The Ride to Conquer Cancer 2011
Over this past weekend, Adam, Marcus and I rode along side 3,000 other good Samaritans to raise money for the BC Cancer research and treatment options. Our team has raised $250,000 for this great cause over the past 3 years. This year a record $11.2 million dollars was raised in this event making the ultimate goal for a cure for cancer closer than ever.
The ride runs from Cloverdale to Seattle with a half-way overnight ‘tent city’ camp at Mount Vernon. Each day we cycled approximately 125km for a total distance of 250km.
Saturday morning started out with pouring rain and pretty well every rider was soaked by the end of the opening ceremonies. . . Yikes!
The Peace Arch border crossing gave us three dedicated lanes to cross through but still resulted in about an hour wait in the cold rain. Most of us were drenched, cold and shaking by then but recovered quickly in the hard ride through Birch Bay and through some beautiful farm area onto Bellingham. Following Bellingham came the famous Chuckanut Drive hill climb to lunch.
With the majority of the climb behind us our first lunch stop was welcomed by many smiles. And boy does the food taste good when you have just rode 80km.
The ride coordinators place pit stops every 25km along the route. In this photo Adam is sporting one of the famous waffles that we all devoured along the route. This is of course until one of us finally read the contents which confirmed each waffle contained 450 calories (Wow! That’s like a Big Mac). Each calorie was welcomed however. My feet never looked better caked in mud and soaked right through my shoe rain guards (we called them concrete feet).
Welcome to ‘Tent City’ at Mount Vernon, the half way point along the ride where we spend the night. This is no ordinary camp ground as it comes loaded with cheering fans, a massage tent with 30+ masseuses (giving us each our own 20 minutes of bliss), cold beer on tap, champagne, and hot shower trucks, a general store, live music and good food (which ran out this year tsk tsk).
Day 2 – And we thought we were working hard until we saw this uni-cyclist. He rides this 250km event every year which is absolutely unbelievable when you consider the hills where climbing and descending on a unicycle can be treacherous at best. Bravo! Whoever you are.
Lunch stop 50km from the finish and yes, it was still raining! At this stop they were handing out reflective heat wraps to help the shivering cyclists warm up (check out this happy group). Nonetheless, happy to be approaching the finish our gang is all smiles.
3000 cyclists, 250km, an elevation gain of 3,735 ft. resulting in an amazing achievement of raising $11.2million. An adventure well worth the effort pushing us one step closer to our ultimate goal . . .
Finding a Cure for Cancer!
