grrlTravels

As it turns out I’m competitive. Well, I’m not competitive in the sense that I might win. I don’t win. Ever. But I’m competitive in the sense that I always want to win even when I’m most certainly not winning.
I rode my 22 miles at the fastest pace I could which turned out to be rather slow on account of the hills and the rain. I had my camera strapped on my back in my new little camera backpack thingy (just in case I was to see Lance at the start, which I didn’t) and at the end of the ride I thought to myself wouldn’t it have been cool if it wasn’t raining and I could have stopped here and there and taken shots of the course and the other riders and documented my 20 miles? I entertained that thought for about a minute and then burst out laughing (by myself in the car). Because I would never stop in the middle of a race or a ride, no matter how much I am not winning, no matter how much it is raining or not raining, no matter how beautiful the scenery. I rode as hard as I could and it felt good (because my legs are stronger than I had realized) and bad (because I am still slow and got passed a lot and I wished I could have ridden the 45 miles but I couldn’t). Still competitive, even when I’m not.
I had a good ride. I enjoyed it except for the part where I fell over before we ever got started. That part was embarrassing. But I picked myself right back up and then we all rode slowly in a huge pack and then the pack thinned out and then the rain started and then it rained hard and then it stopped and then I was riding alone and then it rained again and then I had half a banana and half a PB&J and some bad gatorade at the rest stop and then there was a big long hill that hurt and then it was the end and I crossed the finish line.
I’m very impressed with LiveStrong and the level of enthusiasm there was infectious and the survivors riding made me teary. It was all good. I’m psyched for next year and I’m grateful to everyone who supported my ride this year, planned as it was in 7 short days. So the ride was a win in the most important ways. Even if Lance did ride 100 miles in just about the time it took me to ride 20. We’re all winners! Even the slow ones!
Which reminds me. If you read my blog and you sent me a donation and I might not know your real name but only know you by your online moniker would you be a dear and send me an email to amy @ grrlTravels . com and let me know you contributed and what your real and online names are? Because I’d really like to thank you and it’s embarrassing that I don’t know your real name but I’ve got lots of online friends whom I always think of by their handles and it takes some real thought to get their names in my head. I’d appreciate it. A lot! Thanks! And Thanks!! It was really good to ride and think about all of the people I was “representing” through my relatives and friends and to feel connected to so many different people.

Me: I don’t think I’m going to do the ride next weekend. It’s a lot of driving to ride my bike 20 miles.
K.: Ok, if you don’t want to.
Me: And I’d only be doing the 20 mile ride, not a longer one.
K.: Ok.
Me: And we’re going home the weekend after for my next race and so we should be here.
K.: If you want to do the ride you should do it. If not stay here.
Me: I don’t think I’m going to do it.
later
Me: Lance is going to be there!
K.: What?
Me: Lance is going to be there!
K.: What? (mumbles indistinctly and closes the sliding door)
I stop and try to decide if I should rush to the back door naked to tell K. in person. Decide that it’s better to get dressed. Get dressed in a hurry.
Me: Lance is going to be there!
K.: Where?
Me: At the ride next Sunday. Do you think if I went I might see him?
K.: Definitely possible.
Me: I need to raise $250 in the next 6 days in order to ride. Do you think I can do that?
K.: Um, sure.
Me: I know that it’s weird that I want to go and see him.
K.: It’s not weird.
It is weird. Partially because I have a very yin/yang thing with Lance: admire him as an athlete, love the work he does with his LiveStrong foundation, on a personal level, well it’s unlikely that we’ll ever meet so I guess I don’t have to worry about it. Plus I feel weird going out of my way to potentially get a glimpse of a professional athlete/celebrity. Not the way I roll. But then again I really want to see him. And I’m still smarting over the whole “28 jersey” fiasco and how I was in the car when they went on sale and then they sold out and I didn’t even have a shot at one and I really want one even though I generally don’t care about things where the quantities are extremely limited and you have to jump through hoops just to own something and the big fuss is half of the business of owning it and now people are making money off of them on eBay and I won’t buy one that way because those people are the dregs of the universe and I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.
Oh fine, I’ll go potentially see him. Because he’ll be practically in my back yard and it would be a shame not to go potentially see him. Right?

