Texas - Tour de Pink

Anyone riding in the Tour de Pink on September 9 at Prairie View A&M University?

It's their third ride and it is the only Texas bike ride solely benefiting breast cancer. They offer 12, 23, 47, 63, 80, and 100-mile routes for cyclists of all levels. A post-ride festival will feature artists and entertainment from the Houston and Prairie View communities for cyclists, volunteers and their families.

I did it last year and it was a lot of fun for a great cause.

I did it last year too and I will be there again this year. The 100 mile route takes me on a lot of my normal roads.

When is it? Do they have a website with details, info, and reg?
I would search around a little, but can't at work.

Tour de Pink http://www.tourdepink.org/site/TR?fr_id=1060&pg=entry

Registration is now open for 2007!

Please join us on September 9th at Prairie View A&M University for our third annual Tour de Pink - the only Texas bike ride solely benefiting breast cancer. We offer 12, 23, 47, 63, 80 and 100 mile routes for cyclists of all levels! A post-ride festival will feature artists and entertainment from the Houston and Prairie View communities for cyclists, volunteers and their families.

Form a team, join a team or participate as an individual! Not able to ride or make it out to the event? Register as a VIRTUAL RIDER, fundraise for the cause and reap all the benefits of the participants!

This is reminder that each participant is required to raise a $75 pledge in addition to their registration fee. You can donate to your favorite cyclist online now!

Cyclists will be raising money for Pink Ribbons Project, in motion against breast cancer to fight breast cancer through awareness and education programs and the support of proper screening for the medically underserved funding and outreach initiatives.

Hmm...I think I might have to do this ride. I have a friend that is battling her second bout of cancer and I have been looking for a ride to go on in her name.

Now to decide how many miles to do. I've only done a little over 20 at a time. I wonder if I could do 63.

Anyone know if it is relatively flat or hilly?

It is really flat and the roads were great.

I rode the 100 mile last year and raised $2,150 dollars. This year I'm at $9,675 and counting. It is a great event with a lot of great rest stops. The road markings were everywhere last year so it was hard to get lost. It was a lot of fun.

If anyone is interested in the 100-mile ride, I would love the company. let me know here or send me a PM.

Wow! How did you raise so much money? That is my only fear is that I won't raise enough.

I have had 5 people in my family pass from cancer in the last six years. I needed to do somehting about it. This gave me the tool to do it. It is a good ride for a great cause.

Join the ride...you will fell better for doing it.

Sorry to hear about your family members. :( I had been looking for a ride that was for breast cancer to ride for my friend and hadn't found a thing. I was glad to see the post this afternoon.

I definitely will join the ride. :)

It is a great group to work with and a wonderful cause. Ride the 100 miles and I'll do it with you or start out with the 100 mile group and you can peel off at any point and do the 63.

Welcome to the cause and glad to hear that you will be riding that day. Trust me you will feel great when you see all the survivors and how inspiring it can

I just hit the $10,000.00 mark in fund raisng and we still have 32 days to go!

I don't think you would want to ride with me. You'd have to leave me behind. My fastest is 18.6mph and I don't do that for long periods. Usually around 15-16. But, I guess I could start with you and slowly fall behind. :)

Wow on the 10g's! That is awesome!

I can pull you along! It is up to you. As its get closer to the event, we can e-mail and hopeful meet up to say hi. I hope others join in. It is a great ride, lots of fun and you are helping others. Cannot ask for much more than that.

:) We shall see. My roomie which is going to ride with me doesn't even think we can do the 63. :( I think we can, though. So who knows what route I will be doing.

But, yeah, we should definitely meet up and say hello no matter what. I haven't met any other cyclists other than online.

I was wondering if any other BFers were doing this ride. I was thinking about it, myself. I've done the Bluebonnet Express, which also starts out of Prairie View and it's a good ride. For this one, like others, the cause is personal because I've got a family member who is a recent breast cancer survivor.

Ripa, you still looking for someone to join you on the century? What's your average speed?

