Click Here for Gallery of El Tour de Tucson 2008 Photos




Late in the afternoon on November 22, 2008, I pedaled my way over the finish line for El Tour de Tucson XXVI, completing 109 miles of bicycling that I'd started by crossing the start line at five minutes after 7 in the morning, a couple thousand riders already starting ahead of me in those five minutes. I finished nine hours and thirty-two minutes after I started, in 3,487th place out of the 3,814 riders who completed the entire 109 miles.

Click here to read my transcribed voice posts from the day of the ride for more detail.

It was my third century ride in slightly over a year, and the second year in a row I've ridden El Tour de Tucson - and in many ways, the two rides were like night and day for me. The weather was equally gorgeous and tame, starting in the low 50s in the morning and topping out in the mid-70s. But my training had gone very differently, and my riding habits were very different as well.

I still had more strength in my core from working on it in the spring while preparing for America's Most Beautiful Bike Ride in Tahoe in June, and although it wasn't as strong as I'd hoped, it did help me take fewer and shorter breaks instead of having to nurse my back every hour or so. I had also learned a lot of valuable lessons during last year's Tucson ride about feeding myself constantly, hydrating myself effectively with electrolyte powder, putting on plenty of sunscreen, getting a good night's sleep beforehand, and wearing shorts with thicker padding... so I never had a moment like last year's where I felt like I was simply too exhausted to finish the ride.

On the other hand, I missed a lot of training rides this fall. Between the weather, greater demands on my time at work, and other issues, I just didn't work as hard to get my legs strong. And I felt it, but not for a while, and not nearly as badly as I expected. For the first several hours, I really felt great - I had some trouble climbing hills, but my riding was otherwise strong and efficient, and I was very glad to be out there. As I alluded to in one of my voice posts, on more than one occasion I thought the rest of my teammates were ahead of me when they were actually behind me, and vice versa (we were just stopping at different rest stops, and hopping over each other, basically). I wasn't doing too badly by comparison, though I knew the effect would worsen at the end of the day when they had more steam in reserve than I did.

Nevertheless, when I realized I had overestimated how much it would affect my overall time on the ride, and I actually had a shot at finishing earlier this year than last, I knew I had to seize the opportunity. All of my teammates had passed me for good by this point, but that was fine. I knew my training had been subpar, and unlike last year the cyclists on the team who were weaker than I had dropped out a couple of months ago, so I knew that one way or another I was almost certain to finish last; the only question was how far behind.

So I hammered my way through those last fifteen miles, especially - with my knees starting to hurt from the exertion, and beginning to run low on my last bottle of Gatorade (or so I thought, anyway; as it turned out, I still had one more packet of mix buried in a pocket somewhere). And at this late stage of the ride, with the police actually stopping us to let suburban automobile traffic through, I was forced to channel my frustration at those stops and renew my efforts.

But it paid off - just as our route took us onto the downtown flats that begin two miles from the finish line at the Tucson Convention Center, I felt my phone vibrate, and I checked to see that Coach Kurt had sent me a text message: "How are you doing, sir?" The rest of the team had finished, and had obviously had time to gather themselves and their thoughts together long enough to wonder just how far behind I was. So I answered him the best way I knew how - by powering up the flats at 20mph, rounding the corner, and finishing the damn ride. This time, Mom and Dad were both there, as was my old friend Mark, and it was a relief to get off the bike, check in, and get my medal.

So I finished this year four minutes earlier than I had last year - but my bike's computer registered a ride time of 7 hours and 32 minutes, meaning it took me about twenty minutes longer to do the actual 109 miles of pedaling. As I'd planned, I made it through with fewer and far shorter breaks, which more than made up for the slower biking and accounted for getting me across the finish line sooner.

