It's a family affair

What's 100 miles, you might be asking yourself

100 miles is:

The amount of free towing I have with my PlusAAA membership
The distance between Storrs, CT and Brattleboro, VT (give or take)
The furthest distance from which your food could come if you adhered to the 100 Mile Diet
A Bad Company song and an NWA song

And it is really far to ride on a bike.

This past Saturday I rose at 5:00 am after a craptastic nights sleep to head off to ride my bike 100 miles. I didn't have to ride 100 miles. That's the part that needs to be emphasized, I chose to ride my bike and finish what felt entirely impossible at many points.

WHY?

Why would a sane (I know many of you are shaking your heads going, you're not sane) person choose partake in an event like this.

For me the answer is many fold:

The Fitness Angle . . . it's not just your body

I like being fit. It improves my attitude. I also enjoy new challenges to my fitness and athleticism. For the past few years, I've been running 1/2 marathons a feat I truly never imagined. Around February, I registered for the VT marathon, but I had to bow out of running it due to a foot injury. The idea of not exercises did not rest well with me, so I went back to my old stand by the stationary bike. Then as the Prouty approached it seemed like a great alternative. I needed to have a goal something to focus on and to actualize. When have concrete goals I'm able to of positive a mind, body and soul and to approach life more balanced. I tend to suffer from extreme syndrome, either I'm completely dedicated to fitness and eating healthy or I'm just way off the wagon sitting in the corner hugging my running shoes as I eat a half-gallon of ice cream. It's not a new story, it's my constant struggle. The battle to be level.

There's also something to be said for pushing yourself beyond where you truly thought you could go. Thus, biking 100 miles.

The Cancer Angle

I hate Cancer. Seriously hate this fucking disease.

Cancer is mean and it is indifferent.
Cancer doesn't care how old you are.
Caner doesn't care how many people love you.
Caner loves to grow and strip you of your strength.

While I know chemo is a successful treatment for many to fight cancer, chemo is also brutal. And if the chemo doesn't make you sick the drugs you take to stave off its side effects usually do.

Having watched people endure the ravages of both cancer and chemo, the physical pain of riding 100 miles doesn't compare. For the physical and the psychological agony of the ride have a concrete and definite end when you cross a finish line. For the Cancer patient even remission is not the end. There's the unfair yet constant fear of cancer.

The images of real people

And the ride was painful. After about 80 miles I had to dig into the deepest depths of both my physical and mental perseverance. With about 10 miles to go, I had tears streaming down my face and was screaming aloud that i just wanted it to be over. To me at that moment it felt like the ride was never going to end. My body wanted to just stop but there was no way that my mind was going to allow that to happen. At that moment I thought of my father and the more painful moments of his life with cancer and how much he fought to have just one more day. I thought of our friend Katie whose life was cut and ravaged by ovarian cancer. I thought of Daniella whose brave battle against cancer left behind two young victims. I thought of Andrew enduring everything that could possibly go wrong.

As grave as these images are, they were what I needed to push through for my pain. It reminded me that my pain was temporary and a choice. None of them had chosen cancer but they had all risen to the occasion with every ounce of energy to fight for their lives. The least I could do was finish a 100 mile bike ride.

(me at the finish line)

The Fundraising Angle

Last year I biked the 50 mile ride at the Prouty and just wrote a check for $125 fundraising pledge. Initially, I contemplated just doing the same this year. I don't like asking people for things well anything. I'm told often and by more than one person, I'm quite difficult to help. My decision to actively fundraise was a very conscious one. It was to force me into doing something that i wasn't quite comfortable with. I mean who likes asking people for money, not me. I started with sending out a few broadcast messages on Twitter. Thought I'd give this whole Social Media for Social good thing a try. It didn't seem to be making much of a difference, so I started to send a few direct messages. The responses were of course, but my donations page didn't change too much. Somewhat discouraged, I put up a message on Facebook and sent out a mass email. With those two simple messages, my donations began to flow in. I followed these up with another email, some broadcast tweets, some DMs and a few more Facebook posts.

fundraising for newbs

In the sense of traditional fundraising this really required very little effort on my part. The biggest and the most donations resulted from my emails. And I only sent two. These were to people who I know and who know my family. My Facebook posts and Tweets were about neck and neck in donations. But all of my efforts resulted in a landslide of kind words, much praise and inspiration. The lovely Phil Campbell even wrote up a little blog post about my efforts.

Through all of my effort and with your dollars, we raised an amazing $1865.00 for cancer research and patient services.

Now, of course, all of this has me thinking of how I could do it better and what I would have done differently to have capitalized on social and giving aspects of the internetz. If I was really good, I'd have some screen captures of my twitter stream and FaceBook. (I like to leave room for constant improvement.)

What now . . .

We arrived home on Sunday and I registered for the Hartford Half Marathon. And on she runs, on she blogs, on she goes . . . .

R came home the other day, well yesterday really, and was singing, "Harry Potter, Harry Potter. Ron Weeeeeasley, Ron Weeeeeasley. Snape, snape severous snape." Now if you know R at all he was singing this incessantly and without explanation. Finally, with nerves frayed, we asked him what the fuck it was that he was singing. There's a possibility that we phrased that question a bit differently when we posed it to him but we certainly asked that question to each other.

He explained that it was a part of the skit that he was going to be performing at camp. Our reaction was "Oh, OK." Then slowly over the course of the evening we learned more part of the skits. As each part was revealed we wondered aloud about what this skit was based off of (poor grammar). Finally around bed time, it was revealed that his counselors had told the kids to check youtube for the skit, but been a bit sketchy about how to search for the video. Don had initally told Robert no when he asked to search for it concerned for what we might find. I decided to skip the Youtube search and just do a Google search of all the stuff Robert was reciting (over and over and over again).

Here's what we found