The 2007 Pan Mass Challenge

In the spring of 2007 a friend of mine, Steve Kaufer, who knew I was an avid cyclist asked me to ride on his team in the Pan Mass Challenge. His wife had been killed by cancer a few years earlier, a heartbreaking event. It was very hard to refuse and shortly thereafter I signed up to ride on Team Caring For Carcinoids.

I don't normally do fundraising rides for a variety of reasons, although I have volunteered for events such as the AIDS Ride at various times, often as a bicycle mechanic. Being a mountain bike rider I have a lot of experience with fixing broken bicycles.

Nonetheless I took the plunge with a little bit of trepidation since the PMC requires riders to guarantee their minimum fundraising goal with their own credit card. I had told Steve I would ride with him on the Wellesley-to-Wellesley single-day route of the ride, which has a $1,000 minimum. Without much experience at fundraising I expected I'd have to pay most of it myself, but in fact many people I knew were extremely generous and I nearly doubled the goal! My understanding is that on top of the generous donations of my sponsors the Steve and Caroline Kaufer Foundation will match all donations to the Caring For Carcinoids riders, doubling the effectiveness of everyone who gave to the cause.

A Little History

When I was younger I was a roadie (someone who rides bicycles on the roads) ... of sorts. I didn't have a car, and rode my bicycle almost everywhere. I kept that up when I moved to Boston to go to school, and for the first year or so after I graduated. Unfortunately the Boston roads weren't nearly as nice as the roads in New Hampshire where I grew up, both in terms of traffic density and road surface. I eventually gave it up for a pair of rollerblades.

After a knee injury I was forced to give up daily use of the rollerblades and bought my first mountain bike in 1994 under the theory that it would be immune to Boston's lousy streets. A few months later I was introduced to off-road riding and since then I have been doing almost all of my riding on the trails, taking to the dirt almost every weekend for the last thirteen years. My high-school road bike sat ignored on a hook from that point forward, until being donated to Bikes Not Bombs last year.

Four years ago some friends were doing a training ride for an event (perhaps the PMC, I can't remember) and asked me if I'd like to come along. I didn't want to try to keep up with them on a mountain bike so I borrowed a friend's Bianchi. It was my first taste of a modern road bicycle ... and what a difference from the 1983 Univega Nuovo Sport I used to ride! The technology has improved by leaps and bounds, and I was reminded of why I liked the road bike in the first place: They are fast.

The hook was set, and within a year I sold a motorcycle in order to buy a new road bike from a local frame builder, Independent Fabrications of Somerville, Massachusetts. The bicycle, a Club Racer, is beautiful. Unfortunately my infatuation with dirt riding held and the bicycle saw only occasional riding over the last three years, mostly commuting to work every once in awhile.

Preparation

That little detour down my personal history is a set up for my preparation, or more properly lack thereof, for the Pan Mass Challenge ride. I planned to do a few practice rides on my own and with my team. The Wellesley-to-Wellesley loop is 48 miles long, longer than I had ever ridden on the Club Racer, although I have done some road rides of similar length and quite a few off-road rides of similar effort over the years on my mountain bikes so I had a pretty good idea of what I was getting into.

Even so, it would have been a good idea to take the bike I intended to ride out on some longer rides if only to learn what parts don't fit quite right. That's something that only a few hours of sustained riding really tells you. But various commitments including my volunteer work with the New England Mountain Bike Patrol kept me from taking out the Club Racer on weekends, and day-to-day things made even bicycle commuting too time-intensive. So as the PMC date approached I got in reasonable amounts of bicycle time off-road, but never even took the Club Racer off its hook until the evening before the ride.

Unfortunately my wife had become sick a few days earlier, and I had a few possibly-related health problems on Saturday and into the evening that made me wonder if it was a good idea to do a significant bike ride. But unlike my usual weekend rides this time I had made a commitment to a lot of people, so I decided to ride no matter how I felt. At worst I would go very slowly, I thought.

So Saturday evening I checked the Club Racer to make sure it was in good tune, packed up my backpack full of water and food, and filled some water bottles with Gatorade. I hit the bed a little early hoping to get a good night's sleep.

The Ride

Unfortunately I usually have a hard time sleeping before all-day rides, and it was a restless night this time as well. I woke at 5am, ate breakfast, and packed up the car. I arrived at Babson College for the start at about 6:30am in plenty of time for the 7:30am departure. Thankfully the sickness I had felt on Saturday was gone.

I managed to meet several other members of my riding team, some of whom I knew previously but most of whom I had never met. They were all great people and encompassed both very dedicated riders and people who rarely turn a pedal. As we were gabbing they called us to the starting pen for opening ceremonies.

Opening Ceremonies

A short speech ensued, talking about the goals of the Pan Mass Challenge, its beneficiaries, and its most notable sponsors (such as the Boston Red Sox, who sent a representative to sing the national anthem). Soon thereafter we were off.

The day's ride was to be about 48 miles long, with a water stop at about the 28 mile point. I planned an easy pace, perhaps 15 miles an hour on average. (When I was younger I scoffed at going less than about 20mph over this kind of distance, and regularly averaged 22mph. My how twenty years and a lot of french fries changes your goals!)

