Thursday, June 11, 2009

Comedy Night Fundraiser

Hi, everyone,

On June 19, I will be co-hosting a comedy night fund raiser to benefit the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. The location is the new Bunjo’s Comedy Club in Dublin, which shares space with the Willow Tree restaurant on Regional Street. Our headliner is Robin Cee, a very funny and well known SF comedian. The cost is $15 per person, half of which benefits the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. More information is can be found at and tickets can be ordered at
http://www.bunjoscomedy.com/index.html

This fund raiser is capping off my fund-raising with Team in Training for the 2009 Death Ride. Once again, I will take on a 129 mile ride with more than 15,000 feet of climbing (kind of like climbing Mt. Diablo 5 times, but at altitude!), with the goal of raising funds to benefit the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. I have had the pleasure of training for and riding this event with several cancer survivors, and it always amazes me just how much joy they find in every day life, and how they can take an event that’s downright painful to most rational people and turn it into a celebration. This event may be called the Death Ride, but it really is a celebration of life for those of us privileged enough to know and ride with these very special people!

This year’s fund raising has taken on an even more personal meaning for me. In January, a close friend and someone that I’ve done a lot of work with in the past was diagnosed with CML – Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia. She is currently undergoing chemotherapy with a drug called Gleevec. This drug is very effective for many CML patients, and was developed under a grant from the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society – a grant that in large part was possible because of all the donations made over the years to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society via Team in Training! We are making a difference – and you can too by participating in this event.

So far, her treatment is progressing well and she has not suffered serious side effects. We are keeping our fingers crossed that she will be one of the lucky ones. However, with continued support the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society will achieve it’s goal of wiping out blood cancers, so there won’t need to be lucky ones. I’m honored to be in a position to help the society make progress towards that goal.

My friend’s experience has also highlighted another, equally important role the LLS plays. They provide a stipend to patients who are undergoing treatment, and are unable to work, or to those who have used up all of their insurance benefits (those multi-million dollar lifetime maximums really don’t go far when you consider the cost of some of these treatments!). They provide counseling and other forms of support. In short, they are a lifeline, a ray of hope, while these patients are undergoing some of the most trying and painful experiences a person can go through. Knowing how strong each of these patients has to be helps keep me going when I’m suffering on those long, steep hills (and I always suffer on those long, steep hills!).

So please, come out and help us celebrate another successful season – great training with a great group of teammates, and lots of fun while raising funds for a great cause. I look forward to seeing you on Friday the 19th!

Best regards,

Jon Buckley
--
Find out how I’m helping to fight cancer one mile at a time! http://pages.teamintraining.org/sf/TourAlps09/jbuckley

If you are not able to join us at the comedy night, please consider making a donation using the link above. Thank you so much for all the support over the years!

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Death Ride training

Well, after reading my friend Steve's latest blog post (it's not about the back!) I realized that I've been horribly lax in updating my own cycling blog. So here's the latest and greatest:

TnT team

This season we are training in a combined team with the Redwood/Wine Country TnT team. This has been a fantastic experience, as we've met new folks, trained with some new coaches and done some rides in an area I don't get to visit anywhere near often enough. We've spent some time on some familiar training hills (Mt. Diablo, the Oakland Hills, Mt. Hamilton, Sierra Road) and we got to ride in the Wine Country Double Metric Century (124 miles for those of you keeping track).

The season has been a lot of fun, and for the first time I've felt prepared for each of the team rides (more on that below). Of course, it can't all be fun and games - after a few days of unusual stiffness, my back went out on Sierra Road - one of the most difficult Bay Area climbs. The 100 degree weather wasn't helping, but my back has been a source of ongoing concern in my riding, so this was a step backwards. It feels better today, so hopefully I'll be back on my bike for an easy week in a few days.

