Ride to Conquer Cancer

I started blogging in March as part of my fund raising efforts towards participation in the Ride to Conquer Cancer. It's a 2 day bicycle ride from Vancouver, BC to Seattle. Each participant must agree to raise $2,500 in order to go on the Ride. I've done that and now I'm going to post my blog posts here dating back to March. I'm not sure how long they'll continue to be posted on that site after the Ride (June 20 & 21, 2009). Hopefully I'll have some photos to post after the event.

Cycle blog entry #1, Mar. 20, 2009
As the weather improves I'm been trying to increase my cycling distances per ride while also training for the Sun Run. It's proving to be a bit of a challenge. I'm adjusting to a gradually more rigorous training schedule since the Season of Over-indulgences (Christmas) has now ended.

I would have tried cross training sooner, but as those of us that live in the lower mainland know, there's been a fair bit more snow this year than usual. I track the number of days I ride to work and in January I only did it twice. February wasn't much better: only 6 times.

Part of my "green" commuting strategy is to take advantage of Transit's offer to travel with my bike on Skytrain. The only limitation is that you can only bring your bike onto a train going opposite to the flow of rush hour. That works for me. For the past 2 years I've been riding my bike 5.6 miles down the hill in the morning from where I live to the Clark Drive Skytrain station and taking the train to Burnaby Lake. It's an easy trip.

The route home, however, is the real workout. Skytrain takes me to Commercial Drive and I ride up the hill to our house near Fraser and 35th. Total round trip adds up to about 11 miles.