6 weeks to go

With 6 weeks till my ride to Vancouver, I will know next weekend how close I am to being in condition to biking 1,200 km.  Next weekend is the Ride to Conquer Cancer, and I have now met my donation requirement of $2,500.  I took a look at the top fund raisers and was astonished to see that there were quite a few that had earned up to $60,000.  I found raising $2,500 to be a challenge and would have no idea who to raise even $10,000 let alone 60!

I have been training most days, but have slipped from my goal for daily rides.  I had planned on biking from Calaway Park to downtown every week day about mid May.  It is now near end of June and I have ridden from Calaway to downtown, but it has been rather sporadic.  I do need to bump up my riding a little and with school ending it will mean that my Monday / Wednesday evenings will have a little more leeway to them.  Currently I need to be home to take my daughter to soccer M & W so that limits my rides somewhat. Most days I ride from COP, which makes for a nice ride.  Here are the distances of the rides I do.

Daily rides to Downtown

• Shouldice – 15km
• COP – 30km
• Calaway Park – 50km

I have decided that I have to take the main route to Vancouver from Calgary through Golden, Kamloops then to Vancouver.  I had been interested in taking a southern route, but it adds 3-4 days to the trip, would be much hillier and a lot hotter (40C).  So I’m opting for a more northerly route. The only part that is still to be decided is if I should go through Case or Whistler as both routes seem about the same distance.

The other part of my plan that has changed is that initially I was going to have a road crew to take care of the daily logistics.  Currently it looks like I will be packing my gear as well, so this will impact my rides making them longer if I want to maintain 100km a day. With 6 weeks left I now need to start planning what I need to bring along for this ride, as well as minimizing what I take as well. I’ll try and note what I’m packing or planning on packing in my next post.

I had expected that with the biking and running that over the winter I would have lost weight.  There are 2 ways to make your ride easier, you can by very expensive bikes and gear that are very light, or you can lose weight. I had opted for the weight loss as a 10 lb loss in body mass would be a big increase in my ride.  Alas I’ve gained a little over the winter which has me puzzled but also accepting that I won’t be as physically fit as I had hoped to be for my Vancouver trip.

Well it’s Saturday, and sunny out, and I hear the trails calling my name.

There was a dream

I think back to my childhood to the many trips we made into BC from Alberta and have very fond memories of seeing cyclists who were doing the trip via bike. I would say "I want to do that when I grow up".

I was always a kid on my bike, I would cycle everywhere in FortMcMurray as a kid. In Jr High I had on many occasions biked from BeaconHill to school in Thickwood, which I am sure was an oddity for most people as I never ever saw another bike whist I treked off to school or home. Now it could have been the hills at either and as they give cars a challenge.

We moved to Sherwoord Park when I was in gr 10 and I biked all over Sherwoord Park and on one occasion in the middle of summer, on a rather hot day I rode accross Edmonton and back.

Well I grew up many years ago and still bike frequently, but have never ever even attempted to realize my dream.

Over my 20's I became robust 300lb guy and it was only near the end of my 20's that I brought that down to a respectable 230lb. Which at that time with a new baby daughter a road trip never fit into my life.

Last summer I started jogging, I was back up to 250 lb, and the jogging nearly daily was really make me feel good, to feel energized, and one day in August I was sharing how as a kid I used to dream about biking to Vancouver. The next day I told her I was going to do it next year.

So my goal is to bike from Calgary to Vancouver the first 2 weeks of August 2010.