Five weeks from today, Cycle for the Cause will be done. I’ll have ridden from Boston back to NYC over the course of three days and I’ll be exhausted but ridiculously happy. With the ride coming up so quickly, I’m in the big push to train and complete my fundraising.
Fundraising has gone well so far this year. I cleared the minimum amount, $3,000, before the end of July, which is awesome. I’m so thankful to everyone who donated to help me clear that amount. It’s a big load off my mind to know that I’ve made the amount that must be made so I can do the ride. I’ve still got fund raising to do though because I want to clear the $4,000 mark. In three years I’ve never managed to clear that mark and I want this to be the year to break that barrier. If you can help with that, please visit the online donation form and help me roll past the mark.
My training hits its cresendo on Sunday, September 9 as I ride in the NYC Century Bike Tour for the first time. The NYC Century offers rides between 15 miles and 100 miles. This is the first year the century has felt far enough away from the Boston-to-New York ride that I could do it. As you probably guessed from its name, this century takes place within the NYC city limits, making it one of the only urban century rides in the country. The route I’ll be on basically goes around the perimeter of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx (sorry, no Staten Island on this ride). If you’re interested, you can learn more about the route here.
Training overall has been less this year, but yet I feel like it’s been strong training. I was out a couple weeks ago on a hot/humid day and still made good time and stayed appropriately hydrated and fed (though I did complain a lot on some of the hills). Yesterday I was out in rainy weather. Cycle for the Cause happens rain or shine, so a little rain didn’t seem like a good reason to not ride. I went out to Nyack with Kip. The rainy ride was good, and kinda fun, until I hit something in the road on 9W just a couple miles away from Piermont and lost control. It was my first bike accident since Memorial Day 2010.
It was a weird accident too. I almost regained control of the bike twice before I lost it all together. As I was working to not wipeout, I did manage to yell out to Kip so he’d stop before he went around a curve. I scraped every limb to some degree. My left knee got the worst of it (as you can see at left). My right forearm also got some good scrape, though nothing like the knee. There are smaller abrasions on both hands, my right leg and my butt.
Once on the pavement, I bounced right up and got me and the bike out of the road. Kip checked the bike and I checked the wounds. Luckily he travels with a bandanna and that made cleanup easier. We ultimately finished the Nyack ride (that’s a tad over 60 miles), had our usual baked goods at Bunbury’s (where I was able to clean up and tie the bandanna around the leg to keep road grit out of it) and got back home by 12:30.
The overall cleanup was not nice. Everything stung. Today the leg already looks better, but the stinging is sometimes intense. Hopefully it will be mostly healed by next Saturday as there is riding and hockey on the agenda.
Meanwhile, I hope you, wonderful blog reader, will consider a donation to Cycle for the Cause. Great work will be accomplished with your dollars… and it will make my training scrapes feel more worth while too. Donate today, please! Thank you!