But another thing I pondered was this: Last year, I started in the back of the Gold group, which meant I crossed the start line pretty quickly after 7am. This year I started with the rest of the team (minus Anna and Peach, who were shooting for gold medals) in the Bronze section, and we didn't cross the start line until 7:05am. If our ankle chips were scanned at the start line when we actually crossed, then my ride really took nine hours and thirty-two minutes; if on the other hand they were all set with a default start time of exactly 7am, then the time it took me to bike the 109-mile route was really nine hours and twenty-seven minutes, and I shaved nine minutes off my time. Naturally, I sent an e-mail to the organizers to ask them which it is, because I'm just that obsessive - and the answer came back this morning that the start time was 7am for everyone, meaning I actually shaved nine minutes off my time. Woohoo!

(Not officially, but whatever.)

The victory celebration was a nice turkey dinner, just like last year's, and this time instead of feeling burned out from too much sun, I just had trouble using my knees. To my pleasant surprise, the next morning I was getting around just fine, and my knees have been great ever since. My back had trouble on the flights back on Sunday, and then went into full spasms on Tuesday, but I've fully recovered from that now. Last night was bike pickup, so my bike is now back in its rightful place in my apartment's entry hallway.

I even got a very nice e-mail this morning from Team in Training, asking if I would be a mentor or fundraising captain again for the spring/summer season, as I did this past spring. But I politely declined this time, because I think I need a season off - several months during which when I bike, it's because I want to. I made sure to let them know I'd be available as a fundraising resource if they needed me, though.

Which brings me to the final point, and the reason I was doing this in the first place: So far, friends, family, colleagues, and complete strangers have sponsored me for this second El Tour de Tucson ride to the tune of $14,774, which will go to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society to support its missions of blood cancer research, patient support, and lobbying efforts. I'm very grateful for everyone's support! Still, it's not quite 75% of the way to my 2008 goal of $20,000; and in fact it's still short of my total from last year, $15,395. I would really love to top last year, even with the economy in its current state.

If you haven't made a donation yet, there is still time. There are even a few miles left open that you could sponsor retroactively with a $109 donation (see the sidebar to your right)! Click the link below for information on how to give by credit card or check. Please also feel free to share the information with your friends and family if you think they would be interested; I'm perfectly happy to have strangers sponsor me if it'll help the LLS find new treatments and cures. Thank you for reading, and for supporting my ride and this important cause!

Click Here to Sponsor Me

Just a quick note, since I have to be in court this morning...

My bike has been on its way to Tucson on a truck with many other bikes, since Friday evening.

I've been doing crunches and planks to work on my core so that it's strong enough to support my riding 109 miles.

You wonderful people have sponsored me to the tune of $13,047 so far!

And very early tomorrow morning, I'll head to Tucson myself via American Airlines, with the TNT group.

The ride is Saturday.

Stay tuned, and thank you for all your support!

Click Here to Sponsor Me

I've been starting slowly with the fundraising e-mails this year, but the first batch of them (and my fundraising page [click on the link below]) have told a little bit of the story about what Mom has been up to this year, referring to it as "a different kind of fight." Although she's been in fairly good health for the last seven years, Mom's leukemic lymphocyte count reached levels early this year that led her doctors to start treatment notwithstanding a lack of other symptoms.

The treatment has been a sort of "chemo plus," a treatment that was not available at the time of her diagnosis - and was developed by researchers supported by the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society with donations like yours and mine. There are "rounds" of treatment, generally a week at a time with three weeks off in between, and Mom's doctors anticipated anywhere from four to six rounds of that four-week cycle.

The great news is this: After three rounds of treatment, and a few false starts over the last few weeks concerning a possible fourth round, Mom's Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia has been judged to be in remission!

Now, this isn't a "cure," but it's remarkable progress and wonderful news for Mom and for all of us. She's been taken off all dietary and lifestyle restrictions that were placed on her during the treatment, and she's looking forward to just living her life as she sees fit for a while. It's more than likely that somewhere down the line she'll have to go through more treatment, but that's a long way off - and in the meantime, we're going to try to help her enjoy every minute.

