WAM 300

This past weekend I rode in the annual Wish-A-Mile 300 bike ride from Traverse City to Chelsea. I just want to say thank you to everyone for their donations, thoughts and prayers. This weekend could not have been a success without you.

I had never ridden this many miles (about 310) in such a short amount of time(3 days). Turns out, neither have most of the people doing it. This made for some great excitement leading up to the ride. Although I was confident that I had the ability, I wasn't sure how much suffering ,exactly, would be involved.

Despite starting off on the wrong foot, with some adult beverage and 3 hours of sleep in a wet tent the first night, I felt quite good for the first day. It was 103 miles and very hilly from start to finish with an average of 19.8 mph. I thought for sure this would take its toll on me for day 2 so I ate unhuman amounts of calories only limiting the alcoholic kind. Oh, and I guess Ferris State is a "dry campus". Or so the cops tell us. Ridiculous right?

Day 2 started after another night of sleeping too few of hours on the ground and being woke up prior to 4 am by a thunder storm. Still managed to feel better than the first day for 116 miles of flatter terrain with an average of 20.5 mph, about 40 of which were without drafting a group. Things were going well. Only one person from our group had to bail on the ride after being admitted to the hospital for dehydration/exhaustion. Only about 4 flat tires in our group as well. Not bad for a group of 87 riders over over 200 miles!

That evening our ride leader told me that the faster riders would take off a little later in order to allow all of the group to meet up at the last rest area, and ride in together. So my friend Dale and I woke in the morning to see that most everyone had taken their tents down and were looking ready to go. They ended up leaving earlier than planned leaving us in the dust. We had to hustle for about 25 miles before catching them as they rolled out of a rest stop. After that I started to have a pain in my left quadricep that I had never had before. It progressively worsened with each pedal stroke and by lunch time was impossible to ignore. I decided to take advantage of the massage therapists at the lunch stop thinking this would help. It did not. So I went on to again try to catch up to my group, but soft pedaling. I ended up catching them again as they were rolling out of another rest area. At this point my leg was on fire. Fortunately the group was just cruising easy, so I could get by just pedaling with one leg.

At mile 87 for the day, we reached what is called the silent mile. I was told by more than one rider from last year that this was their most painful and favorite mile of the trip. The same holds true for myself this year. The silent mile is a seemingly endless stretch of road with a star on the shoulder for each person on the ride who has lost someone. I cannot describe the experience of seeing all of those stars with pictures of children on them.
Two of the guys in the group have lost their daughters, one very recently to cancer. So we stopped and had a moment at the side of the road, All 87+ of us. Again, in cannot describe the power of this experience, but lets just say that my leg became the last thing on my mind and I was glad to be wearing sunglasses.
Any ache or pain any of us felt was of no consequence in comparison with what some of these families have been dealing with. I can only imagine and feel very fortunate.

Our ride is over now, but the memories and emotions and friends I made will be with me for much longer. More importantly, 250 more wishes will be granted because of the donations made through this event. A wish gives a sick child something to look forward to and plan for, creates long lasting memories, and gives their families a break from the difficult day-to day reality. It must feel awesome to have complete strangers do something so caring for your child. So again, thank you to all for your donations, thoughts and prayers.

Interesting to know that the WAM 300 is the largest Make-A-Wish fundraiser, not just in all of the 58 nationwide chapters, but in the world. All the riders and recipients are from Michigan, home of the country's worst economy. We raised 1.52 million dollars from this event alone. Pretty cool!