Coach Kim

As some of you know, I've hired Coach Kim Collier to help me get in better cycling shape and lose some weight. The weight loss has been slow but steady (I think she's more frustrated by my progress in this area than I am), and I've definitely gotten to be a noticeably stronger rider on the climbs. Yesterday, on the back of Mt. Hamilton (a notoriously tough local climb, and rated HC for the pros in the Tour of California) I was able to climb it almost entirely in heartrate zone 3, but still going faster and stronger than I did last time I tried it. For those of you who are old fashioned, heart rate zone 3 meant I was still in my aerobic training zone (ie, I didn't go anaerobic). While I wouldn't want to ride at that level of effort for a full century, it is a sustainable pace for me on these long, tough climbs. My coach likes to call it a tempo climb. I'm more realistic - it's still a darned slow tempo climb.

Margie and leukemia

Early in the year, a good friend told me that she had just been diagnosed with CML, a form of leukemia. She is responding well so far to the chemo, which has consisted of a drug developed under grants from the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. This has taken the fund raising that I've been doing with Team in Training to a far more personal level.

I met Margie through some volunteer work I was doing. She is an energetic, vital and driven woman - and someone making a huge difference for our kids. I've always admired the passion and energy she brings to her work - now I also admire how she's taken on this new challenge head on.

Fund Raising

That brings me to one of the big reasons I got involved with Team in Training in the first place - a chance to make a difference. The money raised is donated directly to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, and helps to fund the development of new treatments while also helping to directly ease the financial burden of patients. Please consider supporting me and the Leukemia & Lympoma Society for this year's season: http://pages.teamintraining.org/sf/TourAlps09/jbuckley

Special thanks to Joy and Alan Brooks, who were able to take care of my kids during yesterday's unbelievably long training ride!

JB

Friday, January 23, 2009

2009 Plans and Aspirations

After sitting down for a while, I quickly realized that my original goal of doing one or more double centuries this spring were probably unrealistic - I hadn't been riding consistently, much less the kind of disciplined training it would take to do a distance I'd never done before.

So, I needed some structure and some accountability to get my butt on my bike when the weather isn't perfect. I hired Kim Collier, a local cycling coach and nutritionist. She looked at my eating log for a week, highlighting anything that was just plain bad in pink. It probably would have been easier to print the damn thing on pink paper to begin with. However, she then took me through Whole Foods and showed me how to replace all that (What do you mean, no pizza or bagels? I'm from New York, damn it!) with healthy, but still good tasting alternatives that I'll have a fighting chance of getting my kids to eat.

She also introduced me to the joys of SFR's. I have no idea what the initials stand for, but these are hill repeats - not looking to go at lung busting speeds, but rather to build strength. Climb a hill for 5 minutes, at a slow cadence in a big gear that you'd normally use on flat roads. The goal is to keep your heart rate low (I failed miserably at that the first time, but I'm getting better!), and really work the muscles in your legs. Repeat 5 times, then spin easy for 30 minutes. For the last two years I'd worked really hard at learning how to spin up hills, using small gears and a high cadence. This training will build strength while giving me much more flexibility on how I attack a hill.

So, with all this going on, I also signed up for the Death Ride again. No, I'm not bored with it yet. I'm going to do it with Team in Training again, although this season will be quite different. Over the last two years there'd been lots of continuity on the Death Ride teams - same coaches, lots of participants and mentors did it both years, etc. It will seem strange, especially without some of the close friends I've made (and without coaches Jacqui and Mike, who showed me how I could get off the couch and get in shape to do this in 6 months). However, the new coaches are all great, and I'm going to be a mentor - I'll provide kind of a point person that team members can use to answer questions about administrative stuff and fund raising, while I'll also be asked to provide ride support - something I've never done before. All in all, this should be a fun and exciting season.

Further on in the year, I'll revisit that double century goal. I suspect it won't be a problem if I can stick with Kim's plan (especially combined with the TnT Death Ride training). Kim even mentioned as a possible the Everest Challenge, a 2 day race in Southern California that got it's name because over the 2 days you climb as much as if you'd ridden your bike up that mountain with the same name. Aspirational? You bet. But it's fun to think that I could still get in that kind of shape.....

So, stay tuned - I'll be riding a bunch again this year!

JB