In cancer ride, they're driven
Pan-Mass event lures dedicated
Of the nearly 5,000 cyclists -- hundreds of them from Boston's northwestern suburbs -- cranking as many as 192 miles across Massachusetts in this weekend's 28th Pan-Mass Challenge, few capture the spirit of the event better than Jim Adelson.
Adelson, a Harvard resident for nearly 30 years, had been sponsoring PMC riders since losing his father to colon cancer in 1991, but last year decided to ride himself despite never having been a cyclist.
He raised $8,800 for the Jimmy Fund -- the race raises nearly half of all annual donations to the Dana Farber Cancer Institute's fund-raising arm -- but he didn't get to ride. A week before the event, a jagged roadway at the bottom of a steep downhill on a training ride sent Adelson flying over his handlebars, breaking his collarbone and eventually requiring surgery. He finally climbed back onto the bike in March, hoping to get in shape for this year's event.
"I had actually had several instances during March and April while I was attempting to ride where I'd feel not too energetic and even a little dizzy," said Adelson, 54. "I just assumed it was because I was not in good shape."
But it was far worse. In late April, an evening ride triggered a heart attack, and Adelson had triple bypass surgery three days later. He will not be doing the whole ride this year, but after training for only the past four weeks, he still plans to try to trek from Wellesley to Provincetown -- 84 miles Saturday, and 79 Sunday -- if his body allows.
"I don't know if it's a jinx, or what," said Adelson, who has raised $6,800 so far this year. "It will have been a lot for me just to get to the starting line."
The same could be said of Winchester's Cindy Hale, another example of what seems like an endless number of inspirational stories along the route. Many riders pedal in honor of a relative who either succumbed to or beat cancer. Some simply want to help. Perhaps the most impressive are cancer survivors or patients themselves.
Hale, 47, will be riding for the sixth year with the rest of Team Flames, a squad that Hale helped start, comprising Dana Farber nurses, doctors, patients, and former patients. While Cindy was being treated for Ewing's sarcoma in 2001, she saw what the the PMC calls its "heavy hitters" -- or top fund-raisers -- on a tour of the clinic, and tried to convince the nurses that she once looked like them, unlike her "bald and skinny" state at the time.
"They said, 'You get better, and we'll get on a bike with you,' " Hale said, even though she herself had never been on a bike beyond "riding around the block" as a child.
They rode the full 192 miles that summer, but soon after, Hale started feeling sick again, and this time was diagnosed with leukemia, which had been caused by the initial treatments. After receiving a bone marrow transplant from her brother, Dudley Speros of Westport, Conn., she was back in the saddle in 2003, and has done 170 miles from Wellesley to Provincetown each year since.
Now, she's a heavy hitter herself, well on her way to her fund-raising goal of $13,000 this year. Her husband, J.D., 48, has also ridden the full 192 since 2002, and the couple expects the first of their three children to join them in the coming years.
"It's definitely in our blood now," Cindy said. "It's an awing experience being on the bike and seeing the impact it has."
Then there are serious cyclists like Westford's Alan Bugos, 47, a rider since age 13, who has ridden competitively (future Tour de France winner Greg LeMond crashed in front of him at the US Nationals in 1977, and the two reminisced when LeMond rode the PMC last year), recreationally (he has ridden across the country and through much of Europe), and practically (he commutes to work in Burlington every day by bike).
But none of his rides have quite the impact of the PMC.
Bugos, who is also a volunteer search and rescue pilot, is in his fourth year as part of the 23-member Roudenbush Outdoor Athletic Group, started by Westford's Mark Rodman, that will do a "true Pan-Mass" -- instead of starting the normal 192-mile route in Sturbridge, they planned to start Friday morning at the New York border, totaling about 300 miles in three days. They are hoping to raise, collectively, more than the $70,000 they did last year.
"You don't have to be a star athlete or a bike racer to participate in this. It's a lot easier than people think," Bugos said.
"The people who are cheering you on, it gives you energy to keep going. By the end of the day, you still feel like you have a lot more to go or give."
Giving is what the PMC is about. The biggest athletic fund-raising event in the nation financially, it has attracted famous riders from LeMond to former Boston Marathon champ Uta Pippig to former presidential candidate John Kerry.
While the sport of cycling has been riddled with a seemingly hopeless number of doping scandals in recent years, the PMC and its riders seem only to breed hope.
Mike Lipka can be reached at mlipka@globe.com. To learn more about the Pan-Mass Challenge and read many more riders' stories, visit pmc.org. 