SpencerWon

Hi, this is Spencer. Today I finished third grade at Canyon Creek Elementary. I am healthy now, but four and a half years ago I was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. I am one of the lucky ones. My leukemia was very treatable and after 3 years and 2 months of chemotherapy, I completed treatment. My parents had good health insurance and my Dad was able to stop working and spend time caring for me. When my immune system was shut down, we would go on hikes and bicycle rides to stay away from people, but remain active. Now, we go on bicycle rides to raise money to fight cancer.

In 2004, my Dad and I rode 40 miles with my Dad towing me on a trail-a-bike to raise money for the Lance Armstrong Foundation to help in the fight against cancer. We raised over $32,000 that year. Every year since, I have continued to ride and raise money. In 2006, we rode 40 miles again. In 2007, we rode 50 miles on a tandem. In 2008, I rode 45 miles solo!

This year, we are doing two LIVESTRONG Challenge rides and I need your support to reach my $3000 goal for the Seattle ride by June 18. My Dad and I will be riding 70 miles on the tandem. This Fall I will ride 65 miles solo in Austin, though I will let my Dad draft and be my official guardian.

Donate today to fight cancer

Follow our progress at the SpencerWon blog or follow us on Twitter @spencerwon

More than 12 million Americans are currently living with cancer, and more than 1.3 million people in the U.S. will be diagnosed with cancer this year alone. It’s time for us to do something about this. We must unite to make cancer a national priority, and the Lance Armstrong Foundation provides us with an opportunity to do just that. Founded in 1997 by cancer survivor and champion cyclist Lance Armstrong, the Foundation’s mission is to inspire and empower people affected by cancer. It seeks to spread its goal and mission through grassroots networks all around the country that subsequently demand from this nation’s leaders increased resources to provide open access to preventative care and screenings, more opportunities for research, and improved quality of life for cancer survivors everywhere.

Thanks,

Spencer Sartin

P.S. The Lance Armstrong Foundation has worldwide programs to help with cancer awareness and survivorship issues. Your donation will help the 12 million people who will be diagnosed with cancer this year to face the disease with the best chances. Please give today at http://seattle09.livestrong.org/spencer

If you had the chance, what would you say to cancer?

On January 21, Spencer and I got to head to East Austin and drop into a cool little studio to do some filming for a LIVESTRONG Challenge promo. Today, the results are out.

We’re up for a Challenge in Seattle in June and another Challenge in Austin in October. Are you up for Challenge? My nine year old leukemia survivor son is targeting 90 miles in October. Seattle is part of training, either 70 or 100 depending on the course and which bike(s) we bring. By the time he’s twelve, he’ll probably want to do all four. Sign up for a Challenge today. See you in Seattle or Austin.

Thank you to everyone who helped Spencer raise $5650 dollars (as of this afternoon) for the Lance Armstrong Foundation. WE have about 30 emails sitting in Spencer’s inboxes. He will reply to all of them.

LIVESTRONG Challenge Fundraising Award Dinner is over. We brought home the Lance-signed Sports Illustrated from 2006 that has Lance, Brooke, Sean, and Spencer. Sat with Cyclists Combatting Cancer at dinner. Had a great time. Lance wants us to be angry about cancer, make it personal, fix the unacceptable, and change the world. Better get to work.

The bike rack is on my car for morning. Rachel’s car is loaded with stuff for her and Jacob, including the all-important “I’m a fan of Spencer” fans. Spencer and I are packing clothes, Gu, and gear for the morning. The bicycles are in the garage ready to load on the car as soon as we wake up.

Spencer talked to Lance after the dinner and asked about the rides. Lance is doing the 90 and thinks it’s cool that Spencer is riding solo on the 45. I, too, think it’s cool. Still gonna cry when he goes through the survivor lane by himself though.

Follow sartin on twitter to get ride status, pictures, and geolocations.

We finished the ride in 3:56:35 for an average speed of 10.1 MPH. At least 18:03 of that was stops, giving an average rolling speed of at least 11.0 MPH. Spencer was awesome.

We had the classic problem at the start of an organized ride of riding too fast, trying to keep up with all of the people around us. I got Spencer to slow down a little closer to pace before we got too tired and we didn’t have any problems. As we hit a rough area of gravel, we found our friend and “Turtles on Wheels” team mate, Jim Beesley, who rode with us to the first rest stop where he took the photo here. I had senior moment in the parking lot and left my toolkit in the car instead of on my bike. Fortunately, Jim had a hex wrench we used to adjust Spencer’s seat height. He seems to have grown an inch since we bought the bike.

