I signed up for two long bike rides this year – originally on New Year’s Eve, the Door County Century (100 miles) – and then when I invited my friend Kayla to join me for that one, she lamented that she was busy already doing the Ironman the same day, but said I should consider joining her for the 75 mile fundraiser for a cure to Multiple Sclerosis, BikeMS. I fundraised $2000 over the past several months, helped Kayla’s (and now my) team, Team CCC, hit $1 million dollars in lifetime fundraising dollars. This was the post-ride success email I sent out to the fundraisers the day after the ride, which was on August 2. Here it is for everyone else to see too.

Hello everyone – yesterday was the BikeMS ride, and I’m proud to say I completed it – and it was your donations that got me there! So thank you – so very much! My group of riders, the ~30 of us that make up Team CCC crossed a major milestone this past Monday as well – one million dollars raised by the team over its lifetime! I am proud to say that you and I both raised $2000 of that. The minimum required to join the ride was only $300 so I’m so proud and thankful to you all for helping me and Team CCC hit and surpass some major milestones to raise money for MS research.

A little bit more detail (well it’s me writing so – perhaps a lot more detail if you’re curious) about the ride. First of all, to my surprise – it wasn’t actually 75 miles! It was only 72. Broken up into 3 loops of 22, 22 and then 28 that are also easy, medium, and then hard in relative difficulty, of course the ride is designed so that people who live with MS can also participate at whatever number of loops they feel comfortable doing.

We started at 7:30 in the morning (the home base is the Ho Chunk Casino that’s between-ish of Wisconsin Dells and Baraboo) – I had already had an early morning start getting up at 4:30 and then driving the hour up to eat breakfast with the team at 6. The weather was perfectly cool and breezy, but nice and sunny – exactly what you’d hope for an activity where you’re generating your own heat via exercise. This ‘easy’ loop was indeed just that – the hills were gentle slopes up and down that would be maybe 300 feet inclines, so barely needing to change gears. All 508 riders left home base together through a typical ride ‘chute’ – each team released in the order of their total fundraising. CCC was group 5, and each team has 20-30 people in it, so we were relatively close to the front. So loop one was spent fairly closely clustered together – no matter which way I looked, I could always see at least 50-100 riders in front of and behind me. The organizers strongly discouraged headphones for safety, of course – but lots of us, including me, had bluetooth speakers or just our phones themselves out and listening to whatever inspiring music they wanted to ride to (for me it was Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories album on loop 1, and then the entire shuffled discography of Fujiya & Miyagi on the second and third loops).

Each of the loops had at least one rest stop about halfway through. Loop 3, at 6 miles longer than the previous two and by far the most challenging, had 2 stops at approximate thirds. There was no shortage of porta potties, snacks of the squeezable fruit tube variety, fresh fruit, and nuts and granola bars at each one. Multi-thousand dollar bikes were lying on their sides everywhere! Of course BikeMS isn’t for competition at all and allows bikes of any type – tandem, e-bike, recumbent, etc – there was quite the collection.

After each loop was completed (volunteers in bright blue t-shirts were always on hand at the combination start/finish line with cowbells to ring and bang on to cheer for everyone) each rider was welcome to relax, refuel with more snacks, hang out and chat, etc for as long as they want – or decide they didn’t want to do more loops, for that matter. The only request the organizers had was that each loop should be completed in order, because they only had enough volunteers to cover 2 of the loops at the time with support vehicles and manning the rest stops.

I already knew I was one of the slower members of Team CCC – I’m primarily a trail-biker on a hybrid by predilection; generally road bike events don’t interest me. Having a two month old new baby has also cramped my sleep and training ability as well! So even though CCC started out together, three quarters of them rapidly disappeared into the mass of riders and I didn’t see most of them again until the post-ride dinner. I had my Fujiya & Miyagi and beautiful Wisconsin farm scenery though so I didn’t mind being on my own. After loop one, I rested for about half an hour to cram as much water and trail mix down my gullet as I could, chatting briefly with a few other CCC riders in our shared tent who happened to be there, before heading back out.

