![\"\"](\"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/corry.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
February 20, 2001 \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Corry Moolenaar just kept on going.<\/p>\n
Steady and sure, she emerged on the horizon, pedaling persistently.<\/p>\n
I caught my breath as her bicycle approached. I took a drink of water as it sped right past me.<\/p>\n
“I’m not stopping!” Corry yelled with joy.<\/p>\n
Corry doesn’t stop for much. She is 76 years old, a cancer survivor, a champion road cyclist, and perhaps the most inspiring person I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. I hopped back on my bike and chased after her.<\/p>\n
We covered 31 miles on this Saturday morning, winding through bucolic country roads in the counties of Barrow, Jackson and Hall. We passed mansions and shacks, more cattle than cars. And Corry just kept on going.<\/p>\n
“You see the cows and the horses and the dogs,” Corry, of Chestnut Mountain, said in her pleasant Dutch accent. “I talk to them. I say, ‘Good morning.’ I just love nature.”<\/p>\n
Hard to believe just one year ago this senior citizen, spunky and spry, was fighting for her life, undergoing radiation and chemotherapy treatments for an aggressive case of non-Hodgkins lymphoma.<\/p>\n
“I was bald as a baby’s butt,” Corry chuckled, running her hand through her curly gray locks.<\/p>\n
Corry’s cancer was diagnosed in November 1999, just three days after she had completed a 50-mile bike ride.<\/p>\n
“It was a very big shock,” said Corry, who lost her husband to cancer in 1977. “I try to eat right and I try to do my exercise. That doesn’t make any difference with cancer. You just get it, I guess.”<\/p>\n
And once you get it, you fight it. At least that’s what Corry did. Last June, after eight trying months of treatment, she had battled her cancer into remission.<\/p>\n
Today, standing just 5 feet tall, weighing barely 100 pounds, Corry is a picture of health. Riding behind her, I was impressed by \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and just a little bit jealous of \u00e2\u20ac\u201d the definition in her bulging calves.<\/p>\n
“Every bit of her is muscle and bone \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and heart,” said Dr. Jack Griffeth, the radiation oncologist who treated Corry at Northeast Georgia Medical Center and had his own battle with non-Hodgkins lymphoma in 1992. “She had a lot of pain, but she was just amazing. She should be an inspiration for anybody with or without cancer. She squeezes life, and gets every bit out of it that she can.”<\/p>\n
Corry began road bicycling in 1990, at an age most start cashing Social Security checks. The activity came to her naturally, she said.<\/p>\n
“In Holland, if you wanted to go someplace, you had to ride your bike,” explained Corry, who lived on a dairy farm in the Netherlands until 1947, when she and her husband, a flower bulb grower, left for the open land of America.<\/p>\n
In retirement, Corry decided to ride because of need, not necessity.<\/p>\n
“People need to keep doing things,” Corry said, “and not looking at the rocking chair.”<\/p>\n
Corry won her first gold medals at the National Senior Olympics in 1995. She had the medals framed and gave one each to her three sons. The rest of her medals \u00e2\u20ac\u201d literally several dozen \u00e2\u20ac\u201d from nationals and the Georgia Golden Olympics, hang in a heavy cluster in her closet. When asked, however, she presents them with pride.<\/p>\n
“What can you say? She’s amazing,” said Lloyd Unnold, longtime friend and secretary of Chicken City Cyclists, the bike club to which Corry belongs. “I can’t put it into words. She just keeps going. She’s one of those rare people that you’re fortunate to meet.”<\/p>\n
Cancer caused Corry to miss her first Bicycle Ride Across Georgia (BRAG) in a decade last summer. But she’s determined to make up for it this year. Both the six-day, 300-mile Bike Florida race in April and the eight-day, 389-mile BRAG in June are marked on her calendar.<\/p>\n
“It has taken me a long time to get on top of it again,” said Corry, a regular at 100-mile “century” rides before her treatment began. “I still am not like I used to be, and I probably never will be.<\/p>\n
“It’s kind of scary, because once in a while you feel aches and pains. You must not overdo it, because that chemo takes its toll on your body.”<\/p>\n
And so does keeping up with Corry.<\/p>\n
We rode into a steady headwind on Saturday. The cold morning air numbed our hands.<\/p>\n
The cows stared. The dogs barked.<\/p>\n
Corry just kept on going.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
February 20, 2001 \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Corry Moolenaar just kept on going. Steady and sure, she emerged on the horizon, pedaling persistently. I caught my breath as her bicycle approached. I took a drink of water as it sped right past me. “I’m not stopping!” Corry yelled with joy. Corry doesn’t stop …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,4,24],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":146,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions\/146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}