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Racing
Against
Diabetes
Foundation, Inc. |
REPORT ON THE 2006
RAD TEAM AT THE RAAM
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Racing
Against Diabetes |
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Oceanside
Pier—the start!
We made
a lot of new friends—who promise to train together for the race against
diabetes.
Atlantic
City Boardwalk! We made it! |
Stopping
for a photo at an exchange in Colorado.
. . .
Patty climbed it; Terry is supposed to be asleep. Yup, those are undies.
How can
we ever thank our crew enough? We
guess they’ll have to do the RAAM with us as their crew! |
Next
up? The 2007 Tour of America: We
bike-raced the Race Across America (RAAM) in 2006 as a two-person team—but
didn’t get to stop and talk about preventing diabetes. So beginning June 10, 2007, Patty will
race the RAAM solo from Oceanside CA to Atlantic City NJ, to get attention
for Racing Against Diabetes, and because she’s crazy enough to try it. Patty
will definitely need your help cheering her on during the RAAM! Then
Terry will drive and ride back across the country and stop to meet everyone
he can, and talk about preventing the diabetes epidemic. He also wants you to join him for a short
ride—and maybe finish with a sprint?! We think
it’ll get a lot of people a chance to learn how to prevent the epidemic—and
it’ll get a lot of teams started.
Publicity won’t hurt, either—we have to start a revolution! We’re
doing this to get you and everyone training for the race of our lives, the
Race Against Diabetes. We want to
convince everyone to start racing against diabetes. For more info about the 2007 plan, click
on Tour of America '07. |
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’06 RAAM: Oof! We’re glad we made it, and we’re glad
we’re done! We’re sure what the
toughest part was . . . . It wasn’t
the 36-degree ride at night in Arizona, it wasn’t the climbing in Colorado,
and it wasn’t the 50- to 70-mph crosswind in Eastern Colorado. It wasn’t Terry’s need to check his blood
sugar 25-30 times per day. It wasn’t
even the Midwest heat or the downpours or the steep Allegheny hills. It was the giant RV we rented! The darned thing shook so much we couldn’t
sleep in it while it was moving—which had to be nearly all the time. (Poor Rod, our Crew Chief, got almost no
sleep because he had to constantly move the RV up the road for the next rider
exchange.) The high point of the
RAAM had to be meeting people. We
need to go back to every town we went through, to talk to folks more about
the race against diabetes, and get everyone to start family teams. ____________ |
Report on the ’06 RAAM
from Terry and Patty: We completed the bicycle Race Across America (RAAM) on June 23,
2006 as team Racing Against Diabetes in 11 days, 19 hours, 14 minutes!! We
even set a record in the over-50 "mixed" two-person division (who
else is crazy enough to attempt the RAAM)!! So we made it in under
the 12 day cut-off --despite the desert
heat, the 36-degree cold overnight ride west of Flagstaff, 70 mph winds that
blew Terry completely across the road, a downpour on Patty with a tornado
ahead in Kansas (of course-- what would
a race be without those?), lots and lots of climbing, some climbs in the
Alleghenies so steep we had to get off and walk, thrilling descents (some too
thrilling). Terry got the
pig farms; Patty got the cattle trucks and flame throwers (they were putting
down new asphalt using a machine with flames coming out from under it). Terry got the late night shift and
saw a lot of deer up close, including one that circled behind him and missed
him by a foot!! Patty got
the early night shift and saw the full moon rise and, once across the
Mississippi River, zillions of fireflies rising out of the grass on either
side of the road. We also saw a
lot of night critters scurrying for cover, one fat toad looking square at
Patty, the road covered with caterpillars, many tortoises, snakes, lots of
birds, rainbows, and interesting cloud designs.
