2024 Pan-Mass Challenge Ride Report

NOTE: Since my lengthy ride reports can evoke a “TL;DR” response, I’ve provided the brief overview section that follows. But if you stop there, don’t miss the 4½ minutes of video footage that I took during my ride, which immediately follows the overview, as well as the photos and videos on the right-hand side of this page.

Summary Overview

Despite championing the event since 2001, I opted not to do a “remote” Pan-Mass Challenge charity ride in 2023 because my partner Inna and I had just moved from Pittsburgh to Austin, and I didn’t have the time to fundraise nor the knowledge to plan a good, safe route.

But in 2024, I didn’t want to miss riding the PMC, for a number of reasons. The most noteworthy was that in its 45th edition, the PMC was going to surpass an incredible one billion dollars raised for cancer research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and I very much wanted to be present and an active part of this celebratory year. I’ve got an entire section on that below.

2024 was a very memorable and remarkable PMC for me. It was my fourth “remote” PMC, my first in our new hometown of Austin, and my 18th Pan-Mass Challenge overall. I also rode in honor of four people I know who were impacted by cancer this year. And it was my first attempt to ride the PMC as a sexagenarian.

This was also my first PMC riding as a member of a team: Team Kermit, a popular group of riders who raise funds for Dana-Farber’s very successful pediatric neurological cancer research lab. I have a long relationship with the team that goes back 20 years to their founding, but I only started officially riding with them last autumn, when they came down to Austin for the annual Livestrong Challenge charity ride. More on my decision and connection to them below.

My cycling and training was remarkably steady all year long, including a couple 100 KM rides and one 100-mile event. But in July, right when my fitness was supposed to peak, I was off the bike for two weeks with my first episode of COVID and a bad back injury. I recovered just in time for a couple long rides before it was time to taper my training leading into PMC weekend. Again, more details below.

The ride weekend’s weather was mostly sunny, with temperatures ranging from 26° overnight to 37° in the afternoons. I mostly succeeded in dealing with Texas-in-August heat by starting ludicrously early: leaving the house at 4:30am CT each day in order to avoid the worst of it. By happy coincidence and the magic of time zones, that meant I set out simultaneously with real-life PMC riders as they began their rides at 5:30am ET back in Massachusetts.

On Saturday I rode 180 KM (112 miles) in 11 hours, taking half-hour rests at home between three big loops. My first and biggest loop included several climbs in Austin’s Northwest Hills, then farther out to the resorty town of Volente on Lake Travis. My second loop went through downtown Austin, following the 40 KM route of my weekly Friday Truancy group rides. And I rounded out my day with another 40 KM excursion down aptly named Scenic Drive to the boat launch on Lake Austin. It was a long, hot, hard day in the saddle! Details below.

Sunday’s shorter 120 KM (75-mile) route began with more climbs in the Northwest Hills, but was mostly spent on the Southern Walnut Creek Trail. Highlights included enjoying the 5-kilometer not-officially-opened-yet extension of the trail to the town of Manor, getting briefly soaked by a passing 6-minute sunshower, and crossing paths with some riding buddies on the Violet Crown Sunday ride. Returning home after 6½ hours, my 300 KM (186-mile) Pan-Mass Challenge was complete, and I was excited for my first look at the footage I’d recorded on my new HoverAir X1 selfie drone, which you can see in the ride video I compiled just below. And the full Sunday writeup here.

But the most important part of the PMC is raising money to fund cutting-edge cancer research at Boston’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. My amazing and generous supporters overwhelmed my most ambitious expectations. This year I set new post-pandemic / “remote PMC” highs for number of sponsors (59) number of donations (61), and average donation size ($125) in a year. And by contributing $7,300 this year – a 62% increase over my previous ride! – my supporters brought my lifetime fundraising for cancer research to $130,800!

My deepest heartfelt thanks to everyone who helped make my ride possible, and contributed so much to the vital cause of eradicating cancer. Thank you!!! Read more about my fundraising below.

Now multiply my individual fundraising success by 6,800 riders and more than 350,000 individual donors over 4½ decades and together we have had an immense billion dollar impact on the state of cancer treatment, with new methodologies and treatments coming at an incredible pace. Every one of us is a small but irreplaceable part of that amazing achievement, and we can each see ourselves represented in this year’s PMC tagline “One in a Billion”.

