OUR TOP 5 INSPIRATIONAL STORIES!

 We asked to be INSPIRED and boy, did YOU DELIVER! Entries poured in from all over, all ages, all walks of life, all kinds of experiences. It was nearly impossible for our committee to decide which 5 stories to choose as our TOP 5. Ultimately, we aimed for five very different challenges these women faced, and the joy and release they each find in cycling. 

Please read their stories and then pull up the LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD FACEBOOK page to vote for your favorite. Help your favorite INSPIRATIONAL HERO win a new bike! How do you vote?? Just look for her name and picture on our FACEBOOK PAGE and 'LIKE' that post. The person who receives the most 'LIKES' on our Facebook page is the lucky winner.

So what are you waiting for? Get comfortable, read on, and prepare to be inspired...


  From Amy Hanson

This is difficult to write, so I'll just start. I am the mother of a mentally ill child. We brought our 10 year old daughter home from a Taiwanese orphanage at 16 months. We were so excited! She was the answer to many prayers. From a very young age we knew something wasn't quite right. She did things all children do but in a different way. She did everything to the extreme. By the time she was in school she was acting out in ways that were constantly getting her in trouble. I was getting calls from teachers daily. J would do anything to get a reaction from people and the best way was to misbehave. She thrived on shock value and learned when she was bleeding, she got the most attention. She self-injured. Every. Day. She was miserable. I was miserable. I had no idea how to help her.

By the time she was 8 life was unbearable and we sought help. She was diagnosed with Severe Reactive Attachment Disorder. We learned many children adopted from orphanages and foster care have this disorder. They weren't given love during crucial brain development as infants. They don't learn to trust adults to care for them. They've known hunger and how it feels to need soothing but not receive it. They learn if they're going to survive it's all up to them. But they are babies. 

When we learned why she was the way she was it helped us have more compassion but it didn't help the problem. By this time she was raging and self-harming every day, most of the day. It affected our entire family and most of all me. Being her primary caregiver I was the most threatening to her need to survive on her own and she took that pain out on me. Loving a child who doesn't know how to love you back can be very lonely.   

About that time I rediscovered my bike that had collected inches of dust. It felt so good to leave my troubles at home and let the wind blow my cares away. They'd be there when I came home, no doubt, but for a short time I could leave them behind.  

J still struggles. She always will. She has a long road ahead but we're looking forward and we are in this with her. Forever. She's worth it.

From Janna Jensen

 

For the first 28 years of my life I was overweight and there were always reasons for it: I had lupus so I couldn’t be out in the sun, my family was all genetically predisposed to be overweight (we were big boned), and, finally, when I was 18, I ballooned.  I gained sixty more pounds over a four month period when I was put on a new medication.  My doctor told me I needed to eat less and work out more.  And so I did.  I started eating around 500 calories a day and trying gym after gym looking for success.  I never found it.
In fact, it wasn’t until two months before my 28th birthday that I actually lost a single pound.  After ten years of pleading my doctor finally changed my prescription.  Within a month of being off the medication I had lost 20 pounds.  It was amazing.  I had toes.  I had a neck.  I had ankles. And, at last, I had hope.
With the initial weight loss I became motivated to loss it all and to get into that magical area on the weight chart that wasn’t labeled “Morbidly Obese.”  I joined a gym and I set out to become healthy.  I tried it all: ellipticals, rowing, BodyPump, Body Combat.  I kept losing weight but I still looked like a blob in the mirror.  One day I passed the spin class.  I was really intimidated.  Everyone looked amazing and they were drenched in sweat.  I decided I would go to the class the next day and stay for the first 10 minutes.  I lasted the full hour and it was REALLY hard.  I remember leaving, getting into my car, and sobbing because I couldn’t believe how much I hurt.  I felt muscles I never knew I had and  I could barely walk for a week.  But I knew if it hurt that much, it must be worth doing.  I signed up for a pass and started taking classes on a regular basis.  Each time I was amazed at how much further I could push my body and it didn’t take long before that blob in the mirror began to take shape.  My muscles became leaner and more defined.  When summer came I bought my first bike ever and I hit the streets.  Today I go for a ride every weekend of at least 60 miles and I never get bored.
The more success I've had, the more I want to learn about improving my health in alternative terms to what had been drilled into me my whole life.  I learned that I could eat more than 500 calories a day and still lose weight.  I learned that being at a healthy weight isn’t a number on a scale.  I learned that there is nothing I can’t do if I set my mind to it.
Since losing half my body weight, I have gotten cancer three times, in three different parts of my body.  I think the mental and physical benefits of a healthy lifestyle allowed me to overcome it each time, making me stronger.
I see biking as that thing that changed my life.  I want to help others to discover the benefits of biking, to challenge them to be the best versions of themselves.

By  Jane Nicholson

WHY I RIDE???

