Sir Velo: TFK Day 3: 216km

I had brought my camera along on the trip, thinking I would be snapping tons of cool pictures and "documenting" the whole thing. It turns out, the whole thing kind of flew by - we were constantly busy - cycling, eating, drinking, sleeping. Not too much time for R&R.

The plan for day 3 was to head South to Peterborough along this route (or check this out).

After the morning dedication, Jeff Rushton, the main founder of Tour for Kids and a guy with tons of energy, warned us that there was a bit of climb starting about 2 km after leaving Camp Northlands. My legs were fairly sore at this point, but still not too bad. Although I had skipped getting a massage the night before and I really hadn't stretched much (idiot), I was feeling pretty good. 10 minutes later, I was feeling like shit.

The hills coming out of Camp Northlands, under the conditions that we were in, were pretty brutal. 10-12%, long climbs followed by severe rollers for what seemed like 50km. By the time we go to the lunch stop, we were all pretty tired. However, we were told that the road from there to Peterborough was pretty much down hill.

We joked throughout the tour about "riding into form". When you watch the Tour de France, you often hear that some riders were planning on "riding into form" during the tour... ie, peaking during week 3 of the tour and using the first 2 weeks essentially as training - it sounds bizarre that they could actually do that, but it's true. So I joked with the team that due to my lack of riding pre-tour, I was riding into form, and hoping to peak in the third week (which didn't really help in a four day event!). That being said, Rob really began to ride strong during the second half of day 3. He pretty much pulled our entire group the last 50km and was really riding well.

We arrived at Trent at about 4:30pm. The organization of the Tour for Kids is second to none - we arrive at Trent, get our pictures snapped, we're handed a recovery drink and a key to our dorm room. Our bags are waiting for us after we stow our bikes in the indoor racks. Everything works like clockwork - which no doubt takes a lot of work behind the scenes by the awesome volunteers.

Dinner was awesome that night and so were the couple of beers that went with it. The catering was provided by Aramark. At night, for the third night in a row, we had a presentation by one of the camps we're supporting: Camp Trillium. Camp Trillium really focused on support for the children afflicted and recovering from cancer, but also the families of those children. We heard amazing stories from campers and counselors, and it sounded like it was an ordinary camp... but that was the point, wasn't it - to give these kids and families a chance to feel normal again.