My Ride Video

I shot a number of video clips during my solo ride, and assembled them into the following 4½-minute montage. This video gives you a different perspective on my ride than you’ll get from either the overview above or the detailed writeup that follows. I hope you enjoy this supplemental way of sharing my PMC ride.

Now I’d like to expand on a couple topics before I go into more detail recounting the months leading up to the ride and everything that comprised my 18th Pan-Mass Challenge weekend.

Billion Dollar Impact

On July 12th, three weeks before PMC weekend, this year’s total fundraising reached $28 million on its march toward this year’s target: a record $75 million. When combined with the $972 million we’ve raised over the preceding 44 years, the Pan-Mass Challenge had surpassed $1 billion raised to fund Dana-Farber’s battle against cancer.

If you think one charity ride can’t make any real difference, let me introduce you to the most successful athletic fundraising event in the world.

The Pan-Mass Challenge’s 6,800 riders are sponsored by over 350,000 donors, and 100 percent of the money raised by riders goes to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute through their well-known fundraising organization, the Jimmy Fund. The PMC is the Jimmy Fund’s largest single contributor, has made the largest donations the Jimmy Fund has ever received, and accounts for 62 percent of the Jimmy Fund’s annual revenue.

PMC funds enable researchers at the Dana-Farber to do innovative work that neither the government, charitable foundations, universities, or the medical industry dare to underwrite. Because of the freedom that PMC funds give them, Dana-Farber has played a major role in developing over half of all cancer therapies approved by the FDA over the past five years. And since the PMC was founded, the number of cancer survivors living in the U.S. has grown from 5 million to 18 million.

A few short decades ago, the only possible treatment for cancer was to surgically remove the affected organ and/or blast the area with a lethal dose of radiation. After Sidney Farber proved the effectiveness of chemotherapy, those barbaric treatments were relegated to options of last resort.

Today, thanks to the generous support of PMC donors like you, we are in the first innings of a complete revolution in how cancer is understood and treated that has left Dr. Farber’s chemotherapy looking decidedly barbaric in turn. Dana-Farber is at the forefront of genetic and molecular medicine that can finely target cancer cells without damaging healthy cells, providing better treatment options, improving outcomes, and enabling doctors to treat cancers that in the past had been given up on as untreatable.

If you think one charity ride can’t make a difference, consider these words from Dr. Craig Bunnell, Dana-Farber’s Chief Medical Officer: “There’s not really anything that the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has accomplished that isn’t in some way attributable to the PMC.” Dr. Bunnell is also a ten-year Pan-Mass Challenge rider: one of 160 Dana-Farber employees who do the ride.

This is the cause that I have proudly and loudly championed for two and a half decades, and the lifesaving research that your donations have made possible.

Riding for Team Kermit

My seventeen prior PMCs were all ridden as a solo rider (i.e. not part of a team), with the money I raised going into an unrestricted fund to advance cancer research and treatment at Dana-Farber, rather than being earmarked for one specific purpose. So why did I decide to ride for the first time as a member of Team Kermit?

The proximate reason is that several Team Kermit members come down to Austin each fall to participate in the Livestrong Challenge, another fundraising ride for the eponymous foundation. And due to our existing PMC connection and history – described below – it made sense for me to join their group last fall for the 2023 Livestrong ride, my first.

After that, it was a logical extension to register as a Team Kermit rider when I signed up for my 2024 PMC ride this spring, even though as a remote participant I’d still be doing my ride alone.

But long before their annual trip to Austin, I have a history with Team Kermit that goes all the way back to its founding twenty years ago.

In 2005, my co-worker Charlie came to me for advice after signing up for his first PMC. His girlfriend Julie was a nurse, and they – along with our friend and Julie’s future husband Jeff – were riding with newly-established Team Kermit, which had been founded in honor of one of her patients: 23 year old Jared Branfman. We trained together on group rides out of Quad Cycles and rode much of the PMC route together.

Similarly the following year, I met up with Charlie early on Day 2 of the 2006 PMC, where he had appointed himself as unofficial escort for Jared’s mother Ellen and their rabbi Susan. None of them had ridden the route out to Provincetown before, so I stayed with them all day, shepherding them along to the finish while also playing tour guide.

