my own Lance Armstrong but with two balls

Last year when I decided I wanted to run a marathon, I asked jparks if he wanted to run it with me. He laughed and said no, not because the training would be too much, but because running was boring. I tried to tell him that running is not boring, especially if you run with a partner and even running alone is fun because of magical inventions called iPods and podcasts. He still couldn't be swayed and I went on my merry running way without him. Somewhere along my training jparks decided that maybe he should get a bike and this quickly spiraled into me meeting him at work one day where he was smiling like a fool and announcing "I'm going to ride my bike from San Francisco to Los Angeles!"

It's safe to say that when he first told me that I might have laughed because really? Have you guys met my princess of a husband? He was going to ride from SF to LA? No. No fucking way. I tried to explain that maybe this wasn't the best idea because if he thought running was boring, what was he going to do to entertain himself on really long bike rides where it's illegal to wear headphones? In fact, what was he going to do on really long bike rides when he actually had to you know, ride the bike? He refused to listen to me, mostly because he had already paid the registration fee, and started training.

That was back in November and since then he has really (surprisingly) committed a lot of time to training. Of course, since he's jparks there have been times when he wanted to quit, but did you know cycling is way more expensive of a sport than running? And nothing can motivate him like me getting upset over the cost of his bike, jerseys, or other random crap required for rides. For once my nagging skills were useful.

Since this ride is in support of the AIDS foundations in San Francisco and Los Angeles, jparks had to raise at least $3000. I'm not going to lie, I thought I would be the one raising the money for him and was a bit annoyed. But Whitney came to our rescue and designed some posters for jparks to hang around his office that helped him come up with the money in record time. I think it was because we hit on the perfect sales pitch: "Want to get rid of jparks for a week? Donate here!"

After months of training, fund raising, nagging from me, sores knees, sunburned stripes on his bald head, and countless gu packs he leaves on Sunday morning for a 545 mile trek down to Los Angeles. For seven days jparks will ride most of the length of California, sleeping at night in a tent (did I mention the camping? oh yes, camping. hahahaha) and eating whatever is served in the food lines. Honestly I can't imagine jparks doing any of those things but I know he will because he's too stubborn to quit at this point. And besides all his coworkers donated so they could be jparks free for a week and I'm surely not going to let him sit at home and pester me all day so they can have their week of quiet.

Like I mentioned, he has reached the minimum amount of money needed to go on the ride, but if you want to show your support for jparks or the AIDS foundations, donations can be made here: To Fight HIV.

I know how hard and time consuming training for something can be and I'm incredibly surprised that my ADD husband was able to stick with this for the past seven months. I gave him a lot of crap throughout his training because that's who I am, but honestly I'm really proud of him. Even if now he has little chicken legs and weighs less than me.