At almost 64, this Bradford resident is still pushing the limits of her physical fitness.
Columnist and long-term-care chaplain, Cynthia Breadner, tackled the Limberlost Challenge for her first time this year on Saturday, July 8, completing a 28-km trail run through the Limberlost Forest and Wildlife Reserve near Hunstville, Ont.
“I’ve done lots of races, but not that one. It was amazing. The Limberlost was so much fun,” Breadner said.
Originally, she was planning to hike 42 km, but hadn’t done any training, so downgraded to 28 km, and said she was glad that she did.
“It was a very technical and challenging course, and it was really fun because it ran around about three different lakes. It’s gorgeous up there,” Breadner said.
The run was comprised of two 14-km circuits, which Breadner completed in five hours and 47 minutes, giving her an average pace of 12 minutes and 24 seconds per kilometre, and ranking her first for females aged 60 and older and ranking her 65th overall.
Breadner camped out on the Friday night before the race and enjoyed the community and camaraderie with other participants.
According to the Limberlost Challenge website, every person’s race entry included a donation to Trails Youth Initiatives, which provides outdoor experiential learning to teach leadership, resiliency, and conflict resolution, as well as physical and mental wellness to youth facing barriers based on race, income, education and neighbourhood.
Breadner also has plans to embark on a 26-km cross-country trail run in Haliburton and a 170-km hike through the Cotswolds in Gloucestershire, U.K., as part of her fourth annual challenge to raise funds for the charity Help Bolivia.
“It’s a wonderful grassroots operation. The charity itself, all funds go towards the children and I really like that,” Breadner said.
Registered in 2019, the charity focuses on alleviating poverty in Bolivia by providing programs to support the nutritional and educational needs of underprivileged children and also training programs for underprivileged women and youth.
“It’s a leg up and not a hand out. It’s helping the community gain access to things they need to learn and become self-sufficient,” Breadner said.
This year she has set a goal of $3,100 and anyone interested in donating can visit her pledge page at www.canadahelps.org/en/pages/dancyn-adventures/.
“All these children are growing up in areas that are not as privileged as Canada, ... and Help Bolivia helps keep me grounded and helps keep me focused that there’s a bigger world out there than my own petty challenges, and when I push myself everybody wins,” Breadner said.
Normally, she would also go on a solo hiking or cycling adventure in her birth month of August totalling a distance in kilometres equal to her age, but with so many other trips this summer, she had to put it on hold this year.
“I’m going to be covering way more than my age this year in the next three months, so I’m not planning an individual one-day Bradford event this year,” she said.
Breadner’s daughter Danielle also raises funds for Help Bolivia and their adventures together are featured on their blog, DanCyn’ Adventures.
As a long-term-care chaplain and grief counsellor, Breadner also sees the importance of fitness in aging and spirituality.
“Part of our aging process is that we end up being sedentary and we lose the connection with oxygen to the brain. In our aging process it’s important to keep moving,” she said.
In her work in long-term care, Breadner said physical, mental and emotional health are often well cared for and well understood, but spirituality sometimes falls to the wayside.
“In my opinion, spirituality is the umbrella over all of the other domains of health. ... We must, must, must find ways to support the spirituality of all humans,” she said.
She tries to connect the body and the mind through movement and also sees it as an opportunity to reconnect with nature by being active outside through gardening, going for walks, picking berries or dipping your feet in a lake.
“Fitness is also really key for people who are grieving. ... When I’m working with someone who is grieving, if I can get them out walking or get them outside or get them moving, then the grief begins to break up and there’s cracks where the joy can find its way in,” she said.