Training and Checking the Boxes

The investments (donations) have been coming in quite well during the early stages of the fundraiser via the LBCA fundraiser link on our Blog, our Facebook fundraiser page and through checks mailed to us on behalf of the LBCA. Thank you so much for your support of the Lobular Breast Cancer Alliance. Our main goal of this fundraiser is to support their efforts. They are one of the very few organizations dedicated to lobular breast cancer awareness, education, research and early detection. Check out more about their efforts at www.lobularbreastcancer.org.     

We are currently at the three weeks and counting down mark until the start of our two-wheel, nonmotorized, ride. I wish I could tell you that the last few weeks of preparation has gone according to plan, but it feels like chaos right now. As with any good plan we’ve had to adjust and be flexible. I’m confident the term “flexible” will be key to the entire adventure. We’re running through our checklists, adding to our checklist, checking the boxes and finding the time in-between it all to ride. Yesterday we locked in our motel reservation and transportation from the Portland airport to Astoria, which Google says is 98 miles and just short of a two-hour drive. We should get into Astoria with ample time to pick up our bikes at the local Astoria, OR, bike shop with time to spare for a quick bite to eat and get organized for the first leg of the ride the following day.   

I hit a few Goodwill stores this morning to find some older luggage to haul all our gear to Astoria. The luggage will basically be disposable, so we will re-donate those items once we get to Astoria. Today I also stopped at our local bike shop and one of our Sponsors, Michael’s Cycles, to confirm the dismantling and shipping of our bikes. The manager is donating his time to disassemble and box up our bikes. Thank you, Jamie! He mentioned that I should also bring additional gear, like our helmets and other odd items to pack inside the bike shipping boxes to make good use of the space. Our bikes need to be shipped two weeks from D-day to account for shipping time and give the bike shop in Astoria ample time to reassemble and tune the bikes before we arrive. This now gives us less than a week to get a few rides in with our touring bikes, fully loaded with all our gear. Since we’ll be without our touring bikes for the last two weeks of training, we’ll be breaking out our old mountain bike as we continue to increase our daily training mileage. 

The apartment complex we lived in for all of 2020 in Chanhassen, prior to our temporary digs staying with our good friend Dara in Blaine, had a great fitness center with a stationary Peloton bike, treadmills and free weights. The use of the fitness center was hit or miss, with the Covid pandemic, but we did our best to stay in decent shape while the snow was falling, but there is nothing like riding pavement.

Being that we are not in our twenties anymore and our bodies don’t always keep up with what the mind thinks we can do we are slowly getting our butts in real riding shape. That’s more of a literal statement than not. The goal is not to get injured prior to or during the trip so we are being careful not to overdue it to early. Over the past month we started out with some simple ten mile stretches and then increased them to twenty miles every day. This week we’ll raise the bar to thirty miles a day and hit forty miles by the time we leave. This training mileage will be a little short of our daily average we’d like to maintain during the trip, but it will be a good starting point as we plan to continue increasing our endurance and average daily mileage throughout the trip.  

The 4,250-mile trip by itself seems like a long ways, and it is. Our mindset is to break it down to bite size pieces of roughly fifty-mile daily sections with regular stops every fifteen to twenty miles for stretching and nourishment.  Again, since we’re not in our twenties anymore, we have a clear focus to stay healthy and uninjured. With the help of two of our Sponsors, The Transformation Club, and our latest sponsor, Eniva Health, we’ve received very good advice about training and proper nutrition to increase our potential for success. Thanks Justin, Janell and Andy and all our individual Sponsors helping to make this possible.

Check out our Sponsors at Thank you! – Motch Across America.