Why I Ride - 2014 edition

It is that time of the year again where it seems like all I am doing with my free time is setting up training rides, recruiting new riders, motiving teammates, spending hours in the saddle training every weekend, organizing fundraisers, and pestering family and friends for donations.  Sure, I may have MS, but why all the intensity? (What is MS you may ask?  Check out this primer)

The biggest reason is I want to have as many healthy, active years with my family as I can beg, borrow, and steal.  There is ample evidence that exercise helps with MS by improving mood and cognition, reducing fatigue, and improving fitness.  While there is no proven genetic component to MS, I would love it if my kiddos only encounter with MS in their lifetime is through me.  Keeping an active and healthy lifestyle is one of the only tools I have to try to control my disease.

I ride for these two bozos.

It has been just shy of 6 years since I was officially diagnosed with MS.  My first encounter with the disease put me in the hospital for a week.  I slowly lost feeling and strength on the right side of my body to the point where even walking was a challenge. A round of steroids, a month off work, another three months of recovery put me back in the healthy column.  Unfortunately, my next relapse was less than a year later.  On the one hand a blessing - there was an official diagnosis with accepted, effective treatment.  On the other hand, as my extremely practical neurologist put it - that with the severity of my first two relapses, gender, and age, I most likely had primary progressive MS, but that only time would tell.

 To say this was a wakeup call would be an understatement. The cliche is you always take your health for granted until you don't have it, which was as true for me as anyone.  The next two years were very difficult as I finished up my postdoc all while wondering if the other shoe would drop.  I was lucky to enroll in a drug study, so I did not need to disclose my condition to my insurance company.  But what would happen if I got too sick to work?  Luckily, I have a tremendously supportive partner in Ali. Together we've been able to rearrange and plan our lives to the point where the future is not so terrifying.

At the 2013 Bike MS150.

So far I have been very fortunate. The drug treatment I have been on for the past 6 years (and the foreseeable future, as MS has no cure) has been very effective, with no relapses since my initial diagnosis.  I have been healthy and active, but I know that this won't always be the case. So this is why I throw myself into Bike MS every year.  I ride because, for right now, I can. I will never be a great or even a good cyclists, but I truly enjoy the ability to do it right now.

Through my team the Penultimates, we mobilize riders and provide a platform for everyone, regardless of ability and skill, to learn how to do long distance riding.  Over the last 3 years our team, composed of over 50 different individuals, has raised over $70,000 for the MS Society - a feat that I could not have done alone.  Through the efforts of many friends, family, and fellow teammates we can accomplish a feat greater than the sum of its parts. 

So if you have the desire and means, please help me in my fight against this disease - any amount will help.  You can donate right here at my rider page.  It is hard to sustain the generous giving from so many for so many years in a row.  I am so appreciate of all that have donated to me the last few years and I appreciate all the support you have given me.  I look forward to many more years of health, but I want to know that I did all I could while I could.  Cheers!

Day 2 - the test!

Normally the second day is the true test.  The test of your commitment to doing the ride, to further abusing your body.  Everyone on the team was feeling the effects of yesterdays ride, except me.  And I was rearing to go!  I usually am on the slower side of our team rides, so I was looking forward to any edge I had in finishing today.

The assembled Penultimates!

Domo power!

The second day of the ride has always been my favorite.  You first wind your way gently uphill through some truly spectacular scenery, winding through lush farmlands and villages, past a mission church, ending up at the top of the hill surrounded on all sides by magnificent red rocks illuminated by the morning sun.  After a long and exhilarating downhill ride you end up in Chimayo for one of the best rest stops of the ride hosted by Napoli coffee with delicious coffee and cookies.

Shortly after the first stop, the ride split and the long ride headed out on a 6 mile uphill ride to Truches.  It is not an easy or forgiving ride but amazingly we had 13 riders complete the long ride on day two!  It is a six mile slog uphill with the grueling hill made worse by two distinct sections of 10% grade.  Total elevation gain of ~1500 ft in 6 miles.  We split up into 3 main groups, and I kept with the second big group with 9 Penultimates.  It was fun to ride as a pack and spirits were high as we rolled into Truches.  

This is the part of the ride that really intimated me when I first did the ride 3 years ago.  I still had a fear of the hill, but found out it was not as bad as I remember.  I am either a better cyclist, in bettter shape, or just more used to cycling in general.

It is a rewarding experience to be up at the top, drinking a cycletini (gatorade with a green olive in it served in a martini glass) looking over the Española valley to Los Alamos glittering in the sun on the other side of the valley over 30 miles away.  But the best part?  Knowing you have a 16 mile down hill stretch in front of you!  The top speeds I clocked on the descent was 47.2 miles per hour.  Yeah!

At the top with teammate Greg!

The second half of the ride is not necessarily as picturesque, more stark, wide open space and big skys than the lush landscape we just left.  But it was still fun, the 9 of us stuck together keeping a pretty nice pace line as we cruised toward the finish line.  As some of the riders got tired we all adjusted our pace so that we finished as a team.   It was the sense of teamwork and camaraderie that I thought was really special at this years ride.

In the final stretch!

Over the last few days there have been a series of emails to the team from various individuals expressing how much they liked the ride.  How moving it was and how much the sense of team made it fun.  This feeling of team is hard to define, but it is great and I haven't felt this since my rugby days back at Penn State.  But it was nice to share this wonderful event with so many great people!

Day 1 - The Big One

Due to a family wedding in Pennsylvania this year I was unable to make the first day of the ride.  Instead I spent the first day getting up way too early after a late night to catch a flight back to Albuquerque.  I touched down in ABQ around noon, went home and quickly loaded up my stuff and strapped Guiseppe the bike to the roof and headed off to Santa Fe and the ride center.

