After hearing time and time again over the last few years from friends and acquaintances that they had taken up cycling, how great it was, and that I should take it up, I finally gave in and bought a road bike at the beginning of this year.
After a few months of taking a casual ride once a week with friends, followed by coffee, I received an email from a friend asking if I would be interested in riding 830+ kms (516+ miles) to support a great cause – the Oncology Children’s Foundation (OCF). My first response was “You’ve got to be kidding!!!” This was after all me he was asking – the guy that got “passively inactive” as a teachers comment on my Form 5 Physical Education class report at school! This was only the kind challenge an athlete would even consider doing!
After thinking about it for a while – by a while, I mean a few weeks – I decided to read a bit more about what the OCF does. OCF is an Australia charity dedicated to finding cures for childhood cancers that have the lowest survival rates. Heart breaking stuff with horrific statistics. Childhood cancers are the leading cause of death by disease in Australia and many other countries. In the USA, cancer is the fourth largest cause of death in children behind unintentional injuries, homicides, and suicides. In Australia, three children die from cancer every week. A very sobering and challenging reality. The good news is that medical research alone has improved survival rates from 2 per cent 50 years ago to 80 per cent today. So there is hope. After reading the statistics, and looking at my healthy children, my response to the request to do the charity ride went from “Why should I?” to “Why not!”
After committing with two other friends to do this ride, I realized I needed to do some regular training to make sure I could complete the ride on my bike, instead of in the back of an ambulance… This has meant committing to (even in the cold and rain of winter) doing a workout twice a week, and riding 3 or 4 times a week on increasingly longer rides, working up to a one day ride with friends last week of over 180 kms (110 miles) – the longest I have ever ridden in my life! Who’d a thought a year ago that this couch potato could even be contemplating this? With less than two weeks to go until the ride, I may not be a perfect physical specimen, I may have neglected my physical health for way to many years, but now I am excited and ready to take on this challenge. Ready to give it my best. Ready to keep trudging up those ascents. Ready to encourage others who may feel even less capable than I do about going on. Ready to encourage one more person to support this cause and share the burden of the kids with so much potential, so much talent, so much to live for, to fulfill the life they deserve, and beat the sickness that threatens to take all that life away.
So far I have learnt that sometimes it is the seemly impossible challenges that, if you choose to accept them, can take you to new places you never would have imagined you could ever go before! For me, I also now live with a new resolve that I want to do what ever it takes to stay fit and make the most of the privileges and blessings I have in life, and not take for granted, but fully appreciate the gift of health, friends and family.
Are you ready to take the challenge?
If you would like to sponsor my 830+ km ride to support the Oncology Children’s Foundation, click here
