The Epic Journey I shared with my sister!!

It's been a LONG time since I've blogged. What can I say, I've been a bit busy.

Just this past weekend (June 23/24), both my sister and I participated in and dare I say “ROCKED” the Alberta Ride to Conquer Cancer! When I did the ride in 2010, I reflected on how at the start of the ride (with over 1700 people)  I experienced an ironic sense of loneliness. This time, not so, thanks to my big sister Tami! The opening ceremonies were very moving, hearing the stories of survival and remembering all of those we’d lost…but I think mostly what I was feeling was nervousness. I wasn’t nervous about finishing, that’s just a given! Mostly nerves on what the weather would bring.


We started in light rain, but it seemed that by about 5 or 10 kms in the weather was nice (at least I don’t remember the rain lasting). It was fun thinking up songs to sing about the rain, and stopping at the pit stops to get snacks and feeling the energy of the entire group. Tami is a “go getter” so our pit stops and lunch were short (which is of course a good thing). The organizers of this event are amazing, and the support along the way would be hard to match.

Coming into the last pit stop it started to rain… and kept raining (quite heavily) until we reached camp. At about 100kms in on day 1 (the last pit stop at Bar U Ranch), my right knee started to cause me some pain, but I pedaled through and still had a great ride. Day 1 was 125 kms and arriving at camp was so rewarding. We literally slogged through a mud pit in order to rack our bikes. We excitedly chatted about how strong we felt going up the hills and how we got to pass a lot people that looked like “pros” :)

After getting our gear, and finding our tent, we changed out of our soaking wet and muddy riding clothes into slightly less wet clothes ;) Luckily our families came to see us and we also had a great dinner! Eventually we made our way back to our tent through the mud and cow pie field and settled in for LOTS of giggles and puddles of water where they should not have been. It wasn’t the best sleep of my life, to put it mildly, but we kept reminding ourselves that no matter how bad we felt, it wasn’t even close to how bad cancer sucks!




Honestly, it was hard to be full of energy for day 2, since I was tired, cold, wet and muddy and my knee was starting off the day hurting. We skipped the coffee tent (what?!?!?!?!) because I didn’t want to slog through all the mud to get there. It felt like we were literally in a cloud as it was foggy and misty!! At the first pit stop the GREAT crew helped us bundle our feet in “mylar” since our shoes were pretty wet from day 1 (that morning I poured water out of them) and that made quite a difference, well for awhile.

The ride on day 2 was good, and I’m not going to lie, although I knew I would NEVER quit, there were a few fleeting moments when I wished for it to be over…or to be closer to the finish, as every peddle stroke was painful for my right knee. We experienced some excitement when we had to pedal over a washed out road (yes it rained THAT much!) and I had a few minor mechanical issues when my chain jumped off its rails on two separate occasions while passing on hills. We were extremely fortunate to not have any major issues with our bikes. I saw a crash and Tami had a near miss on day 1, but we essentially made it through without incident!

It was an amazing feeling to finish with that “pleasant” overall physical exhaustion and so worth it to see our kids cheering us over the finish line. I have to admit, it only took two days after THE ride to start thinking about when I’d go on my next ride :)  I’m just so proud to have achieved this with my sister and to know that we were part of bringing together $8 million dollars for the Alberta Cancer Foundation.