grateful
[greyt-fuh l] adjective
1.warmly or deeply appreciative of kindness or benefits received; thankful:I am grateful to you for your help.2.expressing or actuated by gratitude:a grateful letter.3.pleasing to the mind or senses; agreeable or welcome; refreshing:a grateful breeze.
Family, friends and strangers
Over the past several weeks I have been overwhelmed with the amount of love, encouragement and support that has been given to me to help me in my journey to race for CMT awreness this month in Leadville: I have received donations to the HNF on my behalf, my two brothers surprised me and booked a trip to Denver in mid July so that I could test ride parts of the trail and see how the high elevations will affect me on race day. I spent 3 days riding at altitude and felt pretty good. The first climb on the race course will be tough as it comes very early on and my body typically takes several miles to warm up. The longest climb ofmthe day will be 8 miles long, raises over 3, 000' and takes you above 12, 600' above sea level, it is long and tough but very doable. Race day will be a different story as I will have to do it all at a much faster pace if I want to finish under 12 hours.
I was fitted in late June with custom carbon fiber low profile AFO's that were designed with my input to fit my specifics needs that I will have durring the difficult steep sections that will require a good deal of walking. These were provided for me by a good friend Rick Mckibben who is a Physical Therapist and Clinical Electrophysiologst who is very familiar with the struggles that CMT patients go thru, his company Integrity Rehab Management is located in Pine Mountain, Georgia. Please look them up if you are in the area and have any PT needs, he is the best. The braces were actually designed, built and fitted by George Gatewood at Gatewood Prosthetics located in Columbus, GA. Again, if you are in the Columbus/West Georgia area and have any needs for AFO's, braces or prosthetics, look no further.
I have had friends that have helped me by giving us money to help offset the cost of the trip (you know who you are, and we are forever thankfull) I have recieved Facebook messages from fellow CMT 'ers (that's a word now as far as I'm concerned) that I've never met that wish me luck or share their stories about the struggles that they or their family members go thru or have gone thru in the past. These are the types of things that make me realize I made the right decision that day on a casual bike ride to try to give this thing a shot, but the response has been humbling to say the very least.
