Weekly Fundraising and Training Update - Ready to Roll!

Bike MS is THIS WEEKEND! We're charging towards last year's fundraising total! I wrapped up my last huge training ride before Bike MS! I'm ready to ride. Details after the break...

Just 5 days of fundraising remain before Team Winco rolls out on Bike MS: Harmon's Best Dam Bike Ride! We raised another $905 last week as we charge towards last year's fundraising total. We're now at $5,978, 77% of last year's total of $7,745!

Every time I've thrown out a fundraising challenge, you all have responded big-time. The thank-you notes are getting harder and harder to write. I just don't have any words left to express the appreciation I have for each and every one of you, and the support you give to me, my family, and the National MS Society.

Having said that, here's some shout-outs and highlights from the week's fundraising:

• Thank you Shannon Keegan, for a very generous donation. Like the vast majority of you, Shannon is a multi-year donor to Bike MS - and that yearly support is so critical. Shannon, you're awesome and I hope to see you again soon to thank you in person! And you as well, Lisa!
• We had a couple more "blue-bird" donors! Blue-bird donors are great, because they not only help with the donation totals, but are new additions to the yearly "pipeline" of donors. Thanks John and Kim!
• And thank you Piper for your donation. Piper and her husband Andrew are old and dear friends and former neighbors. Piper's mother suffered from MS - and it's always special for me to add another person to the list of people for whom we ride.

I would also like to re-iterate that we will be collecting donations for roughly four weeks after the actual event this week. So I will be continuing the fundraising push through the month of July.

To follow up on last week's stat-fest, in which I outlined why exactly I believe we can blow by last year's fundraising total...

• We added 5 donors last week, so we are now only 32 donors short of last year's total of 91
• If all 32 remaining donors contribute this year's average amount of $89, that gets us another $2,848 - which would give us a total of $8,826!
• I did a quick "scrub" of the remaining pipeline of donors (75 total donors remain in the pipeline) - and I marked 22 of them as "highly probable." If I'm correct, and all 22 of my "highly probable" donors hit the average, we will pull in another $1,958 for a total of $7,936!

I hope I've made my case over the past two weeks for why I fully expect to blow by last year's fundraising total. And I absolutely cannot wait to announce when that happens! I actually think that will happen by the end of the first week of July. That may be optimistic, but I have learned to not underestimate the caring and generosity of my network of friends and family.

So, how is the team doing with our fundraising goals? I don't think I've ever updated you on how Team WinCo is doing as a whole, and it's about time. We're doing quite well. We had a team goal of $15,000 and are now sitting at $12,447 - or 83% of goal. Team captain Greg Goins has really stepped up the fundraising this year. New teammate Kathleen has been a very welcome addition to the team, and is just killing it with her fundraising as well. And, I heard a rumor that Eric is about to drop a very large corporate donation on us soon, so we're looking good to exceed our $15,000 goal. I'll hold the "official" team congratulations until we get there - but, great job everyone! I'm really proud to be riding with all of you.

Training

I had a nice week of training again again as well. And, I'm ready to say that I AM READY FOR BIKE MS. No question. This month as been my highest-mileage cycling month ever, with 553 miles as of June 23rd. I had never exceeded 500 miles in a single month before. And there's 8 days left in the month!

I completed my second century ride of the year last weekend, the BlueCruise of Idaho. Despite some major issues with my front tire, it was a fun day. Steve from Team WinCo joined me on the ride, as did an old friend of Steve's named Dick. I thoroughly enjoyed riding with Steve and Dick this weekend, and I'll post a more detailed recap of the ride at some point in the coming weeks. I did want to share a couple of nice photos from the event...

Steve (left) and Dick at the BlueCruise starting line

Dick and I on the course, near the mid-way point

With the 175 miles I'll get in over the weekend at Bike MS, and a few easy rides this week, I should get to 800 miles for the month! I have some friends who do that routinely, but it's a milestone number for me. 

What I hope to accomplish by rattling off all of these mileage numbers is to let you know that I'm putting in the work and mileage while you're putting in the $$. I take this obligation seriously - and will continue to make sure that I can ride as many miles as physically able next weekend at Bike MS. I feel that it's the least I can do to honor the support and commitment that you all have made with your donations over the years.

As always, please check out the Strava "widget" at the right-hand side of this blog for details on any of my training rides. FYI, the BlueCruise ride is split into three rides (all dates 6/22) for reasons that I'll go into in a future article!

Thanks again for reading!