Pedal The Cause-20-21 September 2014

Fellow Descenders –A long overdue email on September’s Pedal The Cause event. A summary on a great ride for cancer. The event was amazing. Extremely well done. Over 800 riders and they raised $1 mil for cancer research in San Diego!

Representing the Descenders were Jeff Langley, Rob Verfurth and yours truly. We also had two women join the team who do not ride with us weekly but were great additions. So 5 riders total.

The two day event had multiple courses and our goal was to do at least 75 miles each day (85 mile option which we did on day two). The route started at UCSD and ended north east of Temecula at a campground called Tuculota Ranch. We started out fast and hammered through Torrey pines and across Carmel Valley Rd to El Camino real. The group was fast and we had Marci and a few other really strong riders. From ECR we went onto San Dieguito and eventually caught up with the lead group. That did not last long as we dropped at the del dios climb up to Escondido. I had planned on doing 150 miles over two days but was cut short on day one as I had to pedal home midway through to attend a funeral for a family friend who died suddenly. Ironically it was lung cancer (diagnosis only 2 weeks earlier), so made the ride even more poignant. All totaled I rode 127 miles. Rob logged 170 miles and Jeff 160 miles. Some amazing people and survivor stories; they also had Bob Roll (former TdF rider and funny guy) as a guest speaker at the dinner (which had lots of great wine) and we slept overnight in a tent city in Temecula.

For me the highlight was riding up Rainbow. As Rob, in his orange survivors helmet, passed another rider who exclaimed “great I am getting my ass kicked by a cancer survivor.” I guess he did not see the Descenders jersey….

Our small team did extremely well with both the ride and the fundraising. We finished 9th overall for all Friends and Family teams and raised $19,200!! THANK YOU. The donations from the team were a huge part of the success. All in all just a great weekend for a truly great cause with a very simple and audacious goal “A World without Cancer”.

I have attached some pictures of the ride.

NOW for next year we will be fielding a team again. This year we will be riding in honor of our own Tony O’Gorman. Giving new meaning to the term Fighting irish, Tony who is currently battling prostate cancer is still logging miles and setting PR’s. Tony has committed to ride the event and possibly lead us in some Saturday night hydration. So what we need is to get some Descenders committed. So far we have a team of three – Rob, Tony and I. Our goal is to double our efforts from last year. That means 10 riders and over $38K raised. I am confident we can do this.

To sign up for the event, click the following: http://sandiego.pedalthecause.org/register.jsp please make sure to sign up under the Descenders team.

Please join Tony, Rob and I for this great cause. It will be epic!

Best,

Dave