Saturday is a big day for Travis Streb—it marks the day he completes his goal of climbing one million vertical feet on his bicycle to raise money for pancreatic cancer.
Streb, recognizable by his pink handlebar tape, has done the equivalent of cycling up Mount Everest 33 times. He completed this feat by cycling up Mount Seymour every day for a year.
"For me, it's about purpose," he told CTV News. "This year has been about what can I do to leave this world in a better place than I found it."
Streb climbs about 1,000 metres, or 3,300 feet, every time he cycles from his home in Deep Cove to the top of the mountain. It's been a gruelling year trying to fit in daily climbs around his job as a facilitator and executive coach.
Sometimes he'll do half the mountain in the morning and half in the evening. Once, he climbed it 10 times in one day.
"You get anxiety about it because if you miss a day, you think 'I got to find a way to get that extra vertical in this week,' and mentally that's a little draining," he said.
For Streb, fighting pancreatic cancer—a cancer with with a six per cent survival rate—is about consistently putting money towards research.
"One of the reasons it's so important is that there are so few survivors [of pancreatic cancer] so there's no one left to tell the story or raise money," he said.
His cycling club focuses on battling pancreatic cancer because the club's founder's mother-in-law died from the disease. So far, they've raised $2.5 million for pancreatic cancer research. Streb hopes his cycling effort will give hope to those fighting the cancer.
So far, he's raised over $10,000.
"Despite overwhelming odds, it is possible to make gains," he said. "That's really the story for me and pancreatic cancer."
Even though he's reached one million feet, Streb thinks he'll continue cycling until the end of the year to bring awareness to the disease.
With a report from Christina Heydanus
