Bike Skirt friends meet Jeffrey Anbinder, who is riding 109 miles next weekend to raise money for Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Our friend Wade introduced me to his story and we simply had to tell you guys about him. He was kind enough to answer a few questions for us. You can follow his story
here, he will be live blogging along the ride. Riding for a cause is the best riding there is!
1. Why do you ride? I ride because my mother has leukemia – Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia to be exact. She was diagnosed back in 2001. I ride to raise money and awareness for the fight against blood cancers.
2. What do you ride? Up until a couple of weeks ago, I’d been riding a 1994 Diamondback Expert road bike that I bought in 1995. Perfectly serviceable, but not up to modern standards. I just bought myself the bike I’m hoping will last me the rest of my life, a Cannondale Synapse 3. One reason I was so adamant about buying it before this next Tucson trip is that El Tour de Tucson includes two “washes” – dry riverbeds over which you have to CARRY your bike, lest you get cactus needles in the tires and suffer flats the entire remainder of the ride. My 1994 bike probably weighed close to twice as much as the new one does, and it was rough on my back to carry it for a half a mile. I’m looking forward to feeling the difference this year.
3. Any special training for a ride such as this? TNT – Team in Training, the arm of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society that does these long-distance events – provides coaches, training captains, and mentors, along with a schedule of training rides. This summer’s weekends have been miserably rainy in New York, so we haven’t had as much training as normal; I’m frankly a little bit nervous about the ride. But I’m doing it anyway, and I know I’ll finish. We do a fair amount of hill training simply because that’s the terrain in the suburban areas where we train, but the fact is we’ve trained on hills somewhat steeper than anything we’ll actually see in Tucson, so in that sense it’s good preparation.
4. What made you decide to do this? For the first few years I was raising money for the LLS, it was through an event called “Light the Night” – a three-mile walk from South Street Seaport to the Brooklyn Bridge, over to the Brooklyn side and back. It’s inspiring, but honestly, I walk three miles most days, so it wasn’t exactly a great challenge, and each year I found I was getting *fewer* and *smaller* donations from friends and family. I knew I needed to raise the bar in order to get them to do the same thing, and I knew a few friends who had done TNT events in the past, so I decided to take the plunge. This will be my fifth TNT event; in addition to the other two Tucson rides, I’ve also done “America’s Most Beautiful Bike Ride” around Lake Tahoe, and the Seacoast Century in New England. This year I’m the Fundraising Captain for the NYC team, since I tend to be very good at that part of it, and I’ve been advising the other riders on how to maximize the amount of money they bring in.
His letter to friends:
Now, plenty of people much older than I am do bike centuries, marathons, even Iron Man triathlons, so I know that’s nothing so special anymore. But knowing that I’m going to be biking 109 miles next weekend has definitely made turning forty easier. :-)
What’s going to make biking 109 miles easier is knowing how much support I already have from my friends, family, and colleagues in the quest to defeat leukemia and other blood cancers. I’m riding in honor of my mother, who’s now in her ninth year of living with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia and for the most part is in very good health – partly because of treatments developed with money donated to the LLS, just like the money I’m raising right now.
Over 100 people have already donated a total of $8,805.04 toward my goal of $20,000. If you’re one of those people, THANK YOU! If you haven’t given yet, there’s still time. Of course I’d love to fly to Tucson on November 19 with your donation in hand, so the sooner the better.
If you can give a lot, that’s great – I’ll dedicate one of those 109 miles to you for every $109 you give (and I’ll bake you a pecan pie if you give $250 or more!). But if you can’t give a lot, please give a little. Dozens of the gifts I’ve gotten so far have been $50 or lower, and they really add up. But most importantly, please give – EVERY DONATION HELPS REAL PEOPLE WITH REAL BLOOD DISORDERS.
You can make a donation by credit card here:
http://pages.teamintraining.org/nyc/tucson09/janbinder
Let’s see what we can do!! Jeffrey-thanks for what you are doing. A real inspiration!
Bike Love
Elisa, you rock! Thank you for shining a light on Jeff’s cause. I hope you get to meet each other in person someday.
I know Jeff from college, and the fact that he does this every year for fund-raising is an incredible feat. I encourage everyone to check out his blog and chip in whatever they can.