 I am a 64 year old widow.  I have been an enthusiastic bike rider my entire adult life.  In my twenties, I had the chance to take three  summer/6-week long bike trips to Germany with a small group of my German language students (usually 10) and my husband.  I think my husband is the real reason those trips ever happened.  He had a confidence and curiosity that propelled us all.  As a teenager in the 60’s John had worked as a bike mechanic and had owned one of the first 10 speed bicycles in the city of Lawrence, KS.  On those trips we stayed in youth hostels, cycled the back roads, and covered about 50-70 miles/day.  I truly think those trips changed ALL of us.  We returned home stronger, more confident, and with an incredible European adventure under our belts!

John and I rode often together after those early European cycling trips.  He was a very active, fit 59 year old man who never smoked a cigarette in his life, but was diagnosed with lung cancer the summer of 2008.  The diagnosis was devastating, but he was amazing throughout the 2 years of grueling treatments.  Depending on the season, he got on his bike and continued to ride or strapped on his skis and logged many trail miles during radiation and several different rounds of chemotherapy.  The power of exercising in Utah’s beautiful nature was profound.  It always helped both of us to face whatever challenges had come or were coming.

I first rode the LRRH   the summer of 2008, two “innocent” months before we knew about his lung cancer.  It was a good, fun ride and I probably would have done it again.  But after his diagnosis, it became so important to me.  I rode it 2 times when he was able to cheer me on, and then last year after his death.

Last year I rode briefly with several of the Huntsman nurses we had met in the chemotherapy lab.  Sometimes nurses in that setting don’t know what has happened to a patient who has simply stopped coming – moved, died, found a different treatment center…?? It felt good to complete the story for them and I think they felt better knowing what had happened.

I love riding in the LRRH – I feel John is with me.  The experience strengthens me in every way!!!

By Sara Aird

Sometimes a pain exists in your heart that isn’t easily recognized and more often than not goes unnoticed, but still requires healing in order to live a truly satisfying life. Two years ago, I watched my little brother cross the finish line of the Wasatch 100 Endurance Run and felt inspired to do something great that was just for me. I was feeling depleted and depressed, despite having many great blessings in my life, and knew I need to make some big changes. I started out running and trained for a 10K. My body totally rejected this form of exercise; I was diagnosed with ischemic bowel and told to find something else. At the time it felt devastating, but it led me to my bike and thus my rescuer. My amazing husband got online and bought me my first real road bike, and I got into counseling to begin a long journey to make sense of a lot of pain that was holding me down. Things usually get harder before they get easier and this experience for me has proven no different, except that during it all I have felt like cycling has acted like a healer. When I first started counseling, I would go out on rides and as soon as my feet hit the pedals it was like something inside me would just let go. My rides would be so emotional, full of tears, yet somehow it felt like the ride was restoring me and making me capable to move forward. Cheesy, I know, but the truth. I like to call my bike my therapist even though I already have one. Something about being on the bike makes me feel like everything is going to work out and be okay. I feel so renewed after I ride. I feel like I belong on bike! I know that a lot of people say it but…my bike is saving my life! It’s making me whole-hearted again! It continues to be a process. I am just glad to have a bike for the journey.  

By Deanna Byck

Riding is PERSONAL! No really, I know everyone says that, but for me, I ride my bike because I CAN – literally and figuratively. I wish I could be one of those stories where I’ve lost 20 miraculous pounds over the last year, or somehow reduced the size of my thighs. But this is not that kind of a story.

My story begins with years of struggling through exercise and a lot of bone pain throughout. I didn’t actually get my first “adult” bike until I was 46 years old. As soon as I bought it, I tore my ACL, MCL and Meniscus that same week (skiing, not biking) and was pretty much out for the summer. I was recovering from 3 sets of surgeries and generally feeling profound fatigue and constant leg pain in both legs. I was rapidly loosing all energy to rehab and knew the problem was way beyond the ligaments in my left leg.

It was through the MRI on my knee prior to surgery that my radiologist found abnormal marrow in my long bones – mine was red and diseased and of course not producing healthy cells. Everything was “stuck”.

Though a bone marrow biopsy, I found out I had an EXTREMELY rare genetic disorder called Gaucher’s Disease (pronounced Go-Shays). Gaucher’s can be variable, ranging from few outward symptoms to severe disability and death.

More importantly -- although it cannot be cured -- there is a treatment consisting of an infusion (IV Therapy) to deliver drug for a couple of hours every other week. I call it my bi-weekly “tune up” where I am forced to spend some quiet time. This treatment is life long.

As I began treatment 2 years ago, I also began to ride my bike again. It’s truly the one thing that gets me out and increases my energy. All the studies show that exercising out in nature has so many remarkable beneficial effects. Even though I have done Little Red in years past, last year was my greatest year of getting out to ride either alone or with my girlfriends. I dream about riding while I’m getting treatments. I constantly bug my girlfriends to go out for a quickie, and I take time to ride for myself. Riding has become as important a treatment for me as the drug that keeps me alive. And my friends agree! I’ve had several of my friends buy bikes so they can ride with me!!

My treatment will be life-long, but so will my love of riding. Last year capped off an incredible first year of all women rides – each one was very personal for me as a small victory --each ride was a new milestone. And believe me, my fat thighs LOVE it, too!!