Race Across the USA!!!! San Francisco to New York City. We finish!

 On June 1 we signed up for one of Candice's virtual races.

It was a Race Across the USA.  Starting in San Francisco and ending in New York City.

Candice is smart about her business, so set the race up for a wide variety of types of runners and cyclists.  We entered as a team of cyclists, Vicky and me.  Our team name was "Marina and Stella's Septuagenarian Grandparents."  We thought Marina and Stella would get a kick out of our team name since Race Across the USA is one of the races that was created and put on by their mother‘s business, Destination Trail.

 We came in........last...in the division of cyclists.

HOWEVER, in our defense, we only had two members on our team, and the other two teams had four and five.  Plus we took three weeks out in the middle of the race to cycle the STP with our family.  See?  We aren't insecure about coming in..........last.  Really.  We're OK with it.  Doesn't bother us at all.  Not even worth mentioning.  Who cares? 

Actually we don't care whether we "won" or not.  We figure at our age and with what we have been dealing with that just finishing is "winning."

This is the map where we recorded and tracked our progress.  We had fun looking on the map at where we had cycled each day.  It was especially fun when we “cycled” across a state line and entered a new state!

 And here we are in front of our map of where we have traveled during the last nine years.  I am pointing to our race starting place, and Vicky is holding the end of the string showing our goal, the finish line in New York City.

It isn't easy to see, but there is a yellow string from San Francisco to New York showing our journey.

Here is the t-shirt we both got:

We also earned a belt buckle.  Through the years every finisher in one of Candice’s 200+ mile races has been awarded with a belt buckle.  Pretty cool, huh?

The coolest part of this is that we rode, as a team 2572 miles ALL IN LEISURE WORLD.   Leisure World is about 1 1/4 miles by 1 1/4 miles.  The roads twist and turn so much that we could cycle for several days with hardly riding on the same street  twice.  But we still know every pothole by name.

And here is another cool fact.  We rode all of those miles...ALL of them..in the dark.  ALL of them at 2:30 in the morning.  After all, we live in Arizona, and the summers are like living in an oven.  So, in the middle of the night it is more comfortable for riding and there is no traffic at all.  It is the safest place on the planet to cycle.

I have our tandem bike lit up like a Christmas Tree (that is what one person said about it).  In fact, this morning, we happened to meet a car driving in the opposite direction.  The driver pulled to the side of the road and stopped.  We assumed that the driver thought we were an emergency vehicle.  Imagine his/her surprise!

We did this race while at the same time both of us individually rode 206 miles on the Seattle to Portland ride in the middle of July.  We paused during this STP time on our Race Across the USA.  We didn't count our miles for both events, so we both rode the STP and we rode as a "team" from San Francisco to New York.

To do this while I was undergoing 45 treatments consisting of radiation, the major side effect for most people being fatigue, is something that we are so proud of.  I could not have done this without my Vicky.

So we are here, New York.  It's OK, but we like our home in Leisure World much better.  We'll be home tonight!