I ride anywhere from 18 - 22 avg. it depends upon the day, weather and how I'm feeling. I can go faster but not for long and slower is not that big a deal if needed.

:) We shall see. My roomie which is going to ride with me doesn't even think we can do the 63. :( I think we can, though. So who knows what route I will be doing.

But, yeah, we should definitely meet up and say hello no matter what. I haven't met any other cyclists other than online.


I have faith you can do it. We will be in-touch before the event. See you there.

I'm in for the 63!

Hmm 63 doesn't sound bad...

-Nate

The 63 - 100 mile rides all go in the same direction if they have the same course as last year. It that is the case we can all start out at the 7:00 am 100-mile start time and then peel off on the appropriate course route as and when needed. As we get closer we can figure out where and how to meet up. I'm jazzed about the event since I will finally meet up with some other fellow BF members.

Spread the word.

I just signed up for the 80 mile this evening. May scale my plans back to 63, but we'll see. Hope I'll see a few of you out there.

hmm, do you think when they say ALL rider levels, they mean it? My younger sister, fourteen, is interested in doing the twenty-mile since I'll be participating, but. . . well, I don't think she can go over eight mph. She'd probably be alone at the finish then, eh?

ETA: Well, I'm sure she can go over eight mph; I just doubt she will.

Is there anyone here that's done this before that can suggest a rendezvous point for BFers? I'll be doing the 63 miles...

Have fun on this ride guys.

Ripa, well done on the donations for Cancer!

Looking forward to hearing the ride reports.

I’ve done the ride and they do mean people from all levels. You will see children out there riding to support mom or dad or other family members who have cancer. Last year I saw children as young as eight who rode the 12-mile ride and were proud to do it. It was inspiring to see. They had 1,200 riders last year who came out even though it was forecast for rain. It is a very important event and is very heart warming to see so many people there to support those battling cancer.

Send me a PM and I can send you the route map they will be using for this years ride. It is really planed out well and they have a ton of markers to keep everyone on the right roads. The rest stops are wonderful and they cheer you on when you pull in to take a break and again when you head back out.

Having done the ride you can see from the map that all the routs head out in the same direction. For the BF riders who want to leave with the 100-mile group you can and still stay on track, plus you can get a head start. I will be doing the 100-mile route. How about we hook up on the left side of the staging area across from the registration area.

If this works, we will just need to come up with how we can identify each other.

Thanks Marinaer Fan. Good luck with your ride on Sunday. I will be pulling for you as well.

So who wants to meet before the ride Sunday? I’ll be riding a red and white Colnago and I should have on a Twin Six Jersey (red, black and white or a pink and black that says Fat Cyclist). Can’t miss me I’m about 6’6” and weight in at 250 pounds. Not fat just big.

Have fun and ride safe.

I'll be there at 7 AM for the 100 mile start, but I think I'll be doing the 63, and I want to wait until the appropriate time to start for that. I'll definitely meet up, I'll be on a red Trek 1500, with a light blue/dark blue Cannondale jersey, silver trek helmet, and I'm also pretty big (235). I'll be hanging out near the start at 7 AM.

Damn, but I'm gonna love hangin' out with you guys! Make me feel like I'm losin' weight! :)

I'll be there for the 100 mile start, but I may do only the 81 or the 63. I want to ride with my wife's cousin, who's joining me for the ride, for at least the first part, and he's doing 63. I'll be on my silver Ti wearing a tri-color jersey--blue on top, white in the middle, green on bottom. Hope to catch up with you.

Hey y'all, I tried looking for you this morning but didn't find anyone. I ended up starting with the 63 milers (it was pretty well organized by ride length, I thought). I rode the first hour with a group of about 10 people going about 24 mph average, we made it to the pit stop in Brookshire in about an hour and 15 minutes. I was done after that, slowed down a lot for the ride back up to Prairie View. I had a great time, hope y'all did too.

