Sports & Play
Ride for the Heart 2007 a long, leisurely hike up the DVP
There's no danger of not being able to find the start gates for Becel's Ride for the Heart; by 6:30 a.m. this morning, the streets of Toronto slowly began to fill with like-minded cyclists all funnelling down to the same point like rubber duckies toward an open drain.
I did the early-bird 50K this year, which starts at the west gates of Exhibition Place and enters the Gardiner Expressway, before heading up the Don Valley Parkway all the way to the York Mills exit and turning back. It took me about 2 hours and 15 minutes, which bests my 2005 time by about twenty minutes and change, but is nowhere near the league of the speed racers - who could be seen (and resented) charging up and down hills at speeds that would make a Smart Car jealous, leaving the more casual cyclists in their grinning wakes. All in good fun!
More photos from this morning's event below.
The real early-birds: the 75K marathon gets started at 6:45 this morning.
View from the top: looking south from the turnaround point at York Mills and DVP.
The regular-start peloton heads south towards the finish. (I used peloton in a sentence!!)
The finish line!
Discussion
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And it's no more inconvenience than rush hour(s) every day - you can still get where you're going, just takes the "usual" time rather than the magic weekend speed.
Not that I would wish ill, but you might want to think of the purpose that the ride serves and how the money raised contributes to the dramatic rise in survival rates for all circulatory ailments.
Oh - and get out and ride your bike, it's better for you than sitting in front of a computer and whining.
Too bad people like LAT can reproduce (and do in numbers in the 905). That's the only thing that makes me wonder about Darwinism.
LAT, you have some balls to come on here and take a swing at an event that raises money for life-saving research AND has ancillary benefits towards the city's air quality. Don't like the traffic? Stay the hell off our roads.
I hear Queens Qauy and Lakeshore are beatiful this time of year. I know I love riding my bike on the Lake.
Anyway, I stayed over at my friends condo near Queens Quay, and it was really neat to wake up in the morning and see instead of cars a whole bunch of cyclists and no traffic on the Gardiner!
Point is, people are the problem. Donate money/time regardless of whether people are riding a bike or climbing stairs, and exercise regularily anyway when not using the masterbatory excuse that you're "helping a cause."