Two of a kind
MacDougall completes cross-country trek at Terry Fox Mile 0 Monument in St. John’s
Charlie’s Ride came to an end Wednesday – appropriately, it was at the Terry Fox, Mile 0 Monument.
Truro businessman Chris MacDougall finished his crosscountry cycling odyssey at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday in St. John’s, N.L.
But the fundraising effort it generated is geared to live on into perpetuity through the Charlie and Dan MacDougall Endowment Fund for Cancer Research (through the Beatrice Hunter Research Foundation).
The ride, which began July 24, in Vancouver, B.C., was in memory of MacDougall’s son Charlie, who died in 2004 at age 14 of the same type of cancer that Terry Fox was afflicted with.
With the exception of a few rest days, MacDougall had been averaging approximately 130 kilometres per day for the past two months.
He could have finished up on Tuesday but wanted to complete the ride on the schedule he had planned out from the beginning. So, on Wednesday morning he cycled the last 16.03 km, into the city and to the site of the park where the Mile 0 Monument is located.
“We rode down Water Street to the park and I expected four or five people and there were about 25 people there, so that was quite nice,” MacDougall said, while relaxing with his feet up in his room at a St. John’s bed and breakfast.
“It was a great little ending, shall we say.”
After spending so much time
on the road, MacDougall said it is going to take some adjusting to get back into a regular routine at home.
“It’s mixed feelings. I’m glad to have it done but I’m sure I’ll miss the mindset and the mode that I was in for the last number of weeks,” he said. “I’m going to miss the riding part of it. You sort of get your mind into a mindset where there’s a mission to be accomplished or something like that. And it’s going to be pretty odd not having that, you know, I’ve had it for the last few months.”
From a physical perspective, MacDougall said he has probably never felt better – despite the elevations and the weather elements he dealt with along the way. And mentally, there was
never a moment’s doubt or regret over what he had set out to do.
“I never questioned why I started or whether I would finish,” he said.
“It’s emotional when I think of setting up a fund … and it’s emotional when I think that this is something that Charlie would have appreciated.”
And especially so, MacDougall said, as the money raised through the ride – in excess of $171,000 so far – will be used for research to try to help with the disease that took his son Charlie’s life and from which he suffered.
“He really suffered from that horrible disease.”
MacDougall and the friends and family members who saw him through to the end of his
long ride will leave St. John’s this morning.
Sunday, a meet-and-greet will be held for MacDougall at the Engine Room in Truro between 2 and 4 p.m. And, his bike?
Expect it to be parked. For a week or so, anyway.
Truro’s Chris MacDougall touches the Terry Fox Mile 0 Monument in St. John’s, N.L., on Wednesday morning after completing his cross-Canada bike ride of just over 7,000 kilometres. His arrival marked the end of “Charlie’s Ride for Cancer Research.”