Here I am, ready to ride to the start of my ride with the awesomest outfit ever. Bought my knee warmers the night before only to discover they didn't go up high enough - so glad I had them though!

I just wanted to say thank you again! With your support, I was able to complete a 103 mile bike ride with 9,000 feet of crazy climbing, and many people with blood cancer received your support. Although my ride is over, cancer is not, so please keep this cause close to your heart - it's never too late to donate.

Thanks again!

Read more about my season.

Read more about my event.

Thanks to all your generous support, I have far surpassed my fundraising minimum! I am so overwhelmed and thankful for the outpouring of support my donors have provided the past three years. I believe I have now raised over $10,000 for LLS! Because of you, more patients will receive the financial, emotional, and practical support they need, and more treatments and hopefully cures are coming down the pipeline.

If you missed the deadline, it's not actually too late to support. My fundraising page will be open at least until the end of October. You can still help sucker-punch cancer until it no longer exists! (And then kick it while it's down.) Thanks again!!!

I was on vacation this past week but came home early for our "dress rehearsal" training. This is the hardest ride we will do in preparation for our event: 78.7 miles and 7860 feet of elevation gain! I know most of you don't live in the Bay Area, but we climbed the classic Three Bears, Wildcat Canyon up into the Berkeley Hills, Grizzly Peak, and the super steep Elysian Fields, among others. The first 40 miles of the ride included over 5,000 feet of gain - boy were they tough! My whole body was physically exhausted. I felt so much better last week on our ride that summited Mt. Diablo - not sure if I hadn't been properly fueling or training during our vacation, but something caught up to me!

At our SAG stop at mile 61.4, my coach asked me how I was doing. "I'm tired," I responded. Somewhat facetiously, as we talk about this all the time, he told me to think of all those cancer patients undergoing treatment. That is, after all, the reason we put ourselves through this torture. I really can't say I enjoyed much of yesterday's ride. But we finished, in just over 8 hours. If we really push ourselves, we will be finishing the Gran Fondo (102.4 miles with 9207 feet of gain) just before the 10 hour sweep. I hope I feel better and fuel better on race day so I can actually have some fun! In the mean time, I'll just keep thinking of the cause. Thank you so much for supporting such a wonderful one!

(The poor picture quality would be the result of me using the phone camera while climbing up a big hill on my bike.)

Yesterday's ride was billed as the one that would show us we were capable of our event rides. My ride was 67.4 miles with 6250' elevation gain. It was amazing! We started on the coast in Half Moon Bay, headed up a 10 mile climb through the redwoods along Tunitas Creek, rolled over some more hills into Pescadero, and enjoyed beautiful coastal valley views the remainder of the ride. Unlike previous rides, I didn't have a stretch somewhere in the middle on semi-flats where I felt like I had run out of energy. I really enjoyed the entire ride, except various pains in my body, like my shoulders, and well, my bum. We tried to minimize time off the bike and finsihed in just under 6.5 hours. This puts us just barely under the pace we need to maintain to finish the Gran Fondo by 6 pm (10 hours), at which time the sweeper van comes and removes people from the course. I will do everything possible to finish the event! Hope it's just as gorgeous as yesterday's ride!

It finally happened. I got my clipless pedals just a couple weeks ago, and towards the end of the team ride on Saturday, I tipped right over at a light. Scraped my knee, bruised my quad, and bent in my handlebars, but luckily my coach was able to unbend them for me. It wasn't nearly as bad as I had feared! Hardly hurt at all, even my ego. I'm not sure exactly what happened. I had stopped once short of the light, unclipped, and removed something from my front tire that was annoying me. When I started going again I discovered a teammate right in front of me. I think I had inadvertently clipped in, because when I went to stop behind her, I tipped right over. The scariest part was that I tipped over into the traffic lane - luckily no one was close behind me, but boy that sure did make me bounce back up as fast as possible! Then I finished a 60 mile ride with over 5,000 feet of gain in 90 degree plus heat with no shade. What a day.