Tour de Pink 2012: Wearing It On My Sleeve

Day 2: riding 95 miles with my friend Jon and new friends, and yes I was drafting like crazy.

Tour de Pink 2012:  235 miles over three days.  Philadelphia to Washington D.C.

Surely, the most intense part of this ride was not the riding itself but the people with whom I was riding and the cause.  It is intense to be a survivor on the ride, I must admit.  There is a bright pink band on the official jersey I receive.  It has “survivor” printed on it in black lettering. I get one of those and, yes, it makes me pause.  I wore my Rapha jersey on day 2 so it’s not pictured in the photo above but you can see the “survivor” sleeve there on my friend Kim, a four year survivor and really strong cyclist, not to mention incredible person.

The experience of having had that serious of an illness is still surreal and my moment-to-moment appreciation of every second of my good health now seems more personal than what I wear on my sleeve literally for this ride.  But it is important to be visible here.  As someone who has been through cancer sooner rather than later in life, I am grateful that I can see the faces of young survivors, as heartbreaking as it is to see so many people around me effected by cancer.  We’ve been through something terrible and looking at anyone of us in an everyday setting, you’d never know.  On the ride, I know I’m not alone in this experience.  In this ride, along with other rides–but this one particularly for me–I know I’m not alone in understanding with the fullest weight that even after such adversity, so much is possible in life.  More than I ever expected.  My thanks to what I learned from the survivors who were out there on bikes doing the Tour de Pink long before me and helped me see the other side.  And thanks to everyone who supported my ride by making a donation in support of the Young Survival Coalition.  Emily Gresh