After that, just about every year I found myself sharing some portion of the PMC route with the growing number of Team Kermit riders. However, I never wanted to formally join them. I have always preferred that the money I raise be unrestricted – available for use combating any cancers – whereas Team Kermit’s donations are specifically allotted to research into the pediatric neurological cancer that took Jared’s young life. To be honest, I also wasn’t keen about receiving the attention that Team Kermit riders get from adoring spectators while riding with large Kermit the Frog dolls strapped to their helmets.

In 2024, Team Kermit is celebrating its twentieth year, has over sixty members, and has raised over $7 million. Impressively, the lab that Team Kermit funds has developed three new treatments that are tremendously effective on different types of brain and spinal tumors. Speaking about OJEMDA, a drug they developed that received FDA approval this past April, Dr. Mimi – the head of Dana-Farber’s Pediatric Low-Grade Glioma Lab – said, “This drug – and its FDA approval – would 100 percent not have happened without the PMC.”

You can learn more by watching the 2017 interview with Jared’s father and team founder Steven Branfman. And Dr. Mimi’s pediatric neuro-oncology lab is profiled at 11:30 in the “Everyday Heroes” video. Both appear in the sidebar that runs down the right side of this page.

Planning and Training

I wasn’t especially confident about registering for this year’s PMC ride. After taking a year off, I wasn’t sure if enough of my sponsors would return to cover the $2,000 fundraising minimum. And despite a year in Austin, I still had no idea what would make a good ride route. And it’s not like the Texas-in-August temperature was going to be any easier to handle this year!

But cancer didn’t wait for a convenient time to afflict the people I care about. Right around ride registration time, a valued member from one of my meditation groups back in Pittsburgh lost her ongoing battle with cancer. Then my partner received news from two long-standing friends: one receiving a diagnosis of prostate cancer; and another learning that her previously-treated breast cancer had returned and metastasized. Whatever my misgivings about my fundraising ability, the need to overcome this disease remains as urgent as ever. Registering, riding, and fundraising is the best way I have to respond.

Then, just three days before my ride, I received news that one of my cousins had been diagnosed with breast cancer, and was being evaluated for treatment at the Dana-Farber, giving me another reason to continue the fundraising work, and yet another friend or family member to ride in honor of.

On the bike, my cycling training was remarkably steady all winter and spring, beginning with 17 out of 18 PMC Zwift rides on my indoor trainer from November through February; 20 Friday Truancy group rides; and a few Team Tacodeli group rides. I completed my first 100-mile event of the year – the Red Poppy Ride – on May 11, and repeated the 100 KM Fire Ant Tour in June, tho I did miss a couple other interesting events for various reasons.

After a bit of rest toward the end of June, I planned to use July for hard training to build up to maximum fitness, but July wound up being a minefield. Inna and I began the month by contracting our first cases of COVID, and a few days later I threw my back out pretty severely. The lingering effects of both meant a complete two-week halt to training, right when I should have been working the hardest. On the other hand, it gave me lots of time to write to old friends and ask for donations…

The final week of July featured my first lengthy post-COVID ride (100 KM) on July 24th, but also a bone bruise from archery practice, a tweaked neck while swimming, and terrible air quality due to waves of Saharan dust coming inland. July really felt like a cursed month!

After a couple last short rides, it was already time to taper my training, so that I’d be fully fresh on PMC weekend. Ready or not, here we go!

Friday, 2 August 2024

Over the years, the Friday leading into the PMC has developed a familiar ritual and cadence.

It begins with any final bike cleaning and lubrication, followed by a short and relaxed “shakedown cruise” to make sure everything’s in perfect working order.

During the day, I’ll do some extra hydrating; make sure all my weekend needs are laid out and organized for easy access; and update social media with links for anyone who might want to donate and/or watch the PMC’s live opening ceremonies program. As the big ride draws near, there’s a feeling that there’s so much to do, and yet very little left to do… After all, it’s really only going for a bike ride, just like any other day.