Loop 2 was more suburban, with little diversions into cul de sacs of expensive looking Wisconsin Dells houses that may have also been AirBnBs, before going down into farmland where the rest stop, and then finally returning on the same road we went out on. The hills definitely increased for this one, but still – not bad at all for me. I got lost once on this one and saw another rider take a wrong turn too. This time, we were already getting much more spaced out vs loop 1 – instead of big masses of us there was a clump of 4-5 riders here, another clump there, and then solo riders. Being spread out meant that maybe you’d miss one of the orange, green, or blue (for loops 1, 2, and 3 respectively) colored signs. In my case, I just forgot whether green or blue was loop 2, and followed the loop 3 route instead of 2 before realizing it and turning around a quarter mile down the empty road.

After loop 2, lunch was being served at that point. As one of the “VIP” riders – something I earned thanks to all of you donors; the highest-fundraising 100 of the 509 riders were designated “VIP” and I was something like #62 – it meant my burger could also have bacon on it. Delicious. The lines were long but the camaraderie amongst all the teams was high. Most of the teams have the names of the person who they were founded by, or in honor/memory of, who had or has MS. There was very much a shared spirit of In It Together between us all. The ride has been going on since the mid 1980s and some of the riders had been doing it since almost the very beginning.

Loop 3 did bring the challenge at last! For multiple reasons: 1) I was filled with burger 2) it was now 1pm and the sun, while still not scorching, was definitely making its presence known 3) I was now tired, obviously, from the previous 44 miles 4) it was, of course, the loop that was meant to be the hardest. But I pledged to you, wonderful donors, that I would do 75 miles, so Loop 3 would be completed. I had 4 hours; they said they wanted to get the volunteers back to home base at 5. Plenty of time!

Now on the final loop, at least for the entire first third on the way to rest stop 1, I saw no more than a dozen riders. By this point, I got the feeling that the more skilled riders had already started and possibly completed the loop, and others might have wanted to wait and digest lunch a little more, and others might have decided two loops were enough. So I kind of had that route almost to myself. More beautiful farmland around Mirror Lake State Park, so thankfully at least there was lots of opportunities for shade. Some major uphills which my legs were noticing, but also some exhilarating downhills too. The second rest stop was actually inside the campground of the park, and I knew one of Wisconsin’s most famous supper clubs, Ishnala was nearby – a mere .7 miles away biking, Google Maps said! I looked at my watch – it was 3pm. Still plenty of time to stop up there for a photo, maybe even an Old Fashioned if the line wasn’t too long.

Also by this time, I had realized that 22+22+28 does not equal 75, so I was looking for ways to increase my total ride distance up to 75, so an extra 1.5 miles would help push me toward that.

Alas, Google Maps directed me towards a trail it thought that biking was allowed on (the one that goes over the bridge) but actually AT the entrance to that trail, the sign sternly said that no biking was allowed. Just in the 5 minutes I sat at that entrance, I saw a dozen campers and hikers leisurely walking themselves and often dogs through the trail, so yeah – I wouldn’t have wanted to disturb their leisure with my bike anyway. Regretfully, I turned around and reconnected back with the BikeMS event route. At least I had added .6 onto the ride.

As I solo-biked the final 6 miles toward Ho Chunk, I thought of what would be the most logical way to get the total mileage up to 75. I decided on using the roundabouts near the ride’s beginning, between the casino and the highway. So instead of turning left to complete the ride I just kept going, heading back toward the highway and then looped around three roundabouts, then headed back toward the casino again. Still not enough. So I went south along the other side of the casino and did a big loop around it, finally coming back out again near the Rider Village of tents that BikeMS was set up at – and that was that! 75.13 miles completed. I hope you all feel like you got your donation money’s worth!

Well, this email message was a little longer than I thought it would be, but that’s to be expected whenever I sit down to write anything. Baby Luke also is grateful for your contribution too!