We're also going to keep doing everything we can to help win this fight for her and for the tens of thousands of other people battling blood cancers. In the first several days of fundraising, with only a small percentage of my planned e-mails having gone out already, my wonderful friends and family have already come through with $2,040 of my $20,000 goal for this year's El Tour de Tucson. I'm training on my bike two or three times a week, and I'm going to ride it 109 miles on November 22 - I hope you'll join me by making a gift to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society to sponsor my ride. Every gift of any size is wonderful - and if you sponsor me for at least $109, I'll dedicate an entire mile of the ride to you for each $109 you give.

Thanks for sharing in our great news, and for keeping tabs on this here blog!

Click Here to Sponsor Me

I haven't posted in several months, and there really have been things I should have been posting about. For the fall season, I was just another rider for TNT; this spring I have been the Fundraising Captain for the NYC chapter of TNT, helping about a hundred riders raise money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society while they trained for the Montauk Century (now already two weeks past) and America's Most Beautiful Bike Ride, this coming Sunday in Tahoe. Together, as a team, they have raised nearly $700,000. I think that's pretty fantastic.

Oh, right, about this coming Sunday. I'm biking another 100 miles on Sunday. I've been training again, though my schedule (now that I have a good job where I'm pretty happy) hasn't allowed the same level of training as I had in the fall (at least not bike training). Plus, this ride is hillier. And at a much higher altitude. But here I go nevertheless, flying out to Reno via Salt Lake City early tomorrow morning, and Sunday I'll be riding 100 miles through the hills around Lake Tahoe. Many familiar faces will be with me; fellow Tucson riders Larry, Paul, and Sal are now mentors, fellow rider Steven is now a training captain, Coaches Matt and Gregg are again coaches, my "other mentor" Kurt is going along as "just" a rider this time, and my mentor Kathryn is now the Mentor Captain for all the team's mentors.

And I'll be live-blogging the ride again via voice post, just like I did for El Tour de Tucson. So feel free to follow along right here on Sunday, June 1, or check in any time after that to read what the ride was like as it happened.

There's a difference this time. After seven years of "watch and wait" with Mom's Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia, she started treatment in early May. She tolerated the first round of treatment itself pretty well, but ended up in the hospital for several days last week with an upper respiratory tract infection - which ironically meant the treatment had likely worked too well, given its effect on her immune system. She's got two more rounds coming up, and the next one actually starts while I'm on my way back from Tahoe on Monday. She's a brave, strong woman, but I know she appreciates any and all support she gets from anybody, so if you have a moment to think of her this month, that'd be really nice of you.

When it comes time to ride El Tour de Tucson again in November, I will once again be asking you for your donations, and I'll be asking you for the most you can give. But riding as a Captain this weekend means I don't have to raise very much, though I am paying my own way as far as airfare, hotel, etc. If you are inclined to make a donation to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society in honor of my ride this weekend anyway, I do still need to make it to $500, so I'd be grateful - please feel free to contact me via e-mail at beeeejesq at gmail dot com for information. (But I do ask as a favor that you not forego sponsoring me for Tucson this fall in favor of Tahoe now.)

Anyway, Mom's got the hard part. I'm just riding my bike. Thank you for all your support.

The brutally hot weather today convinced me to put in a couple of extra hours at work, and skip the core (non-bike) training scheduled for this evening in Central Park. I can do some sit-ups and lift the cats for a while in the comfort of my air-conditioned apartment after I get home tonight.

It also gave me some time to think about my goals... and here's what I think.

When I did the Boston-NY AIDS Ride in 1995, I committed myself to raising at least (I think) $1,500 for the cause. It had been a long time since I'd done any kind of serious fundraiser like a bike-a-thon, but I had a lot of friends and family, and I knew that if I put my mind to it, I could reach them all and convince a decent percentage of them to help out. I ended up raising about $5,200, which pleased me deeply. Not because I could pat myself on the back for my fundraising fu (though as I was just beginning to learn, I did have some game where that's concerned), but because clearly there was a need out there, and I was touching that need within the people I spoke to.

Twelve years ago, though, I really hadn't heard of any other massive events like that one where you really had to spend months getting ready.

