My intention for this blogspot was to showcase my photography, which I have done in a few of my posts as you can see. This year for the blogspot I wanted to post something a little different. From the heading above you can see that I am riding a bike to Montreal. Now for people who know me they may think that this task is impossible. Not so much! I've proved to myself in the past that I could run 2 half marathon's back in 2008 amd with the proper training, your body can do anything.
The Bike Rally was introduced to me last year as a volunteer and I am glad that I did it. It opened my eyes to what capabilities I have and what I feel is important to me and how I can help others. In the final day of the rally, a large group of us were waiting patiently for the 300 plus riders to cross the finish line. A sea of purple jerseys came towards us with a police escort and proudly awaited their audience. The tears, the hugs and the joy that these riders just finished cycling 660km from Toronto to Montreal was incredible. I wanted to be a part of that in a big way. I made it happen in 2011 with a lot of support from my partner Bob, my family and friends and of course me.
My first was of course the registration which I did at Woody's bar in Toronto along with many of my peers and then I was to attend a few important seminars and workshops to make sure I was up to the challenge. The next big step for me was to buy a bike. It had been 30 years since I purchased my last bike and because of inflation, I'm sure I would be shocked. The bike and accessories were quite expensive but going forward I have a fancy, smancy bike with some sexy spandex and tight shirts (lovely!!!).
FUNDRAISING
Definitely not my strong point!!!! This part of the journey I'll be honest with you is not something that I have favoured. As a minimum, each rider has to raise $2200 by June 30th in order to participate and thank you to some wonderful friends and family I have reached this goal with a few more bucks to get to my ultimate goal of $3000. Thank you again everyone for donating to this wonderful cause. I would do things a little bit differently the next time if I decide to participate in the following years. Let's just put it down to a learning experience. I'll wait a few years I think to give everyone a break.
TEAM VELOCITY
Our team name! We have a total of 33 members on Team Velocity with 5 of them being volunteers. We've had quite a few meetings, plenty of posts and a bunch load of emails to make the decision on our name. We like the name and to make it even more fun, we were able to pick our own special names with the word "Velocity" in it. It's official! My name is "FUELLED BY VELOCITY". Everyone on the team has their own unique twist on the names and to top it off, fancy new shirts with our logo created by are very own Mark Fisher and James Forrester. We are almost there!
TEAM EVENTS
Very exciting events planned for the Bike Rally and some of the ideas are brand new and quite complex. Red Dress Day, Talent night (did someone say Lady Gaga and Madonna?), Disney day and 101 dalmations to boot. Look out for Cruella DeVille!
THE TRAINING RIDES
The training rides would be a true test of my abilities to see if I could actually ride a bike, change gears and change a tire, phew!!!! The rides would gradually increase from week to week and planned so you could be prepared for hills and endurance. I will provide a list of all the rides I've done to date totalling 720km. I won't tell you about all the cursing I've done when I've experience all those wonderful hills east, west, north and south of Toronto. This is a G-rated blogspot. Since the inception of the training rides, a group of us in our team have decided to do more endurance based rides on our own. Most recently 121km. Our group consits of Harvey Malinsky, Chris Jones when he's not working, David Embleton, Rob Venoit, Kevin Levesque aka Miss Conception (yes we have the most fabulous drag queen riding with us) and Kevin Romaine, the most recent registered rider and myself. Sometimes we've had the pleasure of David McNaughton and a friend of his Ben, who snuck in some Hills and Skills training because deep down we knew that we probably not attend the workshop. He knew it!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment