By Coach Eartl

Question: What’s the best piece of advice you can give me as a first time rider?

Allow the JDRF Ride to change your life. One of the most rewarding parts of working as a coach with JDRF riders like yourselves is that I get to witness how many get hooked on riding and adopt a healthier lifestyle. As Tim St.Clair loves to say, each JDRF Ride can be a life changing event. This is so true in many ways. Obviously we want to change the lives of everyone with Type 1 diabetes. Think how it will feel when we can say we have found a cure and to know that we all helped in some small way. But the JDRF Ride can be a personal life changing event for you as well. I’ve seen a number of people who started out doing the Ride as a fund raiser or because a friend or family member was recently diagnosed, and then discovered that they really enjoyed bike riding, and have kept it up year after year. The telltale sign that someone is hooked on cycling is when they buy a bike for the JDRF ride and the next year they upgrade to a better bike! They start training in some fashion throughout the winter and start riding more and earlier the next spring. Does this sound like you? I hope so. You can use the JDRF Ride experience to change your life and become more active, more fit, lose weight if you need to, and become more healthy. Exercise is the real fountain of youth, so by creating a more active lifestyle, you can literally act and feel younger than your years. So while our main purpose for doing the JDRF Ride is to fund and find a cure, go ahead and use it turn help turn your life around too!

About Coach David Ertl

David Ertl has served as the Ride Coach for the JDRF Greater Iowa Chapter since 2004. David is a professional cycling coach who coaches the Des Moines Cycle Club Race Team and several individual recreational and competitive cyclists. He is author of the book, “101 Cycling Workouts”. David has been a competitive cyclist since 1973.