First of all, I want to thank everyone who has given a donation, joined my Facebook support page, or even just given me a shout out or RT on Twitter for my 2010 Pan Mass Challenge fund drive. Without that support I wouldn’t be able to keep slugging away at this day-by-day.
I’m regularly getting up to 300 miles a week in mileage over the past few weeks.Last week my knees starting aching, particularly my left knee. I tracked it down to riding without knee coverings in the spell of cold weather we were having. For several days we never got out of the 50s and we didn’t get above 60 degrees for almost 2 weeks. Also, in doing some research, I followed suggestions to raise my saddle and focus on keeping my leg movements as linear as possible. After following that protocol for a few days the pain is almost gone. The other physical setback was having some kind of allergic reaction to pollen that must’ve been blown into my eyes during some extremely windy (and chilly days) – 5 days and most of a box of Benadryl later, my eyes weren’t swollen shut. What was weird was that I had no other symptoms: no runny nose, sneezing, or respiratory issues. I’d like to avoid this next year if possible.
Fundraising-wise we’re doing pretty good for starting the effort about 2 months ago. We’re over the 50% mark and there are some corporate donations slated but there have been a few frustrating issues. This is the Pan Mass Challenge but the majority of my donations have come out of state, courtesy of my very kind and supportive friends. I’d like to see more donations from Massachusetts, particularly the Berkshires where I live but I’m having a hard time figuring out how to get people to convert. These are people who will most likely know someone who has gone to Dana Farber for treatment or who would seek treatment for themselves there. It’s great that there’s over 170 people in my Facebook Support group but its strange that we’re not seeing some people that we know pretty well and who we know have the resources haven’t joined the group or made a donation. OK, so perhaps you can’t give, literally, just a few dollars this year but why can’t you join the group? I get a lot of invites to groups and I join most of them but some of these people aren’t reciprocating – and this is for a serious charity effort.
Alright, so I apologize for venting a bit. On the whole I’ve been incredibly overwhelmed by the support I have received and genuinely surprised by whom has helped me, some with multiple commitments – it really almost pushed me to tears on several occasions. It’s been great to find out more about people, how they’ve been affected by cancer, and to make this connection with them. I hope to be able to provide similar support for everybody who has helped me when I get the opportunity to do so. It’s kind of a strange way to find a way to be optimistic about life and people but that’s probably a good part of why I got involved in the PMC. If you’ve signed up to help me this year, thank you so very much, you are incredible.