Sorry to have missed you, chinotex. I did manage to hook up with ripa after the ride. It was nice to meet someone I've seen posting here on BF, even though ripa managed--to my mind, absolutely unforgiveably--to look fresh and rested after putting in 100 miles in gruelling heat. :)

For me, this was a great ride. I did the 81 mile route and had a great time. The route itself was fine, and the rest stops were good. What really made this one for me was the people I met. Shortly after the first rest stop, I hooked up with a really wonderful group of folks and stayed with them for the remainder of the 81 miles. There was Donna--an 11-year cancer survivor--quite the inspiration, her lovely sister Carol, husband T.J., and Steve, one of the safety marshals. They just made a really pleasant group to ride with, and I felt like I was instantly part of the "family." It's not often that happens on a ride, so this made a good experience much, much better.

The tailwind down into Brookshire made for easy going to that point, but things certainly got more challenging between the headwind and especially the heat later on. Couple this with the fact that the organizers weren't able to get any rest stop space that had much in the way of the shade, and the sun became a problem. Suffice to say, by the time I hit the finish, I was pretty gassed.

Still, it was a top-notch ride experience and made more interesting by the post-ride conversation. I went out to the ride with my friend Stan, who rode the 63 mile route and met up with me and my ride companions after the ride. It turns out Stan and Steve share a last name. We're not talking one of those "Smith" or "Jones" names, but a fairly unique name for these parts having roots I believe in eastern European Judaism. As it turns out, both Steve's and Stan's families came out of the same local temple congregation, though they had never met. Even more serendipitous, Stan had been in Surfside the previous week digging around a used bookstore and found a yearbook from the temple from years past. He looked up his last name in it and saw an old picture of Steve. Then he came to the ride and there was Steve in the flesh. A funny turn of events, but something else to make it a unique sort of day and a reminder that it's sometimes a very small world we live in.

Anyway, it was a really nice ride to be part of. I'll be looking forward to it again next year.

It was cool to finally meet up with someone from BF. Thanks for coming over to say hello Bluebottle1. Chinotex sorry we did not hook up. The ride was great. Lots of wonderful people out there and it all goes to such a great cause. I hope to top $12,000 in donations when all is said and done.

Quick run down on the ride. My computer clocked out at 110 miles since I missed a turn or two. I will talk with Susan and the rest at Pink Ribbons about signage along the way at major turning points. Other than that, it was great. I had a wonderful time and fished the ride in 5:10. That was fast for me but I was being pulled along by some strong groups for the fist 65 miles. We started out with a long pace line and did the first 20 miles with in 48 - 50 min. that was really fast. The rest of the way the small group I tagged on too held up a pace of 23 miles per hour. I though I was going to die but kept going. I stopped at each of the seven pit stops along the way mainly to get water and say thanks to the volunteers. I stayed at each stop for only 5 min or less.

The stops were all well managed and most of them held my bike and cheered when people came in to stop. That was always cool to see. It was a real motivator for me. Like Bluebottle1, I met some great people on the ride. I spoke with three survivors along the way who were doing the 81 or the 64-mile ride. I pulled them for a brief time and then took on my own. They were all happy for the pull. Had keg cramps off and on around mile 72-80 until they worked themselves out. It hurt but I knew those I was riding for would have gladly traded place with me if they could have.

The wind really took its toll on me when we turned and headed back from Brookshire to Monaville. It was not that strong but it really wore me down. I wanted to finish way under 5 hours with stops but that was not going to happen then.

I had a blast and I look forward to it for many years to come.

Bluebottle1 is spot on with the no shade part. It was killer later in the day. I weight myself when I got home and I lost 9.8 pounds! Now if I could only keep it off it will certainly make the hills a little easier.

I hope everyone keeps riding this tour. If you have any suggestions for the ride please let me know because I stay in touch with them a lot and they really want to make this a greater ride than it is.

Ride safe and LiveSTRONG!

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1420/1398884767_ce422123c4_b.jpg
I met my personal fundraising goal, the Tour de Pink met their fundraising goal, the weather was beautiful and everyone had a great time. Here's a V for Victory for Tour de Pink.

I know the guy right behind you. He rides with us on our Sunday Morning ride. Small world.