Our team flag and our mascot Domo!

I arrived just in time to see the majority of the team cross the finsh line.  It was great to see the team hanging together as 12 riders crossed at the same time.  That speaks a lot to how well our team gelled this year - I know that some of the riders were much faster than the rest, but they decided to all stick together and cross as a team.   And today was a tough one, we had 16 riders do the full 88 mile ride.  I personally was sorry I missed it, but my behind was pleased to sit this one out!

The Penultimates crossing the finish line day 1.

After that we had fun at our ride tent welcoming in the last of the riders.  We gathered again at the ride center later that evening for the banquet.  It consisted of a lot of hungry riders eating a lot of food.  As in the past three years, Dave Bexfield, the driving force behind the fantastic ActiveMSers website, showed a very funny and moving tale of his story.  Diagnosed in 2006, he had a very aggressive MS that quickly debilitated him.  He underwent experimental stem cell therapy two years ago and is slowly regaining much of what MS has robbed from him.  His movies always make me tear up as I feel a close bond to him.  His ActiveMSers was the sole informational site that didn't make me want to scream in terror when I was trying to make sense of my new diagnosis back in 2007.  He has such an upbeat outlook on life, and was determined not to let MS drag him down.  So it was fantastic to see he was doing so well.  If you haven't seen them, check out his series of videos part 1 (where I appear very briefly around 12:01) and the most recent part 2 as well as specifics of his therapy and why the fundraising for MS research is so important here.  Tell me you don't tear up a little watching these.

One of the neat thing is watching people new to the ride come realize how special this event is.  Many of my teammates came just expecting a nice challenging bike ride, but became very moved by the whole event.  Everyone there is touched by MS in some way, from the volunteers at the rest stops and ride center to other riders.  The feeling that everyone there is participating in something much bigger than themselves, as they truly become part of the fight against this crappy disease.  They were honored to participate in the event and already have committed to next years ride.

We finished up the night by beating the crap out of MS with a stick (or at least a MS pinata made by my teammate Chris).  We recruited kids from the ride center to take some swings until the thing split open spilling its treasure of tootsie rolls and Clif bars (it was a cycling event after all!)  I turned in early ready for tomorrows ride!

Bonus video

In case you need your fix of high adrenaline cycling adventure, here is a quick video from out last weekends ride.  Hope you can handle the excitement!

Just like the Tour de France, right?

East Mountains Ride

Today we headed out for a loop through the east mountains on a loop that was very similar to last weekends ride that I missed because I had an unexpected out of town trip. (An aside - one of the great things about being a captain is you choose the rides - I missed last week so we did it again! Bwaaa-haaa-haaa!). The route is here. Notice that the first 23 miles is all uphill, gaining over 2300 ft in elevation. Ugh...

Seven of us convened at the mouth of Tijeras Canyon bright and early and headed out old Route 66 toward Tijeras. There was a lovely canyon wind this morning which made the grueling 8 mile through the canyon seem really bad. But spirits were high as we headed off into the best part of the ride. It is a beautiful ride out there - pine forests and deliciously cool air - a world apart form Albuquerque.

It was a long one today - total mileage of 65 miles. Two weeks out from the big ride! 

At the first stop of the day - still smiling!

It's a beautiful ride!

The Dam Ride!

Okay, I admit, that joke does not get old!  Today we did the ride up to Jemez Dam, a beautiful ride north through the Rio Grande valley before an uphill segment to the dam for a nice overlook back toward the city.  We had 8 people that headed out with us (one turned off early) which made for a really fun ride.  The team this year has really grown - last year we had only 6 riders, but this year we have grown to over 17 riders!  This makes for really fun rides, with a sense of camaraderie and always someone new to chat with while you are riding.

After a rest at the top in which there was much consumption of fig newtons (the unofficial sponsor of our team in that we all seem to eat them on our training rides), we headed off on the second part of the ride back down through Rio Rancho and Corrales before hitting the diversion channel bike path to finish it up.  A total of 62 miles in a little under 4 hours.   Only 3 training rides and the big ride to go!

Look out for cows!

A wee dram for charity!

This year Ali, our fellow teammate and friend Blythe and I attempted a new fundraising strategy - we set out to do an organized event to help raise money for the MS society.  Some how we came up with the brilliant idea of having a paired scotch tasting dinner - 5 courses of food paired up with 5 scotchs from the different regions of Scotland.  We also managed to easily convince our local Scottish pub to host the event.  Things couldn't have gone smoother.

Unfortunately, the night before the big event the little man came down with some unknown illness which included a raging fever and a case of the pukeys and crankys.  He was feeling so bad that the next night for the scotch tasting Ali had to stay home with him.  Bummer.  We missed her, but our paired scotch tasting was a rousing (and tasty) success!  We sold all of the 25 tickets for the big event and we packed tightly into the back half of the pub (a pub that both Ali and I had basically lived in watching games of the last rugby world cup).   

The introduction to each pairing, as explained by the manager and the scotch master, included a mouth watering description of the food, a little history and details of each scotch, why the scotch was chosen, and what made the pairing work.  We then thoroughly enjoyed the combination over lively conversation.  Then the tables were promptly emptied by the attentive staff and the next course of scotch and food was served up.  By the end we were very full from all the food and very happy from all the scotch.   It was quite the experience!   

Personally, I have never drank my scotch with food and it was an epiphany! No one thinks twice of pairing wine with a specific dish, but never had I thought of applying the same logic to scotch.  There were many interesting flavor combinations that the food brought out of the scotch and vice versa.  

All in all a very successful and fun evening.  Through the generosity of our attendees and the fantastic staff at Two Fools, the Penultimates were able to raise over $1200 for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society!  And plans have already been laid for next years event!   If you are in ABQ hope you can join us!