You might think it's really hard to cycle over 500 miles from New York City to Niagara Falls, but it's actually not.
Really hard is finding out that you or someone you care about has cancer. Really hard is making decisions about treatment. Really hard is dealing with the side effects of chemo, radiation, infusions, and surgery. Really hard is seeing the physical and emotional toll cancer takes on both the patient and their loved ones. Impossibly hard is saying good-bye to someone taken too soon by cancer.
But through all that pain hope can be found. Hope comes from revolutionary new treatments that improve quality of life and outcomes for cancer patients. Hope comes from medications that maybe can even prevent or cure cancer. But those kinds of revolutions can only happen through high-level research, and that research is in constant need of funding.
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Me Me ME!
I am so deeply grateful to the two dozen or so people who have stepped up in just the first 10 days of my ESR fundraising campaign. Due to a technical mishap, my total raised is overstated by quite a bit and it will be corrected, but I've still managed to raise around $3,000 in that short time. Another $500 and I'll have hit my minimum and be cleared to ride in July 2024.
Having completed this event in 2022, I know what's in store for me, and I therefore know what it takes for me to deal with it in relative comfort: fitness. At the end of ESR 2022, at 47 years old I was in the best shape I had ever been in as an adult. Encouraged by this, I continued riding throughout August and September, trying to take on challenges when I could, including climbing to the top of Bear Mountain in Rockland County, NY. Summer seemed to extend into mid-October, but in the blink of an eye, El Nino arrived and brought with it lots of cold and rain. Usually, my retreat would be to the indoor trainer and the virtual cycling platform, Zwift, which I'd using since mid-2020. But this time, things were different. Life got complicated. There were medical crises in our immediate family that shifted our focus to getting through the days. The trainer never came out of the closet, and I just stopped doing anything. I kept telling myself that tomorrow would be a day I could get going. Tomorrow turned into next week, which turned into next month. Before I knew it, 8 months had gone by. Between no physical activity and my bad habit of stress eating, I had gained 18 pounds and lost all my fitness. It was very depressing.
I did finally get back on the bike in May, but it was difficult to get any consistency back, and fitness takes time. My jumpstart finally came when I did 24 hours of volunteering at ESR 2023. Seeing my friends, watching them ride, and cheering them on not only made me lament not going all the way to the Falls with them, made me determined to ride again. In August, I started controlling how much I ate and started a six-day a week exercise regimen. Slowly, but surely, the pounds are shedding I'm now 2/3 of the way towards my prior weight and the strength is coming back, too. These will get me to a base line of fitness necessary for the more challenging work of training that begins shortly after the new year. I'm enjoying the discipline of getting at it every day, my clothes fit again, and I feel better. I'm looking forward to embracing the process.
July can't come soon enough.
by Harry Marenstein on Sun, Nov 12, 2023 @ 11:08 AM
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