Miles to End Polio: 104 miles? I got this!

By Rotary International

Nora Zei and team mates.

Nora Zei, right, and fellow team members Christian Pepera and Courtney Drew near the halfway mark of an 80-mile training ride. We are “This close” to ending polio — and the Wisconsin border.

By Nora Zei, Rotary staff

When I was selected for the Miles to End Polio team, I was both nervous and excited. I’ve loved cycling since I was a kid. But the longest ride I’d ever completed in a single day was 60 miles. I signed up to do 104 miles? Yikes!

But I’ve learned a little fear actually helps me, driving me to take my training seriously. I embarked upon several short mid-week rides, followed by increasingly long distance rides every weekend, gradually working up to a beast of an 80-mile ride, from Chicago to the Wisconsin border and back. It was a grueling ride with colleagues, a 15 mile-per-hour wind whipping into our faces the whole way home. But after finishing that, my confidence is much higher than it was two months ago.

Along the shore of Fellows Lake in Missouri wine country.

Two things have made each long ride tolerable — the route and the company. Cycling alongside Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, through country roads in southwestern Missouri wine country, …read more

Source:: Rotary International Blog

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