Hopkins 4K for Cancer

June 9, 2003

A day of uphill battles
Perrysburg, OH to LaGrange, IN

This day was a long one. We all woke up very well rested at Rajeev’s cousin’s house in Perrysburg, Ohio at 6 a.m. After a short feast on the 80 lbs of bagels we had donated last night, we set off at about 7:45 for a 110 mile ride to LaGrange, Indiana.


Sumeet and I set off with Katie in the first going, but soon broke away form Katie too soon to have her follow us on Rte. 20-A, so she got lost for a little while behind us. Sumeet and I had previously determined that we were going to go all-out for this day so we could get this long trip finished as early as possible, so we kept a super fast pace for the first fifty miles to the lunch stop and actually caught Alice before she had planned on having the lunch stop.
She said that we were at least ten miles ahead of everyone else, so we ate a fast luch of leftovers from the night before and got back on our way.

We left around 11:40 from lunch, and started a pace line for the rest of the trip. We took 15 minute pulls and then a one minute break for the rest of our four and a half hours of riding. We managed to miss both of the water stops after lunch and got to the school an hour and forty minutes before the next group. The wind seemed to get even worse once we hit Indiana and the hills at the end didn’t help, but we were all in safely and showered by 7:30, and we also gained an hour because Indiana does not follow daylight savings.


We had a hearty spaghetti dinner at a local church, and when we finished, Babak and I went to Dairy Queen to see if we could use our skills to get surprise Blizzards for everyone. We managed to get 24 Blizzards donated and surprised the whole group. Afterwards, we came back and all crashed for hope of a little less wind tomorrow. But with all of the wind and the hills, we’ve been battling the last week, I couldn’t help but think how fitting it is for us on this ride to be going uphill against the wind, because cancer really is an uphill battle, and at any moment the wind could blow by and catch some of us off guard, and hopefully with our work on this trip, we can help people stay on the path and fight to cross seemingly impassable bridges.

Samuel J. Hertig