It was difficult to say what was tougher for Jeff Rushton — tracking his buddy Kevin Wallace’s Race Across America (RAAM) via the Internet and phone calls in Mississauga— or flying down for the last five days and seeing the pain close up and personal.
If anyone knows what Wallace was feeling as he pedalled 4,900 kms in a little over 10 days, it is Rushton. He’d ridden from California to Florida with him in January 2002. They did a cancer-raising bike trek from Vancouver to Halifax in ’03 and then they’d really worked together, two hours on the bike and two hours off, competing in the two-man section of the San Diego to Atlantic RAAM two years ago.
Despite the incredible toll he knew the ride would take on his friend, the 44-year-old Rushton had no doubt that Wallace would complete his extreme solo cycling marathon this year.
“He just has this incredible fortitude and stick-with-it-ness,” said the Lorne Park resident this morning. “If he sets his mind on something, he will accomplish it.”
I had to talk to Jeff Rushton to find out about what Kevin Wallace must be feeling in recovering from the torture of the race because Wallace doesn’t want to talk about himself.
If Rushton is waking up in the middle of the night and rushing over to get Wallace a water bottle, you can imagine what nightmares Wallace himself is going through.
But Wallace gently guides each of the hundreds of questioners he’s faced away from the tributary of his own race and back to the source of his inspiration: his late mother Betty and the fight against cancer.
“The real story is the power of our mothers and our wives and our daughters to fight this disease,” says Wallace. “They’re the news. I was just a guy out on a bike trying my hardest to get the attention of people. I’m glad I provided some inspiration and great entertainment for a cause like the Betty Wallace Health Care Centre.”
While Wallace is going to be whacked for a while from the sleep deprivation, his sugar and fat energy diet and the neurological effects of his ordeal, Rushton said he won’t suffer the deep funk that many other riders do after peaking for such an extraordinary event.
“That goes back to his psyche and why he did this,” said Rushton, who has also had cancer touch his family. “This was about creating a community of people to fight cancer, a community supporting the cause. It was all about the greater good for him.”
And now it’s about continuing the momentum and keeping the wheels rolling on the fight against cancer. That’s why the banner across the top of the splash page at www.teamrace.com is no longer going to say Kevin Wallace, There is no finish line...
It is just going to say, There is no finish line...
The last 24 hours of the race were torture, said Wallace, but he knew he had to make it for all those battling the disease.
“I had the option to quit but those people who have cancer, they don’t get to quit,” he said.
“Now that the race is over, I get the comforts back in my life,” added Wallace. “For people with cancer, there is no finish line. I’m just humbled to have delved into a fraction of what those people have suffered.”