My Ride to Conquer Cancer Experience

As you may know, last weekend I embarked on a 200km long bike ride to raise money for the Segal Center at the Jewish General Hospital here in Montreal. If you’d like to hear the cancer stories that fuelled the ride, check out my rider page here. Around 1150 riders combined to raise $4.2M for cancer research this year, which is nothing short of incredible.

I did this ride with my friend Jackie, who I pressured into committing and coming with me. She had less experience with long rides than I did, but even I had only ever done a 90km ride once. We hadn’t trained extensively for this, but we’re both in good shape and felt that we could push through. Spoiler alert: we did it!

My dad had told me that the doctor that has been taking care of him throughout his cancer saga was going to be riding, so he put us in touch. We had texted, but couldn’t meet on the morning of the first day because I had lost my bike tags and had to run around a bit to get everything sorted to ride. Oh well, I figured we’d meet her at lunch or at the camp and finish line at the end of the first day. Sometime during the day, I stopped behind some other riders and started making conversation. They mentioned that they were here with a big group of doctors, so I asked if they knew a Dr Johnson. She happened to be riding right in front of us! I pulled up and we chatted for about 10km about the research she’s doing, and I thanked her for being so amazing with my pop. It was truly special to meet one of the people who was so instrumental to helping him get past this, and she (apparently) enjoyed meeting me as well.

The hardest stretch of the first day was the 35km long stretch before lunch, which included some torrential downpour, sunscreen in my eyes, and a sore butt. Surprisingly, my legs were feeling fine, it was just my butt that was sore. Sitting on a bike seat for many hours will do that to ya.

We arrived at the halfway (105km) camp around 3:30pm, after having started around 9am with breaks inbetween. We had the most refreshing beer ever—the sun had come out and was beaming down on our sweaty faces for the last 20km or so—and proceeded to have fantastic showers. They had these shower trucks with surprisingly clean showers, not that shower cleanliness would have mattered at that point.

The evening was followed by some really great good and amazing corn on the cob, a live music performance in the main tent, and hanging out with some Toronto folks who we had met at the lunch stop. Hanging, in this case, implies drinking lots of beer and having good conversation until around 10:30pm when it was already past time to sleep; the 5:30am wake-up was looming.

The next morning we had a lovely breakfast buffet which included sausages and eggs and waffles, the perfect fuel for riding. We didn’t indulge too much, because we knew that at every stop there would be fruits, energy bars, peanut butter and other snacks. En route at 7am, and the wind was in our face for the first 20km or so.

We managed to tuck behind a group of four very strong women riders, two of whom were wearing KPMG jerseys. Ah yes, I haven’t mentioned yet that there were a lot of corporate sponsors and big groups from Rogers, A&W (I guess their office is in Montreal?), some investment groups, some law firms, and an architecture firm. Generally they rode in big groups or they split into a few groups but I was impressed with their ability to stay together given the different pace I assume they would have had naturally. Partway through the second day, Jackie and I split off when I jumped onto a little peloton of people from a company called Genyk. They were all in their 50s or 60s and extremely strong… I was using them to block the wind and still pushing hard to keep a pace of around 29km/h, and we kept that up for about 15km until the next rest stop. Riding in a group like that really, really makes a difference for both wind resistance and for general inspiration, so I’m glad we had those experiences.

The lunch break for the second day was actually only about 15km from the ending, and we had already covered 80km that day. The last leg of the trip, however, was the most hilly and included a few long, big climbs that caused some people trouble. Jackie and I powered through, despite having very sore butts, and made it to the top of the final hill, with around 2km left to go. I decided to sprint the last two kilometers to the finish, so I split off again. I happened to arrive at the end at a time when nobody else was finishing, so I had the whole finish line and hype to myself! There was a person on a microphone announcing that I was coming in, and people were cheering and it felt like I won the slowest and shortest Tour de France ever. Very cool feeling.

We got our medals, got a lot of high fives, and had another victory beer. Then some stretching and we were off to the bus to come back to Montreal.

Overall, this was a great experience and I’m really glad I did it. I’m extremely fortunate to have parents who are both cancer survivors, and it means a ton to me that I’m in a place where I can help raise money for this research. I’m also fortunate to be able to actually do the ride—a lot of people aren’t physically able to do it, and it’s important for me to be grateful that I have this opportunity.

Thanks for reading, and hopefully you’ll be hearing about next year’s ride in 2020! 🚴🤘