The scenery was awesome--Monument Valley, the Rockies, the lake
around Cuchara Pass in southern Colorado, and impressive rivers. We think we missed a lot of gorgeous
scenery at night, but the amazing bike lights NiteRider provided us kept us
safe, and sure illuminated everything around us and down the road. NiteRider was one terrically generous
sponsor! We're sure the
hills in West Virginia were lovely, too, but even riding them in daylight all
either of us remembers are the steep rollers and more rollers. Our crew did a terrific
job! Rod Lorang, our crew
chief, drove the whale RV and kept us all going. Bob and Laurie Guthmann kept great track of Terry
and his blood sugar. Judy
Quinn and Pete Masiel took great care of and inspired Patty. And Judy's daughter, Jesica, drove the
"off" follow vehicle when it was not being used. Patty's high school classmate, Greg
Hartman, joined us across Kansas and helped drive so crew could sleep. In spite of that, our poor crew still
had very little time to sleep. They
were busy taking care of us, our bikes and our three vehicles--two follow
vehicles and the giant RV (whale) where we ate, tried to sleep, and used the
bathroom. The riders got first
dibs on the bathroom, and our very dedicated crew had to use bathrooms at gas
stations and time stations, and got very few showers. One highlight of the trip
was in Greenville, IL, where Patty's former student had three motel rooms
reserved for a few hours--thank you, Joy! We were so exhausted by
the time we got to Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania, we don't remember much of
the ride, except that it was long rollers and more rollers. Terry does remember riding through
Gettysburg, though—he says it was very moving to see everything the way it
was 150 years ago. When we finally made it
to the Delaware River we had to wait for a police escort in order to cross the
Delaware River (gee, we'd crossed the Mississippi, the Ohio, the Missouri,
and the Monongahela without one). We'd
raced in shorter pulls to get to Atlantic City in time, so when we arrived,
we were . . . ah, very tired (an understatement).
Unfortunately everything had to be sorted out and packed into
the two follow vehicles--five bikes, four sets of spare wheels, a couple of
big coolers, and all the gear we all needed to get back to San Diego. Patty gave up and went to sleep while
Terry and the crew worked. At
the awards banquet that night we each received a medal and a terrific wood
plaque for winning first place in the two-person mixed division (since we
were the only ones in that division-it helps to plan what race to enter). Our crew all took off,
and the return trip for all of us was a
continuation of the adventures we'd had. We had to drive both follow
vehicles back to San Diego. Terry's
brother, Ron, flew out from Casper, Wyoming, to Philadelphia to help us get
as far as Casper. We drove
up to meet him in Philly--and managed to drive both cars under the motel
canopy. Yup--you guessed it. Wiped out two bike seats, thought we'd
dented the frame on Terry's Klein wonderbike, and tore the front part of the
bike rack off one car roof. The
other car had a slow leak in the tire -- it'd been punctured somewhere in the
boonies from constantly driving on dirty highway shoulders. We took the tire to Pep Boys and met
two terrific people. The tire
couldn't be patched, and it took Bill an hour of very hard work to get the
spare out from under the car and mounted.
His mother has diabetes, and he refused to accept any payment for his
work! Laura, the assistant
manager, who has a friend who's lost his feet from diabetes, told us to go see
her Cousin Eddie who would fix the roof for free.
But it took so long to get the tired fixed, that Cousin Eddie's
was closed by the time we got there.
From Chicago we drove to
Council Bluffs where a former student (and head of elementary p.e. for one of
the school districts) had reserved a room for us. Then on to Casper, Wyoming.
On the way Ron got sick and in Cheyenne he was in agony. We
don't know if it was food poisoning along the way, or whether it was flu that
his mother-in-law had while we were staying with her in Chicago. Anyway, he threw up so forcefully that he
tore his esophagus. He wanted to be
driven home, where his wife is an ER nurse. So for three hours Patty drove as
fast as she could and stopped whenever Ron needed to throw up. He was
thrashing around in the passenger's seat from the pain (we didn't know about
the torn esophagus until later, but the thrashing around made sense after the
diagnosis). Poor
guy--he was in the hospital over
three weeks! One
moral of the story is, if you have to throw up, do it daintily! --Another has to do with eating at [to be
named later] . . . . We must have gained 5 to
10 pounds driving home. The only way either of us could stay awake was to eat
constantly and drink diet pop with caffeine.
We haven't thanked our crew enough, if we ever can, and we haven’t yet
thanked the kind people along the way (like you--sorry!). But grateful—and lucky—we are indeed! Thank you, team!! (That’s big “T” Team, too—all of
you!) We met a lot of diabetics, friends
and family of diabetics. Four little kids each gave us a dollar of their
vacation spending money because they were impressed by the race and our
cause. A group of elderly people in
somewheresville were gathered for supper and listened to our message about
exercising and diabetes. One woman in Missouri wanted to know what we were
doing and was so impressed she gave us $5.
At a gas station in Wyoming on the return trip a man came over and
thanked us for what we were doing. He's
been Type 1 since age 6, is blind in one eye, has a kidney donated by his
brother, and also got a pancreas transplant.
We've got a lot of work to do.
When we got home, a neighbor across the street (an intelligent,
educated guy) wondered what all the ruckus was about; his brother became
diabetic a few years ago, and he didn’t realize type 2 could be prevented--he
just thought he was doomed to get it!
Guess we need to get to work on spreading the message of
preventing diabetes!! |
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