Some Inspiration Heading into the New Year

At the upcoming Queen City Wheels banquet in late January we'll be handing out the awards for the various age and gender brackets for our Cleves Time Trial Series from 2011 in addition to recognizing the 50 plus members our our youth racing team, the Lionhearts, and the many accomplishments of the other men and women who race for the club. We had over 110 in attendance last year and we may hit 150 or more this year. It's a fun evening and a great opportunity to celebrate cycling in Cincinnati.

At the banquets we'll also be presenting a special time trial award to my friend Mike Keiser. For several years in the mid 2000's I trained with Mike twice a week at the Cincinnati Sports Club with personal trainer Paul Bodenbach. Mike was the national triathlon champion at Lake Placid in the 60-64 bracket, won the Eagle Man triathlon and placed in the top ten in Hawaii. He was in amazing physical condition, a great person to hang around and an inspiration to want to keep training and competing as I get older.

About 4 or 5 years ago Mike was hit by a car and spent many weeks in a coma and months at Drake Hospital recovering from severe brain injury. This past season Mike came out to the Cleves Time Trial on his recumbent tricycle and rode the course. We're going to present the Comeback Rider of the Year award at the banquet. As I said in the weekly report from Cleves I thought that Mike's ride was the best of the year and maybe the best of all-time. It had nothing to do with speed or power but it was all about determination. Mike has had to re-learn many of the daily tasks that we take for granted but he's still a competitor and an inspiration.

While at the club this past Wednesday I had a member ask me to come look at someone training in the pool. He was telling me that I had probably never seen anything like this before. When I looked through the window I knew the person in the pool he was referring to. His name is John Fogarty. John grew up in Cincinnati, graduated from XU is 1983 and now lives in Rhode Island. I think is now the administrator of a large hospital. He still has many relatives in the area so he stops back during the holidays.

In the early 1980's John had a landscape business in the Hyde Park/Mt. Lookout area. While clearing a view for some clients John lost an arm and leg when a large branch fell on him pining him in the tree. A local tree service assisted the paramedics in freeing John from the tree. He was maybe 20 years old at the time. Needless to say John overcame many obstacles and seeing him swimming laps is impressive.

The next you wonder if you really feel like training just remember how fortunate you are to be able to run, bike, swim, play golf, hike, take an aerobics class, etc.