Finity's Giving Back Program
December 11, 2009 - 6:45am
Throughout the year Finity Consulting sponsors a number of different charity events as part of its Giving Back Program. On Saturday the 26th September Finity sponsored the Ride for a Reason Charity Challenge, a 160km bicycle ride from Sydney to Bowral organised by the Sydney Cycling Club. This year the club was raising money for the Westmead Children's Hospital and Finity were a major sponsor of the ride with two of Finity's principals Scott Collings and Tim Andrew taking part.
Conditions for the ride were challenging, starting in an orange dust storm and with a strong headwind all the way which made it hard to average more than 28km/h on the flat sections. If that was not enough there was a hailstorm towards the end of the ride.
The course was "undulating" with a particularly steep 10km climb from the coast (temperature of 22 degrees) to the Southern Highlands plateau (temperature of 8 degrees) which finished off a number of riders who were already exhausted by the dust, wind and hail! However Tim and Scott battled on to the finish arriving at Bowral after 8 hours of tough cycling, ignoring the lure of the support vehicle which was one of the most popular places to be by the end of the ride. A great effort by both the Finity riders but particularly by Tim who is after all a marathon runner and not a cyclist and proved this by falling off his bike at a set of traffic lights.
Aaron Cutter, another Finity principal, participated in the Blackmores Sydney Running Festival Marathon held on the 20th September 2009. The run was in support of his own fitness goals and also training and running with CanToo to raise funds in aid of cancer research. As part of Finity's Giving Back Program Finity matched Aaron's fundraising efforts dollar for dollar.
"It seemed like the second half of the course was littered with bodies. The day was pretty warm and my second half of the course was a little slower than the first but according to the records I finished 300 places higher than my halfway point position. Very thankful for the 30+km training runs.
Between this marathon and a couple of previous shorter runs and with the generous support of friends and workmates we've raised over $7000 to be used in the fight against cancer. That is amazing so thank you everyone. On a personal note, the emotion of finishing my first marathon can't be understated. I'll admit there were moments (that seemed to last a very long time) where I was questioning the sanity of it all. However this was all forgotten about pretty soon after finishing.
I may have the bug now. Thinking about the six foot track, Athens, London, New York, Boston...."