As I continued by doing the far less strenuous AIDS Walks after moving to New York City in 2000, I gradually became aware that other big events were cropping up: The Komen Three-Day Walk for breast cancer was one, but what I started hearing most frequently was "Team in Training." Friends of mine who'd never done any fundraising or had any serious athletic pursuits were training to do marathons or triathlons...!

Moreover, raising money started to get harder, especially when I switched to the Light the Night Walk to raise money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society following Mom's decision to "come out" as a leukemia patient. I knew more and more people, and could spread my reach farther when it came time to ask, but more and more of them had other friends who were doing Light the Night, or who were doing far more impressive things like triathlons or three-day walks, while (however important the cause) I was still doing a four-mile walk. And of course, my own friends who were doing those triathlons have a lot of the same friends I do, and people had to make choices about where their money went.

The real surprise came last year, when I contacted one old college friend who'd done a couple of Team in Training events, and asked her to sponsor me for Light the Night. She told me that she wasn't sponsoring anybody else's pursuits this time, just her own. I can understand that inclination, given that A) everybody has the right to budget their own charitable dollars, and B) she, like every other Team in Training participant, had committed to raising a rather large minimum (at least a few thousand dollars), and if she could get herself closer to that goal with money she might normally have sent elsewhere, and it was going to the same cause anyway, why shouldn't she?

On the other hand, not long after, she unironically sent me a request to sponsor her. :-)

With all those changes, with all that demand on everbody's charitable dollar, I guess this isn't going to be easy. But like I said in an earlier post, this is supposed to be difficult - I'm doing it because it's difficult. And I need to set a fundraising goal for myself that is, commensurately, a real challenge - a goal I have a legitimate chance of failing to reach no matter how hard I try. I'm going to do my part by riding my bike 109 miles through the desert, but I'm going to ask you all to pitch in as well, at a level beyond that which I've asked before.

In order to participate in El Tour de Tucson, I had to sign my name to commit to raising at least $4,400.

For the Boston-NY AIDS Ride in 1995, I raised $5,200.

At the height of my fundraising for the AIDS Walk in New York City - the one year my father didn't participate, and I was able to ask all our family members to sponsor me - I raised about $7,000.

This year, I'm going to raise one hundred dollars for every mile I'm going to ride my bike. I'm going to raise $10,900 to benefit the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

Stay tuned as to how you can help.

My bike suffered a minor injury during its last ride, before vacation; half the left pedal broke off. That's not too bad for a bicycle I bought almost exactly twelve years ago to train for the Boston->NY AIDS Ride; other than having to replace occasional tubes and chains, it's done fantastically well for me. In any event, the bike shop near my apartment (Larry & Jeff's) says they should be able to repair it within about a half hour of my bringing it in, and I should be able to bring it in either tonight after work, or tomorrow night on my way to the Thursday training ride.

Yup, it's time to get training in earnest for El Tour de Tucson. Tomorrow evening at 7pm, El Touristas (or at least a subset of us) will be riding a few loops of Central Park. Then on Saturday, we're going to do a truly interesting morning ride - along the Hudson River from the Staten Island Ferry all the way up to Fort Washington (Bennett Park, at 183rd Street) on the West Side Bike Path and back. It shouldn't be any more grueling than Central Park, but it is further - probably close to 30 miles total.

I also got an e-mail from the NY TNT office today, announcing a contest... whoever raises the most for El Tour de Tucson via their website in the next week wins two round-trip airline tickets. I understand they want to get people off the dime, given that every rider has committed to raising at least $4,400 - but it's early June, and the ride is still over five months away. I'm not really sure I want to be bugging people this early - not least because I'm going to be contacting most people at least three or four times. I just got done bugging them about the last Light the Night Walk in late October or early November, and there's much to be said for letting people recover from all that pestering... especially since I'm going to be asking most people to raise the bar and give more this year to reflect my own larger commitment of time and effort.

Plus, I haven't gotten my website set up yet. :-) But that, I could probably do to my satisfaction in an hour or so. I just think it's too early. Not that I do these events for the potential prize incentives, but I do hope they run a similar contest later in the process.