Spencer set to a pattern at the rest stops. At each stop, he would take 8 chocolate chip cookies which he would eat on the rode. He still hasn’t worked up to drinking on the bike, so we stopped at the top of a number of the (not very large) hills for him to drink. He stayed nicely hydrated on the whole ride which was a bit of a challenge for him. He tends to forget to drink when it’s not hot out.

At the northern end of the ride, I was chatting with a nice woman out on the 50 mile course (which mostly overlapped ours) and she was complementing us on spending time together riding and doing outdoor activities, and marveling at an eight year old doing a 40 mile ride, when Spencer’s right foot popped out of his pedal. All we saw from back where we were was his leg kick out, the bike stutter and Spencer correct balance with a kick off the ground to keep from falling. After it was over, he pulled over to the side and was briefly terrified before I borrowed another hex wrench and tightened his pedal release a bit. He just hopped on the bike and started riding again. I barely had to encourage him to work through the adrenalin and fear from the near spill. Yay, Spencer! Honestly, if that had happened to me, I suspect I would have gone done and had a heck of a road rash to deal with next week. Glad it didn’t go that way

After we finished the ride, we had a free lunch at Chicken Express and talked to a number of other riders, who were similarly impressed at an 8 year old doing that 40 mile ride as training for his “big” ride.

Just a few days to go to the October 22 fundraising deadline. Please donate to fight cancer and support Spencer’s 45 mile hill country ride to raise money for the Lance Armstrong Foundation.

Another Deerfield classmate, Gig (pronounced as if spelled “Jidge”), sent me an email saying he’s going to contact more of my classmates and suggest they donate. These are some of the finest men I know and I am proud to be a part of this group. At my 25 year reunion when we got permission from Spencer’s oncologist to run out of town for a week right before Spencer started an intensification cycle of his chemo, the fine “young” men of DA ‘80 made Spencer feel a part of our class and even gave him one of the class shirts. On top of that, they donated over $2000 to support Spencer’s ride in 2005.

This weekend, after we get back from a 40 mile training ride, Spencer and I are going to create a custom tag to hang on our bikes thanking the Sons of Deerfield for their generosity. You guys are great.

Don’t for get to donate to the Lance Armstrong Foundation and support Spencer’s 45 mile solo ride.

Teaser for next post: Our October 17, 2008, training ride will be the 40 mile course of the Outlaw Trail 100. See you on the road - if you can catch Spencer.

Round Rock ISD had Friday and today off so Spencer and I planned a little riding. Friday got sidetracked by room cleaning. Who knew that Spencer and Jacob had been hiding so much behind the dressers and under the bed? Today, however, went right as planned - well except for Spencer forgetting his socks the first time we left the house. We started at Brushy Creek Lake Park with
a plan to do two laps up Parmer to FM 2243, down County Road 175 to Sam Bass Road, Great Oaks back to the trail that goes into the park. Google calls it 16.8 miles each lap, plus we did about 1/2 mile of extra riding in the park on the first lap. Elapsed time including stops 3:16:15, for an average speed of 10.4 MPH. We spent at least 10 minutes at stops - Spencer is not yet comfortable drinking while riding, so we stopped 4 times each lap, including almost six minutes reloading Gatorade in the park at the end of the first lap - so our average rolling speed is over 11.

As expected, Spencer did great. His bike handling was excellent, including an excellent job of navigating through some dumped asphalt on the shoulder that including chunks as big a 6 inches by a foot. I am unbelievably pleased with his riding and willingness to attack his goal of riding the 45 miles of the LIVESTRONG Challenge in just 13 days. We did another drop of postcards through the neighborhood and got $9.78 in cash plus $50 online, so the fundraising is going well also. We’ll do one more email blast this week to see what we can get with a little deadline pressure on donations.

Please donate to the Lance Armstrong Foundation and support 8 year old Spencer and his 45 mile bicycle ride to fight cancer.

