By Joanna Gadd

If you were to meet me on the street, you would not look at me and think “now there’s an endurance athlete!”  Truthfully, I’m a somewhat plump, middle-aged mother of two. But in fact I do ride! I was part of the Tahoe ride in 2015, and this year have signed up to ride in Colorado. And if I can do it, you can do it too!

So why do I ride?  Well, on 8/21/1997, our daughter Milly was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes (T1D). We lived in the UK at the time and we got on with life with the proverbial British stiff upper lip. It was many years later, 2014, when we first became acquainted with Breakthrough T1D.  Our first introduction was through one of Milly’s co-workers, Gloria Massey, who volunteered at the Hope Gala 2014, and encouraged us to attend the Gala for the first time. We thoroughly enjoyed the evening, and the community.

Around the same time, my husband Philip and I had started doing triathlons in an attempt to maintain fitness in our fifties. One day, on a group ride, I saw someone cruise by wearing a really snazzy jersey with T1D and other diabetes related stuff on it. I thought “I want one of those!” and set about investigating how I could get one. I was quite dismayed to discover that to get one of those lovely jerseys, not only would I have to do a considerable amount of fundraising -EEK!  but I would also have to cycle around Lake Tahoe – DOUBLE EEK! It seemed too much. I didn’t think I could do it. All the triathlon events I was entering were very carefully chosen in terms of difficulty. Never more than Olympic distance, i.e. around 24 miles on the bike, and nothing too hilly. Have you seen Lake Tahoe? It’s not just hilly, it’s surrounded by mountains! I decided I couldn’t do it and tried to forget about it.

Meanwhile, Milly was living her life with T1D. You all know the challenges that entails; it’s tough. But she never thinks “I can’t do that.”  If she wants to do something, she works out how to do it and gets on and does it, finger-pricking all along the way. If she didn’t let T1D get in her way, what excuse did I have for not even attempting a ride I wanted to do? I decided to follow her example and do it! I signed up for the 2015 Ride around Lake Tahoe.

I saw two main challenges. First, the fund-raising and this is how I approached that: once a week, every week, I shared on Facebook an anecdote from our lives as a family with T1D, using old photos to bring those stories to life. Every week, I would get a few more donors. As soon as I got a donation, that person would obviously get the automatic thank you email, but I would also thank them and tag them on Facebook, and I took a copy of their profile picture. The final week’s post before the event was a thank-you slideshow of all my donor’s photos and then I got a few more donations from people who thought they’d already given but weren’t in the slideshow! That was very effective for my first foray into fundraising. Breakthrough T1D has some great resources to help you with fundraising, it turned out not to be an insurmountable obstacle at all.

By the way, always remember it’s a Ride not a race.  It’s not about being the fastest, fittest person on a bike. The Ride is about coming together in support of everyone with T1D and doing our best to find a cure.

Then the next big challenge was the whole business of riding the bike: the gear; the mechanics; the training! As soon as we signed up, we were assigned to a Breakthrough T1D Ride coach. At the time, there was no coach in San Francisco, so we had a remote coach, Barry Falcon, who did a great job giving us training tips and encouragement from afar. We are now privileged to have our own coach, Patrick Ford, right here in the Bay Area, providing motivation and training rides on our doorstep.

Riding is not nearly so scary as I thought. I experimented with clipping into pedals and I didn’t like it, so I reverted to standard pedals and I still managed to climb those hills with sneakers on my feet. One of my Ride companions didn’t even own her bike, she had been lent a bike from her local sports shop who sponsored her. Of course, everyone should learn how to fix a puncture and basic bike maintenance, but in reality, you are never far away from a bike shop in the Bay Area or a helpful passing cyclist if you get into trouble on the road and on the Ride itself, there is an amazing support team.

So finally, the Ride weekend arrived. It was so different from any other athletic event I’d attended. I’d never met so many people in one room connected with T1D! The sense of community was fantastic and the speeches were incredibly moving and inspiring. From the welcome dinner to the post Ride celebration dinner, it was a thoroughly positive and life-enhancing experience.

Come and ride with us, in Colorado or one of the other beautiful locations, and you can get your lovely jersey too.  I hope you’ll love it all as much I do!

Click here to register for the Ride to Cure Diabetes. Also, click here to join our Breakthrough T1D Bay Area Ride Facebook group!