Begin...

Cycling.  Not my strong suit.  I’m actually pretty scared of it.  I love spin class – thankfully.  However, the thought of sharing the road with cars while all I have is a helmet to truly protect me from injury terrifies me.  Yes- I consider a scraped knee or elbow an injury.

As a matter of fact, it’s been this fear that has prevented me from riding anything not stationary and weighed down to a YMCA floor.  And of course the night I got back from Austin with my new found excitement to learn how to ride, I watch E:60 on ESPN only for one of the segments to be about a girl who was cycling and got hit by a minivan at an intersection.  Thankfully she survived and her story had a happy ending with her and her husband cycling through Ohio.  But still….the possibility is there, right?

OK- enough of my Debbie Downer attitude.  A very wise friend of mine taught me that when faced difficult situations, “control the controllables.”  I have to look around at what I can control in an effort to gain confidence and overcome my fear.  I wouldn’t feel confident going on a 6 mile bike ride today, but I can make the decision to start by riding the bike in my gym.  I can’t control the steepness of the hills, but I can control my training to gain endurance.   I can’t control what drivers do, but I can control where I ride.  And probably the coolest controllable, I don’t have to cycle on the road by myself; I have an amazing network of cyclists/friends that are eager and ready to help me.  {Insert cheesy smile here :D}

I can choose to hide behind my fear or I can choose to begin now.

I am at the beginning, the start line.  My start line.  It may look like a stationary bike ride in my gym or spin classes on the weekends.  Then learning how to clip in and out of the pedals in a parking lot, and eventually enjoying an inaugural ride on the infamous booty loop. 

That being said please feel free to post any comments or advice for novice cyclers below.  I appreciate the encouragement and words of wisdom more than you know!

Manifest a goal- Live STRONG

Last weekend I joined my best friend, Sandy, in Austin, TX for the 2011 Ride for the Roses benefiting LIVESTRONG.  Ride for the Roses was created 15 years ago by friends of Lance Armstrong to show their support after he was diagnosed with cancer.  The Lance Armstrong Foundation invites all of the top fundraisers for LIVESTRONG and LIVESTRONG Partners out to Austin for a weekend filled with cycling events and celebrations.

I honestly had no idea what I was getting into by saying yes.  I understood why Sandy chose to invite me and I was confident in the work I had done to help her reach her fundraising goal of $50,000 (yes that's three 0's!) for 24 Hours of Booty, a LIVESTRONG partner.  I saw this trip to Austin as mostly a thank you from Sandy and 2 early mornings that consisted of a 5k and watching Sandy bike 20 miles.  Everything else was fair game. 

I came back a new person.  The weekend was filled with moments I will never forget.  Moments that made me laugh, moments that made me cry, moments that made me reflect, moments that made me extremely angry, moments that gave me hope and made me ask- Why am I not doing more?

One of these moments came when we were getting ready to leave the hotel for the LIVESTRONG 5K.  I saw a table where you could write names on cards: "In Honor Of:" and "In Memory Of:"  For most of my life I have never had names I would've thought to list on either card , but on this day I had names to list both "In Honor Of:" and "In Memory Of:"  I chose to walk in honor of my friend Nicole, who is a survivor, and in memory of my Uncle Tony, my boyfriend's mom, and two very dear friends of mine who had lost one or both parents in 2011 to cancer.  It reset my focus on what this weekend really represented.

I will detail many of the other moments in future posts, but it's important to me to share the video that I believe was life changing for many if not all of the people who saw it at the LIVESTRONG awards dinner.

This video is from the LIVESTRONG.org website.  They shared it with us after a speech given by Lance Armstrong. 

He said- "No one loses their battle with cancer.  They simply run out of time." 

When he concluded his speech,  he introduced the video and left the stage.  When the video ended, we all sat in silence, not out of sadness, but out of pure respect to absorb an emotion.  To respond to a call to take action. 

http://www.livestrong.org/Who-We-Are/Our-Strength/LIVESTRONG-Manifesto