As with every big ride, the final variable is the weather, leading to a healthy pre-ride obsession with the National Weather Service’s forecast. This year, Austin would enjoy clear to partly cloudy skies all weekend, with no wind, and temperatures rising from a low of 26° overnight to 37° during the day (that’s 79 to 99° F for the retrogrades in the audience). That’s warm – and there would be a heat advisory up all weekend – but it actually was quite temperate for August in Texas. It could have been much, much worse; last year it reached 41° (that’s 105° F) in Austin over PMC weekend!

Since my earliest rides, my pre-PMC dinner has been Thai food: whether at the “Thai Place” restaurant at the starting line in Sturbridge Mass., or take-out from Thai and Noodle Outlet before the remote PMCs I rode back in Pittsburgh. For my first Austin edition, I got take-out from Pad Thai Cuisine, ordering Panang curry for Friday night, and green curry fried rice for an as-yet-unspecified future. The drive to fetch it halfway across town and back was a bit anxious; I hadn’t factored for Friday afternoon rush-hour traffic, and needed to get home by 5:30pm for the PMC opening ceremonies live stream.

The opening ceremonies were split into two semi-separate sections. The first, a 40-minute “State of the PMC” program, was hosted by PMC founder Billy Starr. It was directed mostly toward event participants, but could still be of interest to a general audience, and featured an inspiring report from Dr. Cigall Kadoch, a molecular biologist and Associate Professor of Pediatric Oncology at the Dana-Farber. As Billy did his annual count of riders from each state, Inna and I noted that out of 6,800 riders, 41 were from Texas, placing it 13th in number of registrants.

The second half of the evening was a 30-minute “Everyday Heroes” program produced by WBZ television, aimed at the general public, and containing a collection of news stories about PMC riders, Dana-Farber researchers, and the ride’s impact. As mentioned above, it included a feature (at 11m30s) highlighting Dr. Mimi’s Pediatric Low-Grade Glioma Lab, which is the destination for funds raised by Team Kermit.

Both videos appear in the sidebar on the right-hand side of this page. The opening ceremony is a huge part of the PMC experience, and I hope you’ll take the time to see what the ride’s about and the kinds of work your donations support.

While all this was going on, I thought I was being really sneaky. See, Austin – being in the Central time zone – is an hour behind Boston. So the opening ceremonies ended an hour “earlier” here, meaning I could get to bed earlier and perhaps get an hour more sleep than riders in Massachusetts, who had to be up ridiculously early for their 5:30am ET start.

But the most important part of my strategy to avoid Austin’s afternoon heat was to start obscenely early myself, getting much of the ride done before the sun came up and the temperatures soared. And if I began my own ride at 4:30am CT, I’d be setting out precisely simultaneously with all the PMC riders setting out from Sturbridge at 5:30 ET. That was so poetically symbolic that it became my plan. So in the end, I didn’t get that extra hour of sleep because I had to make my start time, which was also an hour “earlier” than theirs.

Saturday, 3 August 2024

NOTE: In addition to describing the experience in words, my ride video provides a different view into what my ride was like. You can find that above. Here I’ll provide some high-level written commentary about each day.

After climbing out of bed at 3:40, I hit the road at 4:30am CT, at the same time as riders departing Sturbridge (tho an hour earlier according to my clock), as described above.

Since moving to Austin, I’ve never been able to come up with a good route for long rides, and it took forever to close on a course for my remote PMC. But in the end, with no supportive water stops, I decided to break my Saturday ride into three loops, returning home for rest stops in-between.

At 100 KM, my first loop was by far the largest. I started according to plan by accruing some climbing in the neighborhoods of Austin’s Northwest Hills, which was a safe place to ride in the quiet predawn darkness. Although it was a warm night, it wasn’t overly humid, and the descents that followed each climb kept my body temperature pretty well regulated.

After two hours, I’d made my way well out of town and turned onto Lime Creek Road, which heads out a meander of Lake Travis toward the resorty town of Volente. It’s one of those up-and-down swoopy roads that motorsports enthusiasts (and cyclists) adore. But it was very stop-and-go for me, as the sky had lightened enough for me to take the time to set up some action shots with my new HoverAir X1 selfie drone. On top of that, I stopped at a porta-john, then paused after my GPS rebooted, then pulled off to reply to a text from my partner Inna, who was checking in on me in her role as support person. Although the roads were still mostly empty, for an hour or so I was a little concerned about the rising sun blinding drivers from seeing me on the road.

