Friday, July 12, 2013

LiveStrong Challenge, Davis + more

Field of sunflowers along the ride
Field of Sunflowers along the ride route
I rode the subject event again a few weeks ago.  This was my third time riding in the LiveStrong Challenge in Davis, CA since recovering from cancer treatments.  It was a great ride, as ever!

Tony, Kent, Jeff, and me at the finish
I rode with Kent Smith, Jeff Thompson and Tony Herz, who were training partners and we all completed the century ride (technically just over 96 miles, but we counted it as 100 due to some of the most amazing headwinds we’d ever experienced which hit us late in the ride). 

This year’s ride had lower attendance (about 800 riders) than we saw in 2012 and 2011. But I talked to more people this year - other survivors, other people riding for relatives and friends - and there were several great pace-lines we got in or led that were a lot of fun.  And we rode safe: no flats, no falls!  Yay!   My sister Ellin and husband Patrick surprised us by being at the halfway rest stop! Big fun! Then they drove into Davis to join Ginny at the finish line to cheer us in.  

The finish is a big deal. Your bike number gets relayed to an announcer who broadcasts your finish arrival to a throng of cheering people. Cancer survivors completing the event go off to the right side and are handed a wonderful yellow “Survivor’s” rose as you ride through the finish area.  This was a complete surprise in 2011, the first year Kent and I rode, and I nearly crashed because I was so ambushed by emotions!  Now, even though I know it’s coming, this symbol continues to make me tear up.  “Each tear, an honoring”, as a friend said.  I’m holding the rose in the pictures (amazingly framed in the 1st one).


Ginny: "EWW... you're all WET!"
What does this have to do with prostate cancer?  Well, it IS a cancer benefit ride, for Pete's sake.  But it also represents a return to strength following tonsil surgery, and more, what I'm seeing as a return to strength after the end of cancer treatments - which ended 2010.  Three years, almost, which would have seemed too much to take had I considered it going in.  And I am so fortunate to have survived.  This event is where I first used the word "survivor" about myself and was amazed that with it came an incredible wave of emotion - sadness, gratitude, pain, relief - a poignant, heartbreaking feeling too deep for words.  I used the word "ambushed" earlier about this, which is how I experience it. 

I talked to a guy at the gym the other day and he asked me about the trainer I use and why I'd chosen to use a trainer. It's easy: Paying her gets me into the gym. But I explained that I had gone through some treatments that were affecting muscle mass (removing it!) and that led to mentioning the big C.  And he said "congratulations" or something, to which I replied, "I don't know. A lot of the time I didn't think there was anything special or brave about it. It was just showing up so the techs could do their thing."  But he didn't accept that, and maybe I shouldn't either.