Generosity

Last weekend the Shafers had one of our six, 7 hour visits to the convent in Nashville. We visited Sister Gloria Christi and updated her on our latest endeavor, riding 105 miles to help find a cure to diabetes. She was moved and decided to take a spin around the Motherhouse in their very own bike herself. It was quite the site, with Mardi Gras beads nonetheless!

Since we started this blog two weeks ago over 200 unique visitors have frequented this site and read the pages that have been created. Once again, we hope that this journey to June 27th and the ride will be a story of hope for a cure. We want everyone to realize the need for support of diabetes research.

Many of our friends and family have answered the call to give. Thank you! For many others, letters are going to be mailed next week. We appreciate everyone considering a way that they could give even in the smallest way. Fountain City Pedaler gave us a discount on some bike gear. A local print shop agreed to print our letters and correspondence cards. Generosity is abound and we can't say thank you enough!

One more note of interest...an exciting announcement about our team could come as soon as next week. All that I can say is mark your calendars for Monday, April 27th, exactly two months before the ride. A special event in Knoxville is being finalized.

The First Ride

Jessica and I got our bikes this week and set off on the road for the first time today. We successfully completed 5.5 miles, only 99.5 more on June 27th! The steep inclines in a few spots on our route today were difficult but other than that we both felt good after the ride.

This past week we tried focusing on getting all of the equipment necessary for this journey and found a great local bike shop to help outfit us (Fountain City Pedaler). They were very generous in helping us with minute questions and even a 1 on 1 training to teach us how to change a busted tire tube.

Now that we have been able to get equipped for the training, this week we are going to start actually riding and learning more about our training schedule. We think that our coach for the ride will be Tim St. Clair who ironically lives and works in my hometown, Greenville, SC. I was told by the staff at the Ride to Cure Diabetes that I will also be assigned a "diabetes coach" to help me manage my diabetes during the training. Although I have always been active, I have never done something so physical for such a prolonged period of time. We estimate that the ride itself will take us around 8-10 hours but who knows, maybe we'll get faster during the training period. Either way, we will be on the road a long time so testing my blood sugar often will be crucial. Today before our ride my blood sugar was a little high at 256 (normal is 80-120) but that is not too abnormal for diabetics after they eat (I had just eaten lunch about an hour earlier). However, after our ride I was down to 77 and obviously needed to eat. This diabetes coach will help make the ride smoother.

Andrew