Open letter to Lance: THANK YOU SO MUCH

It has been a while since I blogged and I was starting one on the LiveSTRONG Challenge in Austin when I heard you stepped down as chairman of the board and now as board member. To me this is very sad news. No matter what people may believe you did or did not do during your cycling career, for me this is getting out of hand. I want to start off with saying I’m still not convinced you doped. The entire process of getting others to testify on hear say and speculations by promising them they will be punished lightly sits totally wrong with me. It feels like a witch-hunt, not based on solid evidence. I have been called stupid, brainwashed and star struck for my opinion but I don’t care. I’m simply not convinced and think you would never put anything in your body that harms you after what you have been through. And I have the feeling you wouldn’t enjoy the win if you didn’t beat everyone fair and square. But now you are "forced" to step away from your true legacy: LiveSTRONG. Of course I understand LiveSTRONG is bigger than you and I admire you for putting the Foundation before your own interests and distancing you from it now. BUT YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE TOO. And that’s why I write you this letter, because I am so very grateful for all you did and still do. As I have told people over and over again: you are the one that literally kept me walking. I got hurt in a hit and run accident in the year you won your first Tour de France and seeing you do that gave me the strength not to give up and work hard enough to not be confined to a wheelchair but walk with crutches. You inspired me and pulled me through the worst time of my life. THANK YOU !!! Five years ago, after I became a LiveSTRONG Leader, your example got me back on the bike and training for my first LiveSTRONG Challenge. If things got bad I remembered your “pain is temporarily, quitting lasts for ever” and that kept me going! THANK YOU !!! I have been able to participate in three Challenges after that. Going to Austin and raise enough funds to be invited to the Fundraising Appreciation dinner has been the highlight of these years. Hearing you and Doug speak there has made an everlasting impression on me. My goal has been and will be to raise enough Funds to be invited to the Ride for the Roses weekend, not only because that will give LiveSTRONG the opportunity to do more of their amazing work for the 28 million affected by this disease, but it will finally give me the opportunity to meet you face to face, shake your hand and say THANK YOU in person. THANK YOU for keeping me on my feet; THANK YOU for getting me back on that bike; THANK YOU for founding LiveSTRONG before knowing your own fate, thus helping millions of others; THANK YOU for fighting for those living with cancer for 15 straight years; THANK YOU for your vision which made LiveSTRONG into a one of a kind cancer charity; Thank YOU for all the time and effort you put into LiveSTRONG; THANK YOU for letting me be a LiveSTRONG Leader which allows me to give back a little and honor those affected by this disease; THANK YOU for letting me be a Team LiveSTRONG mentor, so I can help participants all over the world meet their goal and experience the amazing event a LiveSTRONG Challenge is; THANK YOU from all the survivors in the LiveSTRONG spinning class I teach each week for the hope and inspiration you still give them; THANK YOU from all the survivors in the hospitals I go to each week to do volunteer work for LiveSTRONG which gives me the opportunity to tell them about the amazing Foundation you founded. So as soon as I can register for next years Challenge I will and I will work even harder to make that Ride for the Roses weekend. I hope the world has come to its senses by then and you will be back where you belong, with the LiveSTRONG Foundation. And maybe my wish will come true and I will be able to simply say THANK YOU in person.