Livestrong Philadelphia--A Non-Food Truck Update

Don't worry, we'll get our belated--and not good--review of Tasty Kabob up soon, but in the meantime, Awesome Wife and I have been working hard to get ready for the Livestrong Philadelphia Challenge.  We trained to ride a tough 70 miles in the hills of Pennsylvania, and here's a report on the outcome.  This is very important to us, as AW is a 4-year survivor, and this ride helps us celebrate her successes in the healthiest way possible! Much better than a gourmet meal or a vacation!

After 70 miles, 5500 feet of climbing, one terrifying thunderstorm replete with tornado warning, and a lot of fun, I wanted to provide a final update to those who are interested in the Livestrong Challenge Philadelphia.

First, to those of you who joined our team, THANK YOU from AW and myself.  We ended up raising almost $3300 to help fight cancer by supporting Lance Armstrong's Livestrong Foundation.  Knowing we had all of this support boosted our training, and made us determined to complete the ride without any walking up a single hill--and we did!.  Now, onto the story.

We headed over from our hotel to the starting line bright and early on Sunday, and the weather (if not the forecast) seemed perfect.  Partly cloudy, cool temperatures, but the forecast was for rain to start later in the day (certainly after 3 pm according to the forecasts.)  It was quite a sight--3500 or more riders were there (including Lance, and Stuart Scott of ESPN, who actually led out our group of 500 (they start you in waves.)) 

We skipped the first rest top and did the first relatively 21 miles in one chunk.  We felt great--we had previewed the first part of the course on Saturday as a warmup, and knew it would be pretty easy.  After the first rest stop came "Hill Road."  The last time we did this event (we did the 45-mile version two years ago) we both ended up walking at least part of "Hill Road."  This time? No so much.  We flew up the hill, passing people left-and-right.  We continued to ride a good hard pace and even briefly considered diverting to the 100-miler!  However, because the forecast was bad, they closed the 100-mile course early, forcing all but the very fastest to hit the 70-mile course.  The last 1/2 of the course was tough.  Lots of very steep and long hills.  There were more people walking their bikes up them than riding in many cases, but we were not going to do so, so we kept gritting it out to the top of each one, and enjoyed flying down the other side at speeds over 35 MPH at times, but then would come the next hill!  It only rained a little throughout the ride, and we pulled into the last rest stop.

We had been riding at different paces, and meeting up at each rest stop, but decided to ride the last 10 miles to the finish line together.  At the finish line, there are thousands of people cheering and clanging cowbells, photographers, a live video stream, and each survivor who finishes gets to go through a special finishing lane, with their name announced, and they receive a rose.  It's very nice.  We were riding strong (I had a small mechanical with my bike with about 5 miles to go, but no big deal), and then the sunny skies turned a little dark, and we heard a rumble of thunder.  With about 3.5 miles to go it started pouring.  And windy.  And lightning streaking the sky.  And lightning strikes very close.  And raining sideways.  And....you get the idea.  When we got to the finish line, rather than thousands of people with cowbells, there was one guy screaming "Everybody get to the gym and get inside!"  We were soaked to the skin, a little spooked by the lightning, and did as instructed.  When we got to the gym, we found out there were reports of a tornado in the area, and that several riders had passed by transformers struck by lightning overhead.  They kept us there for about an hour before letting us go, since there was a 30-minute break between storms (accurate--we drove home through the next batch).  A lot of people were stranded out on the course, and even after we headed back to the hotel and showered, almost 90 minutes after finishing, there was still a steady stream of rain-soaked stragglers making their way in.

It wasn't exactly the finish we were anticipating, but it was more memorable.  We were incredibly proud of the way we rode, and the fact that four years post-diagnosis, AW was completing this very tough ride ahead of much of the field was pretty incredible. As a sign of how much fun we had, we are already planning to get started training for our (flat) 100-mile ride in October!

Thanks again for everyone's support, and, as Lance would say, "Live Strong!"