Lance Armstrong meet Manon Horwood.
As you're leaving San Diego on Thursday at the head of the Tour of Hope entourage heading to Washington DC, Horwood will be pedaling alone on a Canadian highway heading west from Jasper, Alberta.
Although your styles differ, you both have the same goal: to raise funds and awareness in the battle against cancer by cycling long distances.
Horwood is on an around-the-world bike tour that she estimates will take about two-and-a-half years. She left Montreal on Aug. 1 and was resting in Jasper when the local newspaper caught up with her.
The 34-year-old mother said her 10-year-old daughter suffers from skin cancer, and her mother had died of colon cancer.
How can she leave 7- and 10-year-old daughters behind while she's on the fund-raising quest? Writes the Jasper Booster:
“She thinks about her girls who are currently living with their dad in Montreal. She pictures her daughter fighting cancer and feels her own daily struggles on the bike are a way to fight against cancer along with her child.
Horwood said her girls have been very supportive about her dream. Though they definitely miss their mom, Horwood said they seem to understand her need to pursue this dream.
While her daughter battles cancer, Horwood takes on weather, fatigue, knee pain and loneliness on long highways in her honour and of the thousands of others around the world coping with the dreaded disease.”
Through the Fondation Québécoise du Cancer, Horwood hopes to raise $5 per kilometer, subtracting $1 for expenses, or $120,000 for the nearly 17,000-mile trip. Donations can be made at the foundation's website, where visitors can keep track of her trip.
After arriving in Vancouver, she flies to New Zealand then cycles across Australia, then southern Asia and through Europe and returns to Canada in 2008.
“Now it’s too big to think about everything. I just take one day at a time,” she told the newspaper.
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