My biggest fear when I signed up to ride with the 2010 Cops for Cancer Tour de Valley was simple: could I keep up?

At the first meeting for the tour, I was pretty worried.

There was Ken Usipiuk, the team captain and a veteran of several tours. Ken has a shaved head and an intense "We're going to get this done" attitude at all times. He always remembers, and can remind you, why the tour exists: to help kids with cancer. Ken bears a slight resemblance to Yul Brynner (think more The Magnificent Seven, less The King and I).

There were Tim Anctil and Jillian Ewanyshyn, our team trainers, both of them veteran cyclists with thousands of kilometres and many hundreds of hours of riding time under their belts.

Tim works at the RCMP training centre in Chilliwack; I soon found he thinks nothing of riding up to 150 km in a day.

Jillian works here in Langley and, among other duties, sometimes patrols on a bicycle.

And there was Craig van Herk, another Langley Mountie who's ridden in the tour many times, and is now one of the organizers. He helps train new bike cops around the Lower Mainland. I later saw him lean off a moving bike and pick up a credit card off flat asphalt. (Try this sometime, but please wear a helmet and gloves. I won't be held responsible for injuries.)

Was I expected to ride as well, as fast, as far as these guys? I was in trouble.

One of the things we were asked at that first meeting was whether we'd done much riding.

Around me, many of the Mounties and municipal cops and Corrections officers had a lot of experience. Not only had more than half done the tour before, but others were avid mountain bikers, or rode to work regularly.

Me?

I'd once ridden a lot, but I hadn't been on my bike for more than a year when I decided to do the Tour de Valley.

Was I in good shape at all? Well, I'd had a lot of practice over the winter with the remote control and/or the video game controller. Yes, my thumbs were in peak condition, ready to leap into action and... press buttons.

So I was pretty worried about being able to keep up with the other riders.

Fortunately, I quickly found out that while every rider is expected to get in shape, we have plenty of help. I mentioned our team trainers, and training is a big part of the run up to the Tour de Valley.

Every month since April, there has been a mandatory ride. The rides began out in Sumas Prairie, with a nice, relatively flat journey through the floodplains, a little more than 50 km. Every ride after that was a little longer, a little more challenging.

Those rides are not just about getting in shape for the big ride this September. They're about putting together the team, teaching everyone to ride as a unit.

There are also regular, weekly rides around Langley, Surrey, or Abbotsford. Those rides have helped haul my flabby carcass to being, well, slightly less flabby.

More important, riding together cements the reason why we ride.

We talk about upcoming fundraisers we're working on. We invite one another to our pub nights. We went together to Camp Goodtimes, as I wrote last week - an experience that will stay with me forever.

I no longer fear training. Now my only worry is how much more money I can raise. The team, and the kids at Camp Goodtimes, keep my eye on the goal. Ultimately, it's not about the ride. The ride just exists to bring attention to the Canadian Cancer Society, and to the work it does with children with cancer. That's worth putting in the miles.

This year's Cops for Cancer Tour de Valley runs Sept. 23 to Oct. 1., from Delta to Boston Bar.