Commitment, Perseverance and Inspiration!

This past weekend I participated in the Texas Bike MS Event, the largest of all MS150 rides. These are 2-day bike rides that covers 150 miles, with the goal of raising funds and bringing awareness to end Multiple Sclerosis... an unpredictable and very often a debilitating disease with no cure. Funds raised in the past by the National MS Society have brought about 24 different treatment options and these rides paved the way for every single one of them by pumping over $1.1 Billion (with a B) into research.

While I have made this ride before, what made this weekend very special was that my 12-year-old daughter was riding this for the first time. She has been a cheerleader for me at the finish line earlier and has said she wanted to do it with me. I've said “sure” partially thinking that she was a child expressing her aspiration and told her she needs to be 12 to ride. On her 12th birthday, she asked me when I’m getting her a road bike so we can start training. When asked why she wants to do it, she gave me the first “Gosh, she is no longer a child” moment! Her response was “because kids get MS too and I want to help”! Having never ridden in a road with traffic, our first ride was 6.75 miles less than 10 days after her 12th birthday! We worked our way up to riding 50 miles a day in less than 4 months. Family, Friends, and several of my 美国船级社 Colleagues supported the cause and helped us raise the funds required for our ride. Thanks to all of you and we could not have done this without the generous encouragement and support.

As we made final plans for the ride, we saw that the weather was not going to help. Our team was supposed to start on a wet (thankfully did not rain), chilly (57°F) and with headwinds from 17 – 20 MPH! This is about as far from ideal as I could imagine. It was looking to be one of the MOST CHALLENGING DAYS of the ride in several years. We did have multiple start points and I had recommended we start at the shortest of the 3 start points, riding only 50 miles. My kid was very clear that she is only starting with the rest of our team at the Royal junior High School which made for a 75-mile ride, and so we did! We started with close to 5000 riders (Total riders this year was over 9,000). IMHO, commitment in the face of adversity is something that cannot be taught. Sports and events like this will help the next generation be more resilient!

The ride on day 1 was about as brutal as we thought it would be. Our average pace riding on flat surfaces was about 15MPH during practice rides. On this day with head winds at 17-20MPH (+GUSTS) and we were NOT moving very fast. There was an elevation gain of over 2,600 feet in addition to the headwind that we were trying to overcome. We went from the start point to lunch and had a decent pace. We covered about 25 miles in 3 hours and gained 275 feet in elevation. After lunch were two of the fun downhill segments (about a negative 5% grade) but the winds were going to be switching back and forth between head winds and cross winds. We were going downhill at both the sections and my GPS was recording us at 13 MPH – a lot less than what we had done in a flat surface. At one of the rest stops, after a minor ankle injury, I saw the competition between my daughter’s perseverance and her physical endurance… It was a huge challenge. Every mile felt like it was 2 or more with the wind, and we solved the endurance problem with some liquid bandage and a single dose of Tylenol.?Again, training your body will come with experience and age, but training the mind to persevere is not a simple task. In fact, I believe that kids have a lot of perseverance to begin with and it erodes over time… It is events like these that build them up over time, and show us that when we hit a wall, we just pick ourselves back up and keep on going. The fact that we rode until the course closed (for about 9 hours) on that punishing day was a win. We did not finish the 75 miles, but the 67 miles felt like it was more than 100 for me. When we hit La Grange, we were exhausted and were happy to see my wife Sudha Sundarrajan and younger daughter cheering for us. They were part of 2000 volunteers, and with the 9000 riders we had quadrupled the city’s population overnight. With several inches of rain, the volunteers had done their very best to make the wet, soggy campground more inhabitable for tired riders. Special thanks to the dozen Bray International, Inc. 's TEAM BRAY volunteers who put a roof (or canopy) over our head and had hot dinners ready for us when we arrived.

Day 2 was a new day, and the weather was predicted to be more friendly. We had an amazing breakfast, again thanks to the volunteers. We got on the bus to Burton for the last and final leg of our ride. We had very good weather, tail winds of 6-7 MPH, and a moderate elevation gain of 1365 ft. This felt like some of my previous rides, and we cruised through to the finish line. My daughter got to spend more time chatting and riding with her two 13-year-old friends who also rode on our team. The atmosphere was more enjoyable. We had a minor mechanical issue with my bike (likely due to the heat) that was resolved quickly to hit the finish line. When it was all said and done, we had covered over 50 miles in 3 hours hitting a max speed of close to 30MPH (straight line downhill, of course). All the 3 friends crossed the finish line together at Texas A&M, followed by their proud parents. It was a lot of fun and we were greeted at the finish line by a proud mom and an excited sister with a cookie in her hand. The 7-year-old is now counting the number of years before she could start to ride with her sister and trying to see how she can start to practice.

Along the ride, I heard over a dozen experienced riders ask me how old my daughter was and thanked me for getting her to do this. In fact, I had NOT done anything to “make” her do it. I believe she was inspired by the events she had attended in the past, I wanted to share this one story on my feed to see if I can get one more person to be inspired by this (in addition to my second daughter) and make a difference to do something that they are passionate about. Riding through “Bubble Bistro” and past signs held by people thanking us for our support helped motivate us… However, the most personal validation of the effort came shortly after the ride, when we were approached by a person in a “I ride with MS” jersey after hearing us talking in our native language of Tamil and said – “I’m from Maryland and have had MS. I have been doing bike MS events in all but 3 states for 13+ years. I have not seen too many participants from my background that support this cause and seeing young children committed to this makes me feel like we will have a cure for this disease very soon.” It was an extremely humbling experience for us as we felt like we were doing our tiny part to the event that raised over $7M (in 2023) to help end MS.

If you are indeed the one inspired by this, it is not too late to get family and friends to start working towards the 2024 Bike MS. TX Bike MS for will be on April 27-28, 2024. Register before Oct 31, 2023, to help plan and save on your registration fee. You can also contribute to NMSS towards their 2023 goals.

#endMS #ms150 #TeamBray #commitment #perseverance #inspiration