Cycling 100 miles for a cancer cure, for inspiration, for Beatrice

By Joe Ritchie

Last month, I completed my Livestrong Challenge century ride in Austin, raising $7,940 for cancer research, and I do hope to keep my promise to talk about how to train for a hundred-miler if you haven’t been doing a lot of long-distance riding.

And I should answer the riddle about the column logo, ktrsd: It stands for the cyclist’s greeting: Keep the rubber side down. But before I do anything else, I need to tell you about some of the amazing people I met in Austin.

What made the Challenge such an awe-inspiring event were the more than 2,500 participants who participated in 100-, 70-, 40- and 10-mile bike rides as well as 5K and 10K runs, raising more than $2.6 million. It seemed that nearly half the riders were themselves cancer survivors. I spent some time riding on the wheel of one young woman who wore a tag identifying herself as a “five-year brain cancer survivor,” and she had a lot of company.

Like Annemiek Sistermans, a Dutchwoman living in Minneapolis who celebrated five years since her breast cancer diagnosis by riding the 1,100-plus miles from the Twin Cities to Austin on her bike. Quite a warm-up for the Challenge! “Sis” also raised over $20,000, so she earned a prized invitation to the Ride for the Roses, held the Sunday after the Austin Livestrong Challenge.

Annemiek’s brother Erik flew in from the Netherlands to join her in the Roses ride. But he missed out on her 17-day trek from the North Country to the steps of the Texas Statehouse. As for the century, Sis finished in about six hours flat, and her riding time was just over five and a half hours, a pretty brisk pace. I’ll admit to taking a bit longer than that!

Another dynamo was Laura Lehmann from New York, who originally hails from Geneva, Switzerland. Laura, a non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma survivor, was the top Livestrong Challenge fundraiser, both as an individual and with her “Oxygen” team. She raised more than $114,000 for cancer research and survivor support.

I could see how she managed it, too; as an indication of her engaging personality, she must have taken time to talk to everyone who came within 10 feet of her during the Saturday night pre-ride pasta dinner!

The ride was extremely well organized, and the spirit that prevailed at the ride, the pasta dinner, and all the other events associated with the Challenge was infectious. Lance Armstrong set the tone. His pep talks at the pasta dinner and prior to the early-morning start of the ride made everyone want to start pedaling, write their members of Congress to lobby for more research funding and go out looking for a cure for cancer, all at the same time.

Armstrong’s personal touch was evident as he went to the stage to congratulate the top fundraisers along with his three active kids, and he noticed details like the few names that didn’t get read or that might have been spelled wrong. And what an amazing athlete: Because he was training for the New York Marathon, Armstrong started the challenge day by joining the 5K run, then hopped on his bike to ride the 40-mile course. He blew by me at the 22-mile mark, a blue blur in a Discovery Channel jersey. I think.

During the Ride for the Roses, I got to drive a support van between rest stops, which gave me even greater appreciation for the volunteers who had helped during my own ride a week earlier. Riding the century was an emotional event, too. Shortly after I finished, my wife Louise and I called our friend Beatrice in Washington, whose own fight with metastasized lung cancer inspired my ride and fundraising effort. Beatrice was touched by our call, and our conversation underscored to me what a great idea it was to participate in the Livestrong Challenge.

As for those tips on preparing for a century, they’ll just have to wait until next month after all. There was just too much to say about the inspirational Livestrong Challenge.

For information about the 2007 Livestrong Challenge, go to www.livestrongchallenge.org.