The 8th Annual “Spin for Childhood Cancer” was a huge success this year! We raised over $38,000 thanks to all of our amazing participants getting out into the community and rallying for every dollar!
The event was held on October 18th, 2019 at 7pm, at the Cloverdale Recreation Centre. Each year, we dedicate the spin to a special family with a cancer fighter. This year, the spin was dedicated to Christine Tulloch, a beautiful soul who touched so many lives, and did so many amazing things for others in her too-short lifetime. Christine unfortunately passed away in June of this year, but her spirit is ever so present, and her family certainly brought her joy to the event.
We kicked off the event with a heartfelt intro from CCFSupport Board Chair, Dave Dunbar welcoming everyone, followed by two beautiful speeches: one from Teresa Gil, whose family has directly been affected by childhood cancer and who’s seen firsthand the amazing work CCFSupport is doing to help so many families in financial and emotional need, and the other speech was by Bonnie Tulloch, touching on Christine’s amazing journey and her special connection to CCFSupport- she LOVED dressing up for this event every year. We then led the riders through a warm up by Brock of Seismic Strength and Conditioning, and finally our loud, crowd-pumping MC for the night, TJ Tulloch counted us down for the start of the ride.
22 teams, with 6 riders on each pedalled their legs like crazy for an hour total, taking turns to see their KM count rise with each rider. Of course there was a prize for highest total KM’s that many of those teams were vying for, causing some healthy competition, and a lot of cheering on of teammates across the room. It was a close ride, with our top 3 teams all breaking 38KM.
3rd: Flaman Fitness 1 with 38.6KM
2nd: Pedal Pushers with 38.8KM
1st: Seismic Strength & Conditioning with 39KM
Of course, some teams were eyeing up one of the other coveted prizes. One of which was carefully prepared before the event… Best Costume! This is one of our favourite parts about the event; getting to see all of the teams’ creativity and just having so much fun with it. Of course all of our teams who dressed up deserve props for their efforts, but we did get to pick some favourites.
3rd: Chain of Hearts
2nd: She Defines Strength 2
1st: Love of Lindsey
Another amazing part of the event is the incredible energy in the air. For an entire hour, the room was buzzing with excitement; you can hear the inspirational playlist, tires are spinning fast, teammates are cheering loudly, waving pom-poms, dancing around the room, and encouraging their spinning teammate. We love seeing this kinship between teammates, and we know that as they ride, some participants are reminded of the trying situations and bravery of those children who have or are battling cancer, making 10 minutes on a bike seem like the easiest thing they’ve ever done. Our team spirit awards are so fun to give out, and it is always hard to choose just 3, but here they are.
3rd: She Defines Strength 1
2nd: Grey Matters
1st: She Defines Strength 2
Finally, following the hour spin and awarding the aforementioned prizes, we took the time to recognize the pivotal reason we do this event, where the real sweat of the work for this event occurs; the fundraising that brings in the dollars needed to help families across BC that have a child with cancer. We thank each and every board member, participant, team, and their amazing donors and supporters for hitting up their communities, families, friends, and connections to raise the funds we did. It is not lost on us how important each dollar from each individual fundraiser is towards our goal, so a HUGE Thank YOU to everyone. We did have some standout teams and individuals who got prizes for their amazing top totals.
3rd Team: VanGang
2nd Team: Flaman Fitness
1st Team: Mad Max & the Ophelia’s
3rd Individual: Kayda Kurtz
2nd Individual: Marissa Dunbar
1st Individual: James Logan
We wrapped the event with another round of thank you’s and an invite for everyone to return to next year’s 9th Annual Spin Event to make it even bigger and better than ever! We hope to see you there!
Some additional ‘Thank You’s’ to mention:
- The Cloverdale Recreation Centre– venue
- All of the volunteers
- Holm Media– videography & Jim Pate- photography
- Teresa Gil & Bonnie Tulloch- beautiful speeches
- TJ Tulloch– awesome MC
- Save On Foods– Cloverdale Crossing Location- bottled water
- Balding for Dollars– prizes
- Troy Dickson- gas gift certificate prizes
- Flaman Fitness, Khalsa Credit Union, West Coast Kids Cancer Foundation, MetaWest Sales, The McAuley Family, Djavad Mowafaghian Foundation – Donors
- Tardi family– Key supporters
- Suzanne Dunbar & Shannon Whieldon for their organization and event implementation, and all of the CCFSupport Board members for their time and contributions