First I want to say Thank You to all of you that supported me in this fight against cancer. Together we raised $3251 that will go directly towards helping others win their fight. The team I am part of raised a combined total of $50,517. The LiveStrong Challenge Philadelphia was a huge success. Roughly 5000 participants raised over 3 million dollars.
I kicked off my weekend with a warm-up ride through Valley Forge National Park. Nothing much just about 10 miles with a few friends but it was a great opportunity to see the Valley Forge National Park. Later that night I attended the fundraiser awards dinner. Because I reached the fundraising goal of $3000 I was invited to the fundraising awards dinner hosted by Lance Armstrong. The dinner was very inspirational and motivating especially when you heard all of the stories. Like the group of fundraisers from Calgary Canada that not only raised huge amounts of money for the cause, they also paid for many current cancer patients to be flown to Philly so they could attend the challenge. As if that wasn’t enough they rode their bikes from Calgary to Philadelphia to participate in the challenge. Yes you read that right; they rode their bikes all the way from Canada to Philadelphia. There was also this story about a dedicated doctor in Harlem, Dr. Freeman that has dedicated his life to helping the poor get the proper care and treatment so they too can have a chance to win their fight against cancer. And the list goes on.
Ride day. I had the honor of riding with so many great people. Some cancer survivors, some care givers, some riding for their brother, mother, father, whoever but all were riding for the cause. Many shared their story with me as we rode and some cheered me on when they saw the survivor tag on my back.
By now most of you are probably thinking well did he finish the ride or not? I did NOT complete the 100 miles. I was true to my word though and rode until I could no longer pedal. Here is the short story. At around mile 60 I started to develop pain in my left knee. I continued to push until around mile 75 when the pain on each stroke became unbearable. I finished the last hill with pretty much my right leg only. I was really disappointed because other than my knee hurting I felt pretty good and knew that I could make it all the way if I were not injured. The LiveStrong organizers put all of the riders that didn’t make the course cut off in time or were hurting on a bus and drove us within 2 miles of the finish so we could ride across the finish line and complete the ride. Of course this was optional, you didn’t have to finish if you didn’t want to or were hurt. I chose to ride the last 2 miles and don’t even want to go into how bad it hurt but in the end I did finish my ride. Not the full 100 miles I had planned but I did ride about 80 miles and climbed 6000 feet.
Thank You once again for everything.
LiveStrong,
Jason
Jason
