ALS Fundraising

Before I get to the good stuff, first I must give a brief update on my 150 km ride today. The good news is that I did it, in fact, I even had company! My new friend, Sara, and I took off this morning early for our weekly long ride. Sara and I got hooked up through our coach, Carolyn, she recently moved back to Calgary, from Victoria, and is also training for Ironman. If I hadn't had Sara as my riding partner today... disaster may have struck! We decided to do two 75 km rides, having a very short break at our cars in between. I actually quite liked this, and the 75 km route was very challenging with hills so it was actually quite good training as IMCanada certainly does not lack hills (or perhaps Mountain's is a better description). Approximately half way out on the 2nd loop of the ride, so approximately 95 kms into the ride we rode directly into a massive thunder/lightning/hail/HEAVY rain storm. It was a storm I would be afraid to drive through, let alone bike through! I won't go on and on (because I could!), but the final result was the most excruciating frozen fingers and toes that I have ever experienced. In fact, I could not even function, I rode in the same gear the rest of the way because physically my hands could not change the gears. Sara actually had to unlock my car and start it for me! I sat in a hot bath (which probably wasn't even that hot, but it hurt on my frozen body) for half an hour while my feet and hands tingled their way back to life. It was kind of scary actually, but I lived through it to tell about it, so I guess it couldn't have been that bad. I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing, but my phone took it's last breath and didn't live through the water damage (It was so some seriously heavy rain!!!), so I rewarded myself (for not curling up in the ditch and dying) by buying a new iphone. I guess it was worth it for that (I've been wanting one of those for a long time!). Also on a good note, the 150 km didn't feel bad at all! My muscles couldn't feel any fatigue because they were well into the hypothermia stage before there was any excessive lactic acid build up!

The real reason for this posting is that I have somehow wanted to incorporate some fundraising into my Ironman training. There is a charity near and dear to Uncle Bruce's heart, as well as the rest of my family, and I know that there are many of Uncle Bruce's friends who may be interested in being involved or contributing in whatever capacity they can. At Uncle Bruce's memorial service, in lieu of flowers or donations, it was requested that people could make donations for the Dave Pendray memorial fund through the BC and Yukon ALS society.

ALS, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, is a progressive, fatal, neurodegenerate disease caused by the degeneration of motor neurons. It may be more familar to you as Lou Gehrig's disease after the New York Yankees baseball star who died in 1941 of this disease. Patients of ALS eventually lose the ability to initiate and control all voluntary movement (that would suck!).

Dave Pendray died of ALS in February of 2007. The Pendray family has been extremely influential on the farming community of Vancouver Island for many many years. The Pendray Dairy farm (off of West Saanich Road) was run by Dave Pendray, and his wife Linda as well as their children. His death was a huge loss to the dairy farming community as well as his many friends. Uncle Bruce was a very dear friend to Dave, his death was very devastating to Uncle Bruce, much like the way that we feel. If Uncle Bruce was still alive and could fundraise and bring awareness to a charity, there is no doubt that it would be in Dave Pendray's name.

Although I did not have the chance to meet Dave Pendray (I have however met his wonderful wife and daughters), ALS has affected my entire family beyond just the loss of Dave. My grandpa, Dr. Barry Backus, died in July 1997 of ALS. My grandpa was the most brilliant, intelligent, caring, generous man that ever lived. If you knew him, I have no doubt that you would agree.

The ALS Society of Canada was created with the purpose to fund research towards a cure for ALS and provide quality care and support for those affected by ALS. If your life has been affected by ALS, perhaps through the death of a loved one, like Dave Pendray, or Barry Backus, and you would like to help fight this battle, you can make donations to:

Dave Pendray Memorial Fund

c/o ALS Society of BC and Yukon

#208 - 1600 West 6th Ave

Vancouver, BC

V6J 1R3

In Memory of Bruce Bowman

Consider your donation a sponsorship to get me out of bed every morning and carry on with all this training. If a financial donation is not something that you are interested in doing, then let me challenge you to participate in your local "Walk for ALS" which is a fundraising charity event that runs in many many cities, throughout the year, in Canada. You can find your nearest event and pledgeforms at this website: http://www.als.ca/events/location.aspx?e=21. Alison and I will be participating in our local Calgary Walk for ALS this year (except she doesn't know that yet).

After sulking for 2 days (sore abs!), I shall leave you with the funniest thing I have seen all week (much, MUCH laughing!):

This is my beautiful, exotic, pure bread, Himalayan, precious baby boy (yes, we treat him like he's human, and we treat him like he's our kid). Bedford:

This is precisely why Craig will never allow me to have kids. The result of leaving Alison and I alone in the bathroom with the cat and an electric razor:




There's a hot summer coming, I thought it would keep him cool... But we're getting Air Conditioning installed in our place tomorrow... So.... HAHAHAHA poor ugly Bedford (I hope it grows back soon!)