Give Hope Ride

Bicycling Event has a Route for Every Skill Level

What are your Labor Day plans? Maybe it’s time to start a new tradition, or simply take a one-time detour from your usual end-of-summer routine. For Jody Searcy and Drew Alexander, the season change is always marked by one event: Give Hope Ride.

Give Hope Ride is a bicycle event organized to benefit the multiple programs at the YMCA of Fishers, including LIVESTRONG^®, for cancer survivors. The ride also helps to make membership available to the entire community. The purpose is to bring together bike enthusiasts for a fun morning of riding while providing an opportunity to give back.

Dip-Your-Toe Bike Riding with Give Hope Ride

Having worked for the Y for some time, Jodie Searcy always tries to participate in the various fundraising events. She says,

“The Y is not a gym; it is a community center. And so, to do these, it is a community event… all of these events are geared toward finding ways to support our community while still being fun.”

Jodie and her husband have ridden Give Hope Ride for the past four years together with their daughters, aged 12 and 15. She shares that they are sort of a “cruiser family,” meaning that they’ve gravitated toward the shorter rides. They’ve also ridden more slowly, due to the age of their girls up to this point. In fact, that’s one aspect she likes about the ride: it’s for everyone. You don’t have to be an avid cyclist or have an expensive road bike.

          “It’s a nice little dip-your-toe into the road biking community,” she says of the ride.

Drew Alexander agrees. Although he’s a cycling instructor at the Fishers Y, he completely understands any anxiety a new cyclist might feel when considering a longer ride. To put it into perspective, he says that riding twenty miles probably takes a good hour and a half. He encourages new riders not to be intimidated: come as you are, and pull that dusty bike down from your garage – or even borrow a bike from a friend!

From 10 MPH to an 80-Miler Ride

Drew says that accessibility is what’s good about the Y. Now, there are some riders who show up in coordinated clothing and come ready to race down a route. So, if a challenge is what you’re after, we’re here for you! But the ride – and the YMCA – takes all people, all levels, all skill sets. Give Hope Ride has a ten mile-per-hour group, a fifteen, a twenty, and a twenty-five mile-per-hour group. Take your pick!

Jodie points out that seasoned participants do take care of the newer riders. She says that there are highly competitive riders who will turn the race into an 80-miler. But the ride itself is not competitive, so there will be plenty of people who are out there just to enjoy the day. Rest points appear periodically along the way as well.

But you won’t be on your own. Drew emphasizes that it’s a very friendly set of people.

“It’s the Y group, right? It’s a family. If you’re not talked to by about ten people that you’ve never met before, it’s not a Y thing!”

A New Passion

The event will occur Labor Day, Monday, September 5 at Olio Fields Park (14181 East 126th Street, Fishers, IN). Featuring routes of 20, 44, or 63 miles, this ride includes courses for everyone from families to the competitive cyclist.

On-site registration and packet pick-up will begin at 7 a.m. The rides will leave from Olio Fields Park at 8:15 a.m. and riders can choose among the various course lengths charted through Fishers and the surrounding area. All rides will be non-timed and non-competitive and riders will be expected to obey all applicable traffic laws.

So, try something new this Labor Day weekend, start a new tradition – or maybe even begin a new passion for cycling! You can register for the event by visiting the Fishers YMCA website, or directly here.