Mentor resident Josh Rosen is no stranger to completing endurance events to help others and he recently continued down that path by hitting the road and trails to bike across the country.
Rosen, 31, is vice president of Cornerstone IT in Mentor and a member of the Leadership Lake County Signature Class of 2017.
His riding journey began on June 15 in Rocky River and ended July 22 on the West Coast in Seattle. The 38-day adventure included 65,295 feet of climbing, 158,172 calories burned, and a total of 252 hours on the bike.
The idea behind riding 2,760 miles through nine states was to raise awareness and funds to provide opportunities for diverse student participation in Leadership Lake County and Leadership Geauga Junior Leadership programs.
He knew there was some tuition assistance available for students, but he wanted to do something to help even more and aimed to raise $5,000 in donations to help students participate.
Rosen averaged about 73 miles on the bike per day and included some areas of the country where he could cover greater distances in day.
“I think the biggest thing is to keep moving, even if it’s just 2 mph,” Rosen said. “The miles in Wisconsin were tougher than I thought they would be and some of the areas like North Dakota and Illinois were pretty fast and I could do 100 to 120 miles a day.”
Originally, Rosen planned to end his cross-country trip in Portland, Ore., instead of Seattle. However, he encountered bad storms in Wisconsin that pushed his route south and forced him to ride an extra 200 miles.
He slept in the cheapest motels he could find and typically carried 60 to 65 pounds of gear and supplies during his ride, along with pedaling a bike that weighs about 30 pounds.
“I had everything including tools to fix the bike, water bottles, and a water infiltration system,” Rosen said. “I had at least six flat tires. A lot of areas, especially in Minnesota, had glass on the road and it was always at the worst time.”
To keep his load as light as possible, he didn’t carry much food so what he ate at mealtimes depended on what was available in the towns where he would ride. Sometimes in small rural towns, his meals would just be some oatmeal or peanut butter purchased at a gas station.
Last fall, Rosen ran a 100-kilometer (62 miles) race to raise awareness and support for Project Hope for the Homeless in Painesville Township. Training for the 100K event helped provide some of the skills needed to complete his ride across the country, but he soon discovered he was on a much different kind of endurance journey.
“I trained for 3.5 months for this, once I recovered from the 100K in November to benefit Project Hope,” Rosen said. “A lot of the planning I did for this was actually quite different once I got on the road. I had to figure out things like where I would sleep and where am I going to wash my clothes.”
Rosen said there was another important reason for him to ride across the country.
“I wanted to see if I could go across the whole United States and to see if the training I did before, the running stuff, helped,” Rosen said. “It did, much as I thought it would. It gives you a lot of the skill to keep going when you hit a roadblock. With running, you’re not running more than 40 hours total, but when you’re riding for more than 30 days, it starts to wear on you.”
Another challenge was overcoming the urge to just pack up and go home as he spent more than a month riding alone on the bike.
“It’s very different than what I thought it would be doing it solo. It’s a little bit different as a group or doing it with someone,” Rosen said. “When you’re solo, it’s much easier to quit because you’re by yourself. The physical part isn’t horrendous. The biggest thing is probably the mental aspect of it and getting up every day and knowing I have to do 100 miles even if it’s pouring rain. The hardest part is doing that over and over again.”
When the grind got really tough, it was all the people who were supporting him back home that he would think about and turn his attention to rather than dwell on what he still had left to do on the road.
“Really, it was just the people keeping the motivation going,” Rosen said. “It would have been really hard to do this one day without telling anybody and it would have been easy to quit.”
Rosen exemplifies the next generation of young leaders who have a strong desire to pursue their passions while benefitting the community, said Jessie Baginski, Leadership Lake County CEO.
“The lessons go beyond the good he and others are doing for local nonprofits — they serve to inspire all of us to push ourselves a little harder each day to make the world a better, kinder place,” Baginski said. “I am so grateful to all of our alumni who followed Josh on this journey to recognize this incredible challenge and to send words of encouragement and prayers for safety each day.”
Leadership Lake County is a private, educational nonprofit 501 (c)(3) organization established in 1986. Its goal is to develop and engage existing and future leaders within highly interactive leadership development programs in community-based settings while in pursuit of civic and economic excellence in Lake County and surrounding communities.
For more information about Leadership Lake County, visit leadershiplakecounty.org.