Considering what they’d just seen, the reception in West Des Moines must have looked a little dull.
“Wolf Creek Pass—that was a heck of a climb.”
“I’d never been to the desert before.”
“The last morning at sunrise, we came through Gettysburg.”
Dr. Richard Deming had done it again—Mt. Everest last year, and now another challenge to cancer survivors.
“They are so prepared to put it on the line,” Demings says, ”use the courage and confidence that they’ve gained in their cancer journey to reach for something that may be beyond what they think that they can attain.”
He always talks like that.
The Race Across America is a true RACE and it has nothing to do with cancer–but these riders still had it on their minds.
“Not for myself,” says survivor, Bob Irving, “I thought about cancer for the people who are suffering through cancer or have died from cancer– that’s the bigger thing to think about.”
It pushed them for 3,000 miles; across every form of American soil.
“I mean that’s climbing mountains, that’s being in the desert, that’s being in rainstorms,” says Mercy Cancer Center caregiver, Sean Arndt, who was one of eight riders.
“It was intense,” says breast cancer survivor, Sarah Russell, “and we were going as fast as we could every time we were on the bike.”
They rolled into Annapolis, Maryland after just under seven days. Only good enough for 13th place, but no one cared.
“I would say that none of us were confident that we could complete this race in the given amount of time,” Deming says. ”But we were confident that trying to do so was going to be incredibly fulfilling.”
There he goes again. It’s a message he’s proven once more: those faced with cancer can not only beat it, they can live on to do things only the most fortunate of us can dream of.