Tour de Fox – Check – Michele Across America

I had a great time riding in the Tour de Fox – Wine Country event this weekend! I rode the “petite” 10-mile route. For me, that’s usually a warm up. After all, I’ve ridden 36 centuries this year. Those 10-miles were some of the most gratifying I’ve ridden, though.

The Tour de Fox is a ride to raise awareness and funds for Parkinson’s Disease research and I was privileged to ride along side a friend who has early onset of the disease. She has been riding for a few months now to prep for this ride which had a couple of pretty good hills in it. Her goal at first was to just finish alive. Check! Once she gained confidence, the goal changed to finishing in an hour. She actually finished with a personal best on the route of just over 53 minutes! Check! So proud of her!

As usually is around these parts, it was a perfect morning to ride. It started out chilly, made it to the mid seventies by ride time and hit the high eighties by the end. Good thing we finished when we did too. The temperature rose to over 100 degrees F by mid-afternoon. Ugh!

The event raised over $600,000 for Parkinson’s research! Happy to play a small part.

Next up? I am planning to do a now annual, 24-hour challenge. I guess 2 years in a row makes it annual. Right? I participated in the Great Cycle Challenge 2017, which targets pediatric cancer, when I did my cross-country ride in June. It ran concurrently with my Bike the US for MS efforts since it is a virtual ride that automatically tracks your miles. I didn’t talk about it too much because my main cause was MS research. I did raise $1000. for GCC, though. September is Pediatric Cancer Awareness month so in 3 weeks, I will be continuing with GCC and co-sponsoring the first ever Molly Widner Courage Ride to raise funds and awareness for Pediatric Cancer Research. Only 4% of all cancer research dollars are directed towards pediatric cancers and it’s my hope to increase that. You’ll hear more about the ride coming up.

Today, though, we celebrate Pam and her team P-Cubed…Pamela’s Parkinson Pack!