It recently dawned on me that I hadn’t posted an update about the tour since June 20th when I hit my fundraising goal. Yet, despite the radio silence, it’s not as though nothing has been happening! Certainly life has been happening, with a trip to Regina to visit family during that period. But the biggest thing that’s been happening is training. So. Much. Training.

Of course, everyone on the tour, from the riders to the volunteers to the event organizers will tell you the Tour is not a race. And it absolutely isn’t! The event is first and foremost a drive to raise funds for the Alberta Cancer Foundation. As for the riders, the primary goal is to finish while enjoying the event for the reward that it is. As I’ve said before, the event itself is an absolute joy to participate in; the large group ride, surrounded by fellow fundraisers and cyclists, is an experience that’s difficult to describe unless you’ve done it or something similar.

But let’s admit it, for a lot of us, we want to not just finish the ride but perform well, and to do that requires training.

And so I’ve been riding. A lot.

I am so very excited to announce that, as of today, I’ve hit my goal for my Tour Alberta for Cancer fundraising campaign! The key was Taber Cares, which held a donation matching event for up to $200,000 in donations to ride participants. Between my own self-donation, a couple of timely contributions from folks in my network, and the equivalent matching donations, all those funds pushed me over the top!

Of course, the fundraising doesn’t stop there. While reaching the $2,500 goal secures my participation in the in-person ride, I will certainly keep pushing to raise even more, as every dollar to the Alberta Cancer Foundation funds critical programs here in the province.

I’ve thought of myself as a “cyclist” for as long as I can remember. First, purely as a practical matter, cycling has always been my preferred way to commute (so much so that during my early years of post-secondary I rode to school straight through the winter). But as a sport, there’s few things I enjoy more (skiing and hiking come a close second). The Edmonton River Valley, in particular, has long been a playground to me, with gorgeous paved, gravel, and single track trails that seem to go on forever. Countless are the number of falls days I spent with my wheels crunching through leaves on rolling trails, golden sunlight filtering through the branches overhead.

Then, as is apparently inevitable for folks as they enter middle age, in the last few years I found myself getting into long distance cycling across the beautiful open roads of rural Alberta, and in doing so discovered a whole new kind of joy in a sport I thought I already knew so well.

Throughout those years I’d occasionally thought about signing up for an event like Tour Alberta for Cancer, but I was always a bit intimidated. After all, the physical demands of these types of events are significant (though I would discover, in hindsight, that I’d significantly overestimated the difficulty, or rather underestimated my ability to overcome it), and the fundraising is… daunting to say the least.

But a few of years back, while still working at INVIDI, one of my co-workers put together a team and I decided it was finally time to give it a shot. After all, while an event like the Tour might be intimidating, it’s a lot easier when you know there’s other people who are on the journey with you.

Of course, this first year was 2021, and assuming you haven’t just blanked out that year in your memory–and who would blame you if you did?–you’ve probably already figured out that year was a little… odd. As a consequence, our first Tour ride was in fact a virtual one, which… really wasn’t the same. At all.

And so, while 2021 was technically our first Tour, 2022 was our first real Tour.

Now I won’t lie and say it was easy. The ride itself was challenging, though I have to admit it was not as bad as I’d expected. And fundraising was certainly difficult. But in the end I had no regrets and I immediately signed up for the 2023 ride, having found a new and unexpected passion.