Family News: Bike MS 2010 Day #1

Bike MS 2010 Team: Big Poppi Pedalers

Before telling you all about the adventure that Amy and I experienced at this year's Bike MS, I would first like to take this opportunity to thank all of you that donated to this event and helped us support this cause. Your donations are greatly appreciated and will make a huge difference in somebody's life! If you haven't donated to the MS Society please consider it as one of your charities. If you would like to know more about MS and the MS Society please refer to the following website:

http://www.nationalmssociety.org/index.aspx

Day 1:
Saturday started off with excitement and anticipation of the challenge at hand. It had been a year since we had been at the now familiar Seaman Middle School in North Topeka. It was nice to be there again and to see familiar faces. We were most recognized as the people with the Rans bikes, but hopefully in a year or two they will know us by name. Amy and I chose to ride the 67 mile route which we felt might be pretty difficult considering our lack of time to train this year. The ride is very well supported with SAG stops every 9-10 miles, so we decided to just take the day 10 miles at a time and see how many miles we could do. The weather was strange fluctuating from cool to warm and back to cool throughout the day. We checked in our long sleeves at the first SAG stop 9 miles into the ride and would later regret that decision. The first 30 miles seemed fairly easy and we cruised into Rossville Kansas (half way) confident that we could finish all 67 miles. As we ate lunch and visited in Rossville there were some reports of bad weather hitting Manhattan and that the storm was moving toward Westmoreland, heading our direction. All morning you could see dark clouds to the North and as we headed out of Rossville it felt as if the storm was right over us. We heard some thunder and felt a few sprinkles but nothing really nasty developed. As we continued to ride to the east we approached the road where we were supposed to turn north. There was a SAG vehicle at the intersection instructing people to continue east and head directly back to the school because the weather was really bad to the north. The detour would shave 10 miles off the ride, but it was necessary as we could now see lightening off in the distance. I was really surprised that we had avoided the rain with the way the weather had moved in on us but finally with 6-7 miles to go it opened up on us. It poured so hard that we could barely see where we were riding. We continued to soldier on through the downpour and just as we turned onto the road that ran in front of the school the rain stopped. It felt great to cross the finish line knowing how tough of a ride it was, especially in the pouring rain.
Shortly after we finished my Mom rode across the finish line as well. She completed the longest ride she has ever done (57 miles), and she did it on one of the toughest routes we have ridden. I am so proud of her for her strength and toughness, both physical and mental. She cried tears of joy, relief, and I would guess a little pride as she crossed the line. I can relate to those emotions, they were the same ones Amy and I experienced when we finished the ride last year.