H140: This Is Happening

In case you thought you were done with listening to me talk about my hugest goal of the year - riding 140 miles on my bike in one day - you were wrong. Yes, it happened last year, and it's happening again this year.

Memory refresher - in 2012 I watched my sister Neva do this bike ride. She participated partly to raise money for cancer research (all contributions go directly to the Huntsman Cancer Institute), and partly to prove to herself she could. She had just recently finished all the treatments you can imagine for breast cancer, and this was a way for her to prove to herself that she could continue conquering physical and mental obstacles. I was part of her support crew for that ride, and I was glad I was there, because the ride organizers didn't have a lot of support on the actual course. I vowed that I wouldn't stand by and watch my sister do that again on her own, and determined to do the ride the next year.

2013 - two of us sisters joined Neva in the ride, and another provided road and emotional support, along with a ton of other family members. It was a tremendous event and cemented many family relationships. (You can see a video summary of that here: Huntsman 2013 .)


January 2014 - my eldest sister, Sandra, passed away after a short battle with breast cancer. In her honor, and to continue proving to ourselves that we can conquer physical and mental challenges, all of us remaining siblings are going to participate in the ride. We are Team Sandra, and besides the five of us siblings, some nieces and nephews are joining in on the fun also. You can see some fun videos about our goals here

and here.

These ones are a lot shorter, and serve to introduce you to the team. Team Sandra.

I know that most of you readers are family members, so you've seen these already on Facebook, so this post is more about a prelude to many other posts that I anticipate coming in the very near future about what I'm doing to get ready for this ride. It's going to be a different experience than last year, with different goals. The goal is tougher, which means I've got to toughen up this body that's gotten very soft in the past six months.

More to come.