Back on June 7th I participated in the 19th annual Trek 100 Ride for Hope for the 3rd time and 2nd year in a row. It was fantastically organized as usual and and was lead out by Lance Armstrong for the 2nd year in a row as well. Needless to say his presence attracts more people but there is a strong following year after year from the locals and many cyclists around the country. The ride participant total was capped at 2, 800.
I rode in the 100k option with the father of one of my old high school buddies and his fraternity brother from back in the day at Illinois. We had a great time, they are pretty serious riders so the pace was reasonable to fast throughout. The weather also favored us, it was sunny and in the mid 80's for the entire ride, a nice change from the two heavy storms that engulfed the ride last year and caused several accidents.
One of my favorite parts of the ride besides the beautiful scenery are the rest stops. The Trek 100 staff do an amazing job at getting the locals involved and at all 5 stops there was far too much food, gatordade, and water for us to consume. Unlike in previous years at the end of the race i did not hit a wall although I was still very tired. I'm not sure my exhaustion was so much from the ride or having had been awake for 12 hours by the time 4pm rolled around. I live in Chicago so I made the 1 hour 45 minute drive the morning of to make the 7:30 am start.
I had a great time and i encourage all of you to come out and participate next year, it will be on June 6th in 2009, for the 20th annual Trek 100 Ride for Hope. I'm sure the 20th anniversary will bring a special twist to an already exciting, inspiring, and exhausting day.
Just to let you know how important this ride is to childhood cancer and blood disorder research the MACC Fund (Midwest Athletes Against Childhood Cancer) which puts on this event has raised over 7.2 million dollars over the last 19 years and this year alone $688,433 were raised. I myself was able to raise $315 for this great cause and I hope to significantly raise the bar next year. Thank you very much to everyone who contributed.
For those of you who might be inclined i would like to start a team for next years ride. I am going to enlist several of my fraternity brothers and hopefully my father and his friends who ride as well. Riding with a group of people always makes it more fun as you all know and it would be fun to to take a crack getting near the top of the list in team fund raising.
I was able to get one good picture of the event, no action shots could be found. While I spotted several people taking pictures along the route there is only one professional photographer who seems to have posted anything and he only took a couple hundred shots of the 2800 people on the ride, needless to say I was disappointed.
maccfund.org
No comments:
Post a Comment