The Cops for Cancer Tour de North arrived in Prince George this evening (Tuesday) on day five of the ride.
The seven day, 800 kilometre ride from Dawson Creek to Williams Lake raises funds for childhood cancer research.
Today’s ride was between Chetwynd and Prince George.
“Today was good, it was long, we started at 7:00 in the morning, and were met with about four and a half hours of hard rain up until Bear Lake,” said Rob Orlowski, an officer with the Burns Lake RCMP.
“We’re feeling good now that we have the whole crowd out here, everyone’s cheering us on, the suns out, and it’s quite an accomplishment to go so far.”
“Today’s our longest day,” added Megan Lee, an administrative employee and dispatcher for the North District RCMP.
“We’ve got that under the belt, and the rest should be easy.”
While today was the longest day so far, Orlowski said the second day was the hardest so far.
“We had a very large elevation gain, almost 2,000 metres, over 153 kilometres,” he said.
“We were met with very strong winds that second day too, headwinds most of the way, which brought our speed down by about ten kilometres per hour.”
He noted it’s been cold every day up until today as well.
The riders have two more days of riding ahead of them, going from Prince George to Quesnel tomorrow, and then finishing in Williams Lake on Thursday.
“I think going into it I was really nervous about these last two days, just because it feels really uphill,” Lee said.
“But after accomplishing the last five days, I think we’ve got it in the bag, I think we’ll do great.”
Orlowski has been leaving bits of hair behind him as he’s progressed through the ride, shaving parts of his beard at various stops.
Outside of the Prince George RCMP Detachment today, Orlowski lost the most hair he has so far, shaving his head with the help of some of the Prince George Spruce Kings.
As for when the ride concludes, Orlowski and Lee shared different answers.
“I thought I was going to throw my bike away, but after seeing all the smiling faces and all the energy from all the people cheering us on, I can’t wait to get back out and do some more riding,” Orlowski said.
“I’m going to take a good month off exercise though,” Lee said.
Both said they’d return for another year of the ride.
“We’re so grateful for all the support from all the communities that we’ve been in, everyone’s been super great, and it really gives us that motivation to keep going,” Lee said.
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