Lots of people raise money as they run or race in in triathlons or bike for various causes. The Leukemia and Lymphoma society has a very active program to get people to raise money as they train for triathlons. For various reasons I am not drawn to working with LLS and so I’ve been poking around for another program. My favorite triathlon supports Susan G. Komen/breast cancer and I’ve got an increased risk for that due to a serious family history but in the end I see a lot of money being funneled into breast cancer research from a lot of very active programs and so wasn’t quite drawn to jump in.
Then one day I was poking around the internets as I sometimes do and ended up on LiveStrong. I love their mission and their services for people dealing with cancer right now. At LiveStrong they strive to “inspire and empower people affected by cancer. We believe that unity is strength, knowledge is power and attitude is everything.” If you know someone newly diagnosed one of the first places I would send them is LiveStrong. And it turns out that they have a program for cyclists and runners and triathletes similar to LLS and that one of the rides they sponsor happens to be in Philadelphia.* This got me all bubbly and excited and I decided that as intimidated as I was to try and raise money I was going to set an ambitious fundraising goal for the ride in August 2011.
And then they announced today on FB that Lance would be at the Philly ride next weekend.
So, the deal is that you have to raise $250 in donations just to participate in the ride. People form teams and there is this donation scale thing and if you raise enough money you get invited to a special event and it’s all very complicated. But it boils down to:
I am raising at least $250 in the next 7 days (with a goal of $500) to be donated to the LiveStrong foundation.
I am riding in memory of my mother Lois (melanoma), my grandmother Jessie (breast cancer), and V.’s mother Denise (breast cancer). I’ll be happy to add your relative or friend to the list—just leave a note in the comments.
If you’d like to contribute, please click on the link below to go to my LiveStrong page:

LiveStrong Challenge
If you donate to my ride I will send you (or your child/ren) a LiveStrong wristband and potentially an additional gift just from me if I get around to making them.
And dude? Let’s all Live Strong.
*Well, sort of. More like the far Western suburbs of Philadelphia, while I live miles to the East. But they call it Philadelphia on the Web site so there you are.
(Photo courtesy of LiveStrong.org.)

I greatly admire and value humility. I’m doing my best to raise humble kids and I admire humble people and if you asked me I would say that yes, I want humility to be a quality that describes me. And all of that is true right up until I’m called to be humble in a way I don’t want to be.
I was unprepared for my race. Running? Check. Biking? Got it. Swimming? Not so much. It’s fodder for another blog entry, but for some reason the part of me that was completely freaked out about swimming has been winning for months over the part of me that wants to race. Not nearly enough swimming. I was going to have to miss my race, the best race of the summer, the race I really wanted to do. I was bummed.
Then my gorgeous, magical, fabulous wetsuit arrived along with glittery rainbows and some sparkly frolicking fawns. The enchanting wetsuit made me buoyant and the buoyancy allowed me to swim and swim and swim. Not quickly mind you. But for the required half mile with tinkly little bells on. I love my miraculous wetsuit! All was not lost! The race was back on.
Almost. Sadly for me there are these pesky triathlon rules about wetsuit wearing: if the water is less than 78 degrees wetsuits are legal; if the water is between 78.1 and 84 degrees wetsuits can be worn but the wearer is not eligible for age group awards*; and if the water is more than 84.1 degrees no wetsuits at all. At the pre-race meeting it was announced that wetsuits would most likely be legal as the water temp was hovering around 81 degrees. Yay! And an unexpected bonus: the swim was shortened from 800M to 600M. Whoopee!
So I set my alarm for 5:40 and I packed my gear and I and my wetsuit went to my race. I was in transition arranging my stuff when they announced that the water temp was still 81 degrees and wetsuits would be allowed. I was happy. I milled around watching the other racers and noticing lots of wetsuits and trying not to think about when I’d have to head to the portapotty. Starting time drew near and I realized that no one else was putting on the ubiquitous wetsuits. No. One. Slowly and painfully it dawned on me that if I were to race I’d have to put on my wetsuit and if I put on my wetsuit I’d look super dorky and like a coward. And everyone would know, because a wetsuit is a hard thing to hide.
Huh. A perplexing dilemma hinging on whether I was willing to look foolish in front of 1300 women competitors. I called K. K. said, “You want to race. Wear the wetsuit.” The woman two bikes down from me told me that she was definitely wearing her wetsuit and we put them on and walked to the swim staging area together. There was no one else in a wetsuit. Just the two of us. We stuck together, making jokes and talking about how hot we were. People smiled at us, people talked to us, people looked at us. And we stood there in our wetsuits. For an hour.
In the end there were 6 people wearing wetsuits and we had to swim in the very, very, very last wave, wave 22, at the very, very, very end of the race. It wasn’t ideal. But my swim in the river was a gorgeous glide through an empty course (no getting kicked in the head!), my bike ride was a freeing swoosh on a nearly empty course, and my run was a long slog along a nearly empty road, pretty much sucking as it tends to do following more than 90 minutes of vigorous exercise. It wasn’t the race that I had imagined. And it was humiliating on some basic level. But it was good too.
Just as I was attempting to sprint through the finish line the rain came. Two sprint triathlons and one duathlon, three finishes in the pouring rain. I hugged K., ran and grabbed my bike and my soaking gear, headed to the car. As I pushed my bike to the car up a ginormous hill that is some kind of cruel joke at the end of such a race I thought about next year and smiled. I’d be back, praying for 77 degree water but also determined to have my day with the Schuylkill River sans fabulous wetsuit one of these years. Oh yes, I will.
*Hahahahahahahahahahaha. Yeah. I’m not in the running for any age group awards. Ever. Unless I do a race some day like my friend T. where she was the only one in her age group and so she won it. My kind of race actually.