From the Wareham, MA Courier:

Dan McQuillan, a 55-year Mattapoisett resident, lost his mother-in-law and a friend to cancer last winter and felt that riding in the Pan-Mass Challenge would be a great way to raise awareness and dollars for the fight against cancer. “I felt it was time I contributed,” McQuillen said. “I had heard about the Pan Mass Challenge as a very successful athletic fund raising organization, and after researching it a bit more I signed up.”

[ ... ]

Marion resident Neal Balboni also rode the Sturbridge to Provincetown route last year and will be riding the same route again this weekend. Balboni participates in the PMC mostly because cancer has affected people close to him. “I have had many members of my family and several friends that have battled cancer in its various forms over the years,” Balboni said. “This event and the money that it raises have a huge impact on fighting this disease.”

Balboni said the PMC is also a great way to spend quality time with friends as well as meet new people. “There are quite a few people from Marion, Mattapoisett and Rochester riding this year,” Balboni noted. “I have five friends from Marion that are making the ride. It’s easy to get separated among 5,000 riders, but I was amazed last year how I came across riders that I knew, or made new acquaintances along the way.”

Fellow Marion resident Kathryn Collins will be riding in her first PMC with the Cape Cod Sea Camps team, made up of cancer survivors as well as family and friends of survivors. The team is also doing the entire two-day route. “I met up with their team captain just after I got my clean bill of health and thought it was kismet,” Collins said. “When I was not well last year, many, many awesome people came out of the woodwork to help me get through a very difficult year. I want to give back and help in a noticeable way. I am so thrilled to have my health and put it to good use.”

Marion resident Patrick Owens been riding the Sturbridge to Provincetown route since 2002 and has raised over $18,000 to date. Owens is riding this year as part of the South Coast Cycling Club with a friend from Plymouth, Bill Lacy, and some friends from Marion, Tom and Chrissy Gelson, Liz Rathborne, and Balboni. Owens’ wife and children are also involved again this year.

“I got my boys (Caleb, 8, and Hayden, 6) involved in 2004, and they have ridden the PMC for kids since then,” Owens said. “My wife (Kimberly) started riding last year, joining me on the first day of the journey from Sturbridge to Bourne.” Owens started riding when his mother, Sheila Converse of Marion, was diagnosed with cancer. “Since then, she has been successfully treated twice at Dana Farber.” In 2005, Owens lost his stepfather, Peter Converse, to liver cancer. “It seems that each year I have yet another reason to ride and stay involved,” Owens said.

From Rob Rose’s column in the Franklin, MA Country Gazette:

The riders coming into Plainville leave Sturbridge at 6 a.m. on their way to Bourne — an 111 mile journey. They enter town from Wrentham on Hancock Street, then move onto High Street, Hawkins and Fales before disappearing into North Attleboro. At Hancock, they have traveled approximately 50 miles — a most demanding and hilly 50 miles. The 11 a.m. Hancock Street ascenders have been in the saddle for five hours and they have been tested.

Several years ago I started a custom of riding with the Pan Mass Challenge riders as they came through Plainville. I wanted to greet newcomers passing through and give them a friendly face with a personal touch. As a recreational cyclist, it also gives me the opportunity to get in some miles.

Last year I started early, taking a circuitous route through Foxboro, Mansfield, Norton and Attleboro. It wasn’t until I got into North Attleboro that the Pan Mass came to life. It was 9 a.m. and as I approached the intersection of Ellis and High St. I could see a continuous flow of blue and yellow jerseys, an uninterrupted peloton streaming past. With 55 miles down in three hours, these were the lithe and the swift; the strong and the powerful; the athletic and the accomplished. Eventually I worked my way over to Hancock Street and climbed to the top.

My job doesn’t begin until about 11 a.m. when the riders are struggling up the hill, usually by themselves. These Hancock Street cyclists are not the strong and the powerful nor the lithe and the swift. But they are the most interesting because they have worked extraordinarily hard to be on that hill. That’s when I swing into action. I descend the hill until I see someone who could use some company. I introduce myself as their personal Plainville ‘domestique’ and tell them that I will draft for them up the hill. For a few fleeting moments I try to make them Lance Armstrong charging up the Col d’ Madelaine. They seem to enjoy the break in pace, the brief moments of conversation, the diversion from the continuous pedal turning.

From the Norton, MA Mirror:

Lori Johnson: “My godfather died from brain cancer in Nov. 1991. It was very difficult and devastating watching him suffer and losing him. When I learned about the PMC, it was a way for me to channel my sadness toward something positive. There are so many other important people in my life that have battled cancer as well, and I ride for each of them.”

Jeffrey Zella: “A close friend got me interested. He also happens to be the captain (or Mayor) of the team I’m riding with. I rode last year and felt like it was best experiences of my life. You really feel like you’re a part of something big. I’m hooked!”

Prentice Smith: “My mother Frances Smith of Foxboro was diagnosed with Leukemia a few years back and still has regular visits to Dana Farber, and my uncle Bruno Andracchio passed away a week after last years event from cancer. My office started a team last year and I just really wanted to be part of it.”

From the Boston Globe:

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. A Harvard resident for nearly 30 years, he 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 — 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. ... 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.”

[ ... ]

[Cindy] 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.”

[ ... ]

[Westford’s Alan] 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.”

Video clips and interviews from the weekend’s Pan-Massachusetts Challenge can be seen on the New England Cable News website. Videos from 2005 and 2006 can also be seen on Dana-Farber pediatric oncologist Dr. Sam Blackman’s Ride For Them website.