I received an email this afternoon from UPS telling me that my bike has been shipped and is scheduled to arrive on Thursday. Hopefully, that means I’ll start my training rides this weekend! Be looking for some more interesting posts as I start really gearing up for this summer!
Thanks to everyone’s generous donations I was able to read the $1,000 mark last Wednesday, my goal date. Last night I was able to begin ordering the bike that will take me from the Atlantic to the Pacific this coming summer, and I am so excited to really start logging my training miles!
I have already begun training, but haven’t really been able to go ride just yet. I’ve started doing CrossFit this month and I love it! Thanks to WolfRiver CrossFit and Michelle Kinney I’ll be able to to ring dips and handstand pushups all across the country.
Luckily, the group of people I workout with three times a week are great people. Already, I’ve formed great relationships with two other cyclists who have been nothing but kind, helpful, and encouraging. It’s completely refreshing to meet new people as great as my training partners Bill, Karen, Atina, and Gary.
However, the most exciting part of this past week is I have finally ordered my bike. In about a week and a half to two weeks I will finally get to start my training rides! Much gratitude goes to Giant and Bokoo Bikes for supplying our two wheeled cross country vehicles!
Be on the lookout in the next few weeks. I plan to start posting pictures and videos soon after I get the bike all put together. I’ll also be using my GoPro helmet camera to document my training rides and the 4,109 miles between the East Coast and the West Coast.
When I was a junior in college I could finally see the light, my higher education was almost over, and I wasn’t sure if I was ready for that or not yet. However, I didn’t have a choice. I prolonged my college career as long as I could…I was only able to make half of a victory lap and graduated in December of 2011. During my final semester at the University of Arkansas I had a lot of decisions to make. I didn’t know what I would be doing or where I would be in just a matter of months. I had already experienced huge changes during 2011 and wasn’t sure if I was ready for more. When I finished my swimming career in January of 2011, after nearly 2 decades in the sport, I decided to start cycling for exercise. I had no desire to run, but already had a bike, so anything that didn’t involve staring at black line for 2 or 3 hours at a time with no one to talk to sounded great. So, I decided road biking was the way to go and I fell in love with it. I loved getting to see places I had never seen and really get to experience them in ways you can’t while driving down the road.
When I got home for the summer I rode every day with my accountability partner, Trish. We kept challenging ourselves to ride further and further every day, to have a higher mileage total every week. Soon I thought riding across the country would be the coolest thing ever. I started googling ways to make this happen and stumbled upon Bike and Build eventually. It was a perfect fit! I had wanted to go to Honduras and Ecuador previously, but both times plans fell through for reasons I couldn’t control and I wasn’t able to go. This time I knew it would be different.
After I put in at least 500 miles of training rides, 10 sweat equity hours with Habitat for Humanity, and raised $4,500 I will get to go on a journey of a lifetime. This summer I will be riding from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean on my bicycle alongside 31 other young adults while building homes along the way. And as of today I have raised $800 and am 17.77777777778% of the way to my goal. Hopefully I will be at the $1,000 mark by February 8, my 23rd birthday!
Follow the entire process by keeping up with my blog. I’ll be posting about training rides, fundraising, and then from May 24 – August 12 I’ll be posting pictures, videos, and stories from my trip!
ginaBARGIACHI 