[Music plays]
>> SPEAKER 1: I wasn't going to let cancer rule my life and decide what I could or couldn't do.
A lot of this whole process has been a solo journey other than of course with Marilyn.
You know there was just a lot going through my mind that morning.
If there could've been a video camera going at the moment,
it would've been interesting flashback to everything that had gone on leading up to that point.
[Music]
At breakfast I sat with a number of other riders,
and of course some of them notice that it said survivor on my shirt.
And over the course of the morning that saw a number of others,
and we would fist-bump or something like that like that.
And there's a lot to that word, survive, not just CLL,
but have survived a lot of other things in the meantime.
Surviving the interpersonal relationship changes that have occurred.
It surviving the family trauma, it's surviving trips to the lawyer to do your will.
Its surviving a lot of things that you had to experience because of the cancer.
So yeah survive the cancer, thank goodness for OSU and for the work that's being done there to help me survive that,
but there's a lot of other things, a lot of other aspects of life
that you have to work through because of the cancer.
When I finally got the 85 mile mark, the last rest area,
I was really confident I could do it from that point forward.
I think I maybe even sent a text to my group saying it looks like it's going to happen.
I stopped at one point, where on a long really long straight incline.
and took a picture up the hill that was in front of me.
I just wanted to enjoy, the fact that I was going to do it, it was done.
[Crowd cheering]
You can definitely hear the crowd before you see the finish line.
I was relieved, I was proud.
One other girl who was also survivor and had the same OSU shirt,
we had passed each other number of times on hills before that.
She'd gotten off her bike and wasn't sure, she said it wasn't in her nature
to call for a SAG vehicle and that she was really doing close to doing that.
So I offered her some words of encouragement.
I got off I think and walked with her just for a little while.
And I remember she had on big pink socks, and she stood out in the crowd.
When we were getting really close to the finish line there, she passed me.
Seeing her finish probably meant as much to me...
as finishing myself.
One person.
Just that one person.