Heading to the foothills in the pre-dawn chill, Connor Ellison slouches in the back of the family's packed Toyota Sequoia. Once they reach Plymouth, dread and inertia keep him lingering there.
Ahead is a 65-mile bike ride on some of the area's most beautifully brutal country roads, with names as ominous as Slug Gulch, Volcano and Ram's Horn. All told, it's a 5,000-foot elevation gain, 11 miles of quad-straining uphill work.
Snow coats the roadside on this mid-February day as other cyclists on Team Donate Life, training for the 3,000-mile Race Across America in June, unload bikes, add layers and gird for the day's ride. Connor, meanwhile, futzes around with gloves and gear, delaying the inevitable. He knows what to expect. Pain.
Connor and pain are longtime companions. He has a rare liver disease, congenital hepatic fibrosis, that almost killed him one night a few years ago and has put him too often in the hospital.
But that condition is what brought him to the foothills on a day better spent indoors. Feeling better after surgery in December to relieve pressure on veins around his liver, Connor's bike training is going well, but his motivation this day is shaky.
He is 12. Remember 12? You're full of plans and dreams, but not always so eager to endure the drudgery to realize them. And this is, after all, the first day of a weeklong school break in Connor's hometown of Folsom. He could be sleeping in, then playing video games with his best friend, Elliott.
"Come on," his mother, Tiffany, gently prods. "The team is waiting."
Connor finally rouses himself and mounts his shiny new road bike. Liver disease or no, he is something of a cycling prodigy. Though just 5-foot-1½ and 95 pounds, with legs as thin as chopsticks, the kid is a climber. Hard-core cyclists call it having a "big engine," and Connor's has enough horsepower to hang with his dad, Jared, and others on the team who are veteran long-distance riders.
The ride's first hour and a half does not go well. Connor lags back with his mom, a nascent cyclist training hard for the race. Tears mix with sweat on the boy's face. Tiffany starts to lose patience; this whole Race Across America thing "is his dream and he begged us to let him do it," she'll recall later. She pulls up next to him and looks at Connor, who has shed his usually placid demeanor.
"I'm just tired of hurting," he says.
At this point, Tiffany almost loses it. Here's her tough little guy, the third of her four kids, who has experienced a world of hurt since being diagnosed with liver fibrosis four years ago. Now he's being subjected to more pain on this hellacious ride.
Turns out, Connor's heart-rate monitor is causing the pain. It has slipped down his slim rib cage and is rubbing against the zipperlike scar from his surgery six weeks earlier.
Now it's Tiffany who's crying, out of maternal pride and empathy. She gives Connor a pep talk as they make the steady climb.
"I promised that all of his personal sacrifice will be worth it, and that in order for us to reach things in life that most people only dream of, we have to do things … that most people are too afraid of (doing)."
Connor finishes the ride looking strong, smiling broadly. Other challenges will come in subsequent months — another trip to the emergency room for stomach distress, a broken wrist from a fall off his mountain bike and, worst for a sixth-grader shy around grown-ups, public appearances.
But isn't that what life is, a series of challenges? It just seems that Connor has had to learn that lesson earlier than most kids.
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