Sore feet, numb bums and are we really doing this thing?
Those were the themes of Saturday’s training ride — a dress rehearsal for the two-week, 1,200-kilometre fundraising ride that is Tour de Rock.
For 27 years, the Vancouver Island ride has raised money for pediatric cancer research and to support programs for children facing cancer, like Camp Goodtimes, a summer camp with on-site medical support where kids with cancer can just be kids.
On Saturday, we assembled the team for a ride from Nanaimo to Duncan and back, a distance of 130 kilometres, to give us a taste of what the real tour, which starts Sept. 21, will be like.
With 100 kilometres behind us and just 30 kilometres of never-ending hills ahead, many of us were squirming in our seats, shifting our weight from side to side and taking any chance we could find to stand up out of the seat and relieve the pressure on our sit bones.
Some riders started undoing their shoes to ease the pressure on swollen feet after a sweltering day.
“The last 5K felt great and all I wanted at that point was to chop my feet off,” Mary Griffin, a reporter at CHEK News and one of four media riders this year, said after jumping in Long Lake to cool off from the day.
“Everything hurts. Everything hurts — but I think everything hurts for everybody so I’m OK with it,” said Nicholas Arnold, a radio host for Vista Radio Sun FM in Duncan.
Until Saturday’s ride, Tour de Rock still felt like an abstract concept for most of us riders, something we knew was coming but wasn’t quite real.
When our team of 13 pulled out of the parking lot at Inn on Long Lake Saturday morning, it was the first time we had cycled with the full “package” — a lead car, a support car in the back and a motorcycle crew. (The motorcycle crew warned us in a pre-ride briefing to stay tight in line or we could, and would, be hit as they zoomed past us to hold traffic at upcoming intersections.)
“ ‘This is real.’ That’s exactly what was going through my mind. We’re actually in it now and this is what it’s going to be like for two solid weeks,” said Sgt. Jereme Leslie with Saanich police.
We rode two-by-two, blowing through red lights as drivers waited patiently for us, honking and waving their support. Music blared from speakers on top of the lead car and the roar of highway traffic drowned out our frequent warning calls of “Slowing!” and “Hole!” to riders behind.
At a stop at the Ladysmith Tim Hortons, where the crew presented a cheque from their fundraising efforts, we met a woman whose two-year-old niece Madrona died of cancer in 2013. Wearing a T-shirt featuring a photo of Madrona, she thanked Tour de Rock for fundraising that has supported Madrona’s siblings attending Camp Goodtimes.
Just down the street, we stopped at the Ladysmith Show ‘n Shine, where people who came to admire classic cars generously stuffed $20 bills into our outstretched helmets.
“Today is the day where it hit me — the scale of tour,” Arnold said. “Because people were honking the whole day, and when we went to the event, everybody was so happy to see us. The grandiose scale of the Tour de Rock was not evident to me until this ride.”
As we cruised Duncan, I began to feel nervous, noticing we’d been riding downhill for much of our southbound leg. Turning around in Duncan to head north, our pace slowed as we climbed, but we pushed on.
By some miracle, or perhaps because of five months of thrice-weekly training, we made it back to Long Lake in time for a lasagna dinner courtesy of the Lantzville Rotary Club.
Bailey Parker, a host for Virgin Radio in Victoria, summed up how many of us were feeling: “Broken but relieved. If we can do this, we can do tour, so it feels really good to see how far we’ve come.”
On Sunday, we’ll test that theory on our longest ride yet: 140 km of undulating hills from Saanich to Jordan River and back.
If you’d like to support Tour de Rock’s fundraising campaign, go to tourderock.ca.
>>> To comment on this article, write a letter to the editor: [email protected]
