October 10, 2010 (Vancouver, BC) – As many cyclists know, a century ride – whether 100km or 100 miles – is nothing to scoff at. The century ride from Golden to Revelstoke, over BC’s Rogers Pass is bucket-list material even for accomplished riders. But that same ride over Roger’s Pass as the third day of a 40-day, 4,000km fundraising ride by four admitted non-cyclists is hard to even contemplate, and yet that’s exactly what former Miss Canada and current Miss North America, Shannon Lynn, and her team of Ride4Red riders have done.

Lynn, (aka Abelle Avanti, Miss Canada 2009) was in Vancouver this week for the first real pit stop on the Ride4Red from Calgary to Santa Monica, which she’s hoping will raise $1 million each for both the Canadian and American Red Cross. People can donate a number of ways, including via text messaging, all of which are outlined on the Ride4Red website www.therideforred.com. Along with Lynn are Canadian Olympic bobsled racer, Christina Smith, and Olympic bobsled racers Bill Schufenhauer and Brock Kreitzburg of the US Olympic team.

So far the quartet has completed nine days of riding, and things seem to be going well. So how exactly do a beauty queen and four bobsled racers end up on an 80km/hr descent down Rogers Pass? For starters, you need a leader who knows how to work hard. As well as being a model, actress and producer, Lynn is an entrepreneur who owned her first business when she was 19. Today she is the CEO of Avanti Corp., has a degree in microbiology, is a certified yoga instructor and a Red Cross Ambassador. She said she got the idea for the ride while trying to come up with fundraising projects that “a stereotypical beauty queen would never do.”

“I’m gaining weight on this ride, lots of muscle mass, and I’ll lose modeling work because of it,” says Lynn. According to her, the modeling industry is at least as cut-throat as popular perception makes it seem, but she’d like to change that. As part of the Ride4Red, Lynn and her team are doing a series of school visits.

Lynn is one of very few successful models in the North American industry who’s had zero cosmetic surgery. “I’d love to change young women with what I’m doing,” she said. “If you have to change who you are for people to like you, then they don’t really like you.”

Lynn says she met the other riders at a celebrity golf tournament and pitched the idea to them casually. According to Lynn, it was very matter of fact… “Hey, I’m riding from Calgary to LA. Wanna come?” From there, thanks largely to Lynn’s work ethic, “everything began to fall into place, like it was meant to be.”

The team met up in Calgary to start training for the ride. Though three of them are former Olympians, none had much riding experience. The learning curve was steep, says Schufenhauer, but so was the pressure to keep at it. “Hey,” he laughed. “If the girls are making it…” Now, in the midst of the adventure, they’re starting to get the hang of things like drafting and smooth cadence.

For Schufenhauer, this ride is an emotional one. The three-time Olympian, who carries his 2006 silver medal in his pocket, feels the need to give back. His Olympic career might easily never have happened. He grew up in and out of foster care and detention centres and got tangled up in street gangs. At a young age, he decided he’d had enough of simply being pushed along the street life. He felt he needed to change things, to make a better name for himself and his family. For him, sports held the answers. He began his career as a track and field athlete, where he developed the speed and power that appeals to many bobsled coaches.

“My Olympic dream got me out of trouble. Those three Games are also stepping stones, ways for me to do bigger things,” says Schufenhauer. As with most bobsled racers, Schufenhauer is a bear of a man, which makes the emotion on his face that much more striking. It’s clear that Schufenhauer is grateful for the opportunities he’s had, and he’s itching to give back. He says that while pursuing his Olympic career helped him get his life back on track, he feels that this ride is at least as important. In some ways, he said, being a charity rider is harder than being an Olympian because you don’t have race results to strive for or a flag to motivate you.

“You’re trying to give part of yourself to help others, and you have to hope it’s making a difference because there are no fans. When you’re on the road, you can’t actually see those you’re helping.”

However, there are still a lot of parallels between his time as a bobsled racer and the challenges of this ride, says Schufenhauer. He’s quick to point out how important having a strong team is. “With either set up you need 360 degrees of support around you.”

The Ride4Red team is a strong one, and their efforts are without any renumeration. The four riders have only two support staff with them on the road: a videographer and a massage therapist who do double-duty as drivers for the team’s RV. Schufenhauer’s analogy seems quite fitting…

“Imagine there’s a train going by. It’s full of people, engineers etc… it needs grease and hard work to keep it running but from the outside it just looks like a train.”

Even though they’re only nine days in, the riders themselves have formed a very close bond. “I wouldn’t have made it up Rogers Pass if it wasn’t for this guy,” said Lynn, affectionately punching Schufenhauer’s thigh. “There were times I was literally kneeling on the road praying to get through the day.”

All four riders have had to come up with strategies for coping with the psychological drain of the ride as well. Lynn’s advice? “Don’t think about the 40 days, just take it one day at a time.”

That’s probably a good plan, since the team still has 31 more days of riding to go. Their planned arrival date in California is November 4th, where they’ll meet up with a host of other celebrity riders for the final stage from Malibu to Santa Monica.

Check out our video interview with Shannon and Christine tomorrow. For more info visit www.therideforred.com.