In just its second year, the Fraser Valley's running of the Innovative Fitness Adventure Challenge has already become a bona fide six-digit fundraiser.
There were bike/kayak/run events in both North Vancouver and Cultus Lake on Sept. 15 and 16 respectively. Between them, they raised $238,000, and almost half of that was from the Fraser Valley event, organized by Innovative Fitness Abbotsford.
The fitness challenge benefits Canucks Place Children's Hospice, which specializes in pediatric palliative care for B.C. children living with life-threatening illnesses, and their families.
To meet growing need, Canuck Place Abbotsford, a 10-bed, five family hospice is being built in
the Valley, effectively doubling the children's hospice capacity.
Although it is an important fundraiser, it is also sport, and the fastest team in both events was led by Innovative Fitness founder Matthew Young, and included Matthew Ward, Darcie Young and Sean Verret. They did the long course, which is a six km kayak, 32 km bike and 10 km run, in a time of 2:57.44.
The short course is a five km kayak, 30 km cycle and 3.5 km run. The fastest team on that course was Jay and Kim Evans at 2:40.31, while the fastest individual was Brenda Ball at 2:22.26.
The top fundraising team was Memories of Matthew, which collected $9,789. The top individual fundraiser was Gabe Hoffard with $5,850.
There were seven teams entered from the Abbotsford Innovative Fitness gym, and 96 participants in total.
Some 50 local volunteers ensure that the costs of putting on the event are kept to an absolute minimum, said Yoshia Burton of Innovative Fitness Abbotsford.
"Almost everything raised goes to the charity," he said.
All participants in the event must raise a minimum of $1,000 for the charity.