The Rum Runner's Trail
The Mission: To ride from Halifax to Mahone Bay, 110km, in one day, raising money for the fight against Cancer. One goal, Two 10 year olds, and a whole lot of dedication.
Day 1
Written By Justin Dolan
Hello and thank you for visiting our blog in support of the Great Cycle Challenge! I bet you’re wondering how and why we got the idea to do this big bike ride from Halifax to Mahone Bay.
Well here it is: Sam was eavesdropping while mom was scrolling through her facebook page and something caught Sam's eye. It was a post for the Great Cycle Challenge to raise money in the help to fight kid’s cancer and right away, Sam thought that was a great idea!
And this is how we came up with the idea to cycle from Halifax to Mahone Bay.
We started out on a sunny Saturday afternoon, water and snacks in Dad’s carry bag, just going for a family bike ride - no distance in mind, no goal, just simply enjoying the trail on a hot day. Once we reached the 6k mark, we stopped for our first break, to enjoy some water and yummy snacks. At that point, our mom started thinking of different ways that we could participate in this challenge, and asked us what we thought of riding from Halifax all the way to Mahone Bay!
That’s over 108 kms on a bike...all day! We thought that was a good idea so we continued on for our first training bike ride.
On this first snack break, we scheduled how many kilometres we would do for each training bike ride. After all, we can’t roll out of bed one day and decide to ride 108 kms. We need to train our little legs for this. So off we went, continuing this first training ride with a goal to build up to 108 kms. The BLT trail in Halifax is beautiful, full of blooming trees, lakes, rivers and most importantly, pretty flat trails - ha! We stopped for a quick snack and water break about every 5 kms so we could continue on our ride.
Our Dad decided that we should try to complete a total of 25 kms on this first ride, and we gladly accepted this challenge. At the halfway point, we turned our bikes around and cycled back to our car. When we only had 3 kms to go, our tiny little legs were about to fall off, when our parents decided the time was now to tell us that we were going to have Darryl burgers when we got home. For anyone that knows us, we LOVE our Darryl’s burgers! Our little legs suddenly found the energy to keep going and reach the car, because we had a goal, we were motivated. We had a reason to keep going. And that is the end of our first training ride for the fight against kids' cancer. Although our butts were sore, our legs felt like jello, we know that this is nothing compared to what kids with cancer have to go through.
Going for nature hikes, tours of places, camping, going to school, playing sports, and going for big bike rides is very tiring, it’s still fun to laugh, exercise, and spend time with the ones you know and love. And we don’t want other people to miss out on that. So please, find the worry in your hearts and morph it into confidence that you CAN help fight kid’s cancer, that you WILL save lives. So please, kids with cancer beg of you, to donate money to fight kids cancerrrrrrrrrr!
And that’s the origin story of the big Dolan/Pellerin family bike ride! Hope you “cycled” through it! Heh heh heh!
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