I started the ride with one of my team members who was obviously a faster rider. He had planned to do the full two-day route, but was unable to raise the $3,600 minimum and switched to the one-day ride. Having made the commitment for the longer ride to his sponsors he snuck into one of the Saturday routes to do the first half of his miles, and rode from his home in Concord down to Wellesley the morning of the ride to pick up most of the rest of them. He was obviously a strong rider and I thought I would ride along with him as long as I could.

I stuck with him for several miles until we hit the first real hills in Dover. We followed Farm Road, which I rode some years previously on my mountain bike, traveling to and from Noanet Woodlands. It's a beautiful winding country road that goes past a number of horse ranches and has one significant climb, the longest of the ride. I let him take off rather than try to keep pace and burn up early in the day. (This would turn out to be a very good decision.) Near the top of the hill I passed a gentleman sitting on the side of the road with a sign reading "I'm 62 because of you!" It's clear that the ride makes a difference to people.

At about the 10 mile point I was doing very well, having averaged 17.5mi/hr to that point ... much faster than I planned. I pretty rapidly burned through my breakfast and ate a little here and there with plenty of water. But not much Gatorade; the weather was so nice that I forgot about it. The riders who had been out on Saturday dealt with 90-degree temperatures, we were lucky.

At one point a faster cyclist zoomed by me and I followed him for awhile until I heard a lot of yelling behind me: "Wrong way! Wrong way!" It turned out he wasn't part of the PMC and I had missed a turn. Whoops! Thankfully they got me back on-route before I managed to get lost, although I understand that many other people weren't so lucky. I started paying more attention to the route markers atfterward.

An interesting graveyard along the route My teammate Sesha grimaces at the taste of PowerAde

When we entered Sharon, the turn-around point in the route, we rode around Massapoag Lake with its beautiful views and shortly thereafter I came to the water stop. I arrived at the water stop in just over two hours, having averaged 14.8mi/hr according to my bicycle computer, almost exactly according to plan. I felt good, and spent a few minutes there talking to some of my teammates and a volunteer photographer. I didn't want to stay long, though, because I know my legs are hard to get pedaling again if I sit around for very long. So I shortly set off.

One of the volunteers who cheered us as we left the water stop let me know that I had 19.9 miles to go. Woo-hoo!

Five miles later I knew I had made a mistake in ignoring the Gatorade earlier as I felt a twinge of a leg cramp starting. Cramping up with fifteen miles to go would be really bad, so I started taking occasional short breaks to drink Gatorade, knowing from past experience that electrolyte drinks are the best way to stave off cramps.

Ten more miles of beautiful Massachusetts scenery rolled beneath my wheels. Along this part of the route there were many people, including whole families, out cheering us on and offering water or fruit. I thanked them for their support as I rode by, occasionally tapping hands with excited children. There were quite a few signs honoring those lost to cancer, too; it's a disease that claims far too many people every year. I became briefly dismayed as I rode past a "Welcome to Walpole" sign during this stretch, having just left Walpole a couple of miles back. Had I become lost again and perhaps looped back on the outbound part of the route? I didn't think so, and I hadn't, but I wondered for a few minutes.

When we're going to-and-fro in our automobiles on the highways we often forget just how gorgeous and interesting the byways are. One of the things I like best about mountain biking is that there is almost always something gorgeous to look at along the way, the likes of which I rarely see from my car. So it was: We rode by cemeteries and farms, through idyllic small towns and around ponds. Occasionally there were really interesting things such as this puppy painted on a rock:

I'll never know who painted it, or why, but it made me smile. You never see things like this on Route 128!

As we rode back into Dover we merged back onto the same roads we had taken out of Wellesley, including climbing back over Farm Road. Unfortunately the twinges of cramps started to come back, a little more seriously this time, and I stopped and drank a lot more Gatorade in the hope that I could keep them away. I also slowed down a lot on the hills, and took more frequent breaks. Probably the right thing to do would have been to take a longer break to eat and drink, but of course I didn't do that. With only five or six miles to go I was going to ride through it....

The man was still sitting on the top of the hill on Farm Road as he had been three hours previously, but now on the opposite side. I smiled at him as he thanked me and told him "You're welcome," then started the descent that would take me to the finish.

The ride into Wellesley has a few gentle hills and as I approached Babson the volunteers directed me toward the finish line. I was literally within sight of the cheering crowd at the end when I bonked. If you're not familiar with the term, "bonking" is running out of energy on a ride. While I was worried about and taking care of possible leg cramps I had neglected to eat anything at all during the last 20 miles of the route, another mistake that I should have known better not to make.

I took a small rest and waved at the crowd, then crawled slowly up and over the finish line.

Fini

It was a 48 mile day, which took me three hours and thirty two minutes to finish at an average speed of 13.8 mi/hr. That's a much longer ride than usual for me, but not really long. The hills and cramps were minor battles, especially when I think about what it takes to survive a fight with cancer. Along the way, however, I saw riders who had never done anything this difficult -- and they finished it. I saw people along side the road who were really happy to see us, holding signs speaking of losses to and ongoing battles with cancer. I saw signs held by survivors, and communities who came out in force to support the effort. It was heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time, a bittersweet reminder of how far we have come towards conquering the disease and yet how far we still have to go.

I rode the bicycle, but it is the many people who sponsored PMC riders who did the real work here and I thank you all for that.

By the way, the Club Racer turns out to be almost perfect, and didn't go back up on that hook.