2010 Ride to Conquer Cancer

I did it! I finished the Ride to Conquer Cancer. They don't say this anywhere, but the course is actually longer than 200km. They added some extra kilometers in there, just for fun. The weather was not ideal, but considering they were predicting 2 straight days of thunderstorms, I think we got pretty lucky with how the weather turned out.

There were more bicycles than you could count at the starting area, and everyone was wearing the same black/yellow jerseys. I did see a few accidents from people either going too fast or not prepared to bike in a crowd setting. It was very unfortunate, but I saw similar things happen when I did the Ride for Heart.

One thing organizers should consider are staggered start times just to thin out the crowds at the beginning. The start was a bad mix of speed demons who think they are in the Tour de France and rookie cyclists that are clipped into bikes they are not comfortable in.

Things got better once the crowd thinned out. Faster cyclists at the front, and slower cyclists at the back. The first 25K was a walk in the park. Basically riding out of the city. It was a bit misleading because we had handled the first 25K in pretty short time. We could probably do the whole 100K before lunchtime...
The next 25K were spent biking through Mississauga and Oakville. Very quaint streets and small shops. Traffic was starting to pick up around that time, but we had officials at most intersections directing traffic.
Now the next 25K segment was hilly. Some were rolling hills, but some were long steady hills. Some cyclists had to get off their bikes and walk up. The worst mistake I saw were cyclists that zip down the downhills and lock their gears as they tried to quickly change gears for the sudden uphill. They would fall and create an obstacle for other cyclists who were coming down the hill. Thankfully we had a lot of help from course officials, first-aid specialists, bike repair specialists. This section took a lot longer that the other ones... and it burnt me out for the final 25K of the day.
The last 25K of day 1 was rainy, but I had already done most of the hills before the rain started coming down. I was biking as fast as I could through the rain to reach the finish line... and shelter. I was feeling pretty gross when I was done, but thankfully I was fully refreshed after a shower and a change of clothes.
Day 2 started off with rain, so we delayed leaving camp as long as we could. Shortly after we left, the rain stopped and gave way to partly cloudy weather. After the hills from day 1, rumour was that the 100km course for day 2 was more easy going.
The course was flat for almost all of day 2. I spent day 2 coasting as much as I could. I'd duck down low and tuck in my elbows and see how far momentum would take me. This was easily my favorite part of the whole event.
When I finished the 200K (and then some), my wife was at the finish line cheering me. Well, she was cheering for everyone else too. She had volunteered to be on the cheering squad. I was exhausted, but glad that I did this event. It was very well organized and the riders were all well taken care of. The 2010 Ride to Conquer Cancer raised over 16 million dollars for cancer research. Good job, everyone!

PS: The bike-mounted camera worked great as you can see from the photos. My camera has a setting to take a photo every minute, so I didn't have to fumble with buttons during the ride.