I promised I would talk about the training plan for the LIVESTRONG Challenge, so here it is. The LAF have kindly made a LIVESTRONG Challenge 40 mile training plan available for riders. Spencer and I are basically following the plan. The two changes. First, I am making our weekend rides longer since we are riding at a slower pace than the plan-maker likely assumed. This will let us get closer to riding the full distance and thus be more prepared. Second, I am mostly ignoring the “ST” marks which are days to build in hill training. Instead, I have been working in plenty of hills in our regular neighborhood rides and we are planning for our week 10 and 11 (and maybe 9?) long ridesto be on the Challenge course.

This week we are on week 7. We two one hour rides around the neighborhood, both with average speed of 11 MPH. We are trying to do the 45 mile in under five hours of ride time, so we’re plenty on target.
Today was a new longest ride ever for Spencer with another trip to the Austin Veloway. We did 7 laps, totaling 21.7 miles in 1:56:36. Best lap was 14:25.4, worst was 17:47.6 (which included a clipless pedal mishap, might need to tighten the pedals a little). Average pace 11.2. Overall slower than our last visit to the Veloway, but still on target for speed and no problem tiring Spencer out even after almost 22 miles.

This week, the training plan has us building up ride times with two one hour rides during the week and an hour and a half over the weekend. Jacob was home sick Monday and Tuesday, so we didn’t get to ride either day. Today we got in the first hour.

We rode out to the main street through our development, did three laps of that (3.5 miles each) and then headed home. Total ride time 61 minutes for an 11.1 mile course with 3 stops for water.

Spencer was using his clipless pedals for the first time on the solo bike. He had a couple of spills at stops, but not from the pedals. He keeps trying to keep the bike totally vertical when he puts a foot down, so a tiny loss of balance topples him. I’m trying to teach him to lean it a little. Besides that his bike handling skills are excellent. He’s better than a number of adults I’ve seen.

We’ll probably hit the Veloway again on Saturday - time depending on the weather and our plans. Can’t be interfering with the Clone Wars birthday party (time TBD) for Spencer’s friend Oliver….

We did a training ride at the Austin Veloway today. Spencer kicked butt and took names. He absolutely rocked. The Veloway is a 3.1 mile cycling and inline skating loop. It’s got minimal ups and downs and one steep, but very short, hill. Thanks to Hurricane Ike, we had stiff winds from the north-northwest (by my estimate based on where we seemed to face the stiffest headwinds and easiest riding). On the first lap, a man probably mid-30s tried to pass Spencer, but had to abandon him and draft for a while. Way to go 8 year old boy!

We did 5 laps for a total of 15.5 miles. Each lap after the first, we stopped for 20-40 seconds for water (Spencer isn’t comfortable enough yet to drink while riding) at the start of the loop. Lap splits and average speeds:

1. 14:04.0, 13.2 MPH
2. 14:55.2, 12.5 MPH
3. 17:02.4, 10.9 MPH (we stopped an extra time for water mid-lap
4. 15:56.4, 11.7 MPH (we had an off-clock stop for a 4 minutes to talk to some other riders about the LIVESTRONG Challenge)
5. 16:16.3, 11.4 MPH

Wow! Overall average speed 11.9 MPH. Our target average speed for past training rides (more reports on that later) has been 10 MPH. With all the stopping and restarting for intersections on neighborhood streets, we have been pretty tight on that goal. I may need to revise our goals upward. I am beginning to think that I will (quite happily) lose this year’s bet with Spencer about ride distance and time.

Spencer handled the steep hill without difficulty. The first lap I warned him when it was coming and told him some people have to walk it. He told me the legs with the headwinds were much harder than the hill. With today’s winds, I agree.

Spencer finished tired, but reenergized quickly. On the way home we stopped at Spin City Cycling and picked up Spencer’s new handlebar stem which is a little shorter and seems to already make him more comfortable reaching for the hoods or riding sitting up straight. In the parking lot, he started riding laps for speed. Clearly he’s got the stamina to do more.

From here on, our weekend rides longer than an hour will be somewhere other than our neighborhood. We’ll either do the veloway or Parmer Lane out by Brushy Creek Lake Park

This is my first training report. Later, I will come back and summarize our plan (from the LIVESTRONG Challenge web site) and recent training (since we started following a plan). You can look at just our training rides by looking at entries with the “training” tag.

Lance Armstrong is returning to cycling, but I think we’ll find it is different this time. His focus is on bringing the survivorship message of the Lance Armstrong Foundation to a global audience. I am looking forward to hearing the details on September 24, but until then, Spencer and I put together this video with Spencer’s thoughts on Lance and a little bit of a challenge to him.

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