road flatened, we hit headwind and my legs were DONE. Maryjane took the lead, I tucked in behind her, head down, concentrating on her back tire and the constant steady rotation of her pedaling, and she brought me home.

Thursday, July 10th

More paraphernaliaI - biking gloves. The palms are padded and they are fingerless. I've been nervous about Saturday's ride so I squeezed in a 2nd after work ride this week, by myself. On the way home, with most of the ride behind me, my hands were hurting. I looked down and discovered that I was wearing the gloves upside down, the padding to the sky, protecting absolutely nothing. Pathetic.