After a couple final (painful) climbs coming homeward through the Northwest Hills, I pulled back into our driveway at 9:30am. I’d ticked off 100 KM in five hours, with 1,050 meters of ascending, and had earned a well-deserved half-hour rest.

Saturday’s shorter middle loop followed the route of my weekly Friday Truancy group rides. After leisurely rolling south through downtown Austin and crossing the river, I lost about 20 minutes getting some drone footage of the skyline before finishing the leg into South Austin and turning back north again, along Barton Creek, through Zilker Park, then back across the river on the Mopac pedestrian bridge before the long slog up Exposition Boulevard toward home.

It was almost 12:30pm when I completed that 40 KM loop, and I was feeling some ill effects from both the distance and the temperature, which had shot up to 35°. Good thing I started early!

After another 30-minute rest, I climbed back in the saddle for my final 40 KM loop, which began with a neighborhood loop around Crestview before going south again along Scenic Drive to the boat landing on Lake Austin – surpassing the 100 mile mark along the way – and then back home. By this time, the 37° heat and fatigue had seriously sapped my stamina, and I had to stop frequently for impromptu roadside cool-downs.

But in just less than eleven hours, I collapsed at home, having completed 180 KM with a surprisingly stout 1,790 meters of climbing and a mere 10 percent battery left on my cycling GPS. It was my second 100-mile ride of the year, and my 110th overall. Starting in the dark, having no one to draft, then slogging through the midday heat, plus stopping for drone videos meant it took much longer than my usual PMC rides.

What remained of Saturday was spent in intense recovery and getting ready for Sunday: showered, hydrated, ate, charged all the batteries, and made some last-minute revisions to Sunday’s route. And I found a desperately-sought packet of chamois cream to ease some raging abrasions from too much time on my saddle. I’d planned a trip to the local swimming pool, but I decided chlorine probably wouldn’t mix well with a badly chafed ass.

Sunday, 4 August 2024

Although Sunday was a shorter 120 KM, and I had been planning to start early all along, getting up at 3:40am was made easier by the memory of suffering through the previous afternoon’s heat. It’s amazing how much the body can recover overnight, and what hadn’t recovered was addressed with chamois cream and Excedrin.

For the first time ever, I broke with my tradition of wearing my 2001 PMC jersey – from my first ride – on the second day of the ride, instead donning this year’s Team Kermit themed jersey and bibshorts. But I just didn’t have the strength and self-confidence to strap the team’s traditional Kermit the Frog doll to my helmet while riding all by myself.

Again setting out at 4:30am CT, simultaneously with – but an hour earlier than – real PMC riders, I began my “day” with another short set of climbs in the peaceful darkness of the Northwest Hills before circling the Crestview neighborhood I’d visited about 15 hours earlier. While the temperature was the same, it felt much more humid than the previous day, and was partially cloudy, punctuated with occasional flashes from distant and scattered thunderstorm cells.

After that, nearly my entire ride would be spent on blessedly flat (-ish) shared-use bike paths, beginning by picking up the Boggy Creek Greenbelt in early-morning darkness, which led me southeast toward the trailhead of the Southern Walnut Creek Trail: Austin’s longest and most popular cycling path.

The sun slowly emerged as I made my way 17 KM northward along Walnut Creek to Lindell Lane, where the path has always abruptly ended. But a new 5-kilometer extension of the trail is all-but-complete, leading from Lindell to the town of Manor (pronounced “Mainer”, not “manner”). While the extension wasn’t officially open yet, there’s been plenty of bike traffic on it already, and no one was around to stop me taking it on a Sunday just after sunrise. This was only the second time I’d ridden out this new extension.

As I stood by the trailside setting up another drone selfie, a passing rider stopped at a nearby porta-john and said hello, making an observation that I’d entirely missed: that he was riding in a jersey themed after the Sesame Street character Cookie Monster, while my jersey depicted Kermit the Frog: an amusing coincidence!

I was halfway through my planned distance when I hit my turnaround point in Manor at 7:45am and headed back the way I’d come. But 20 minutes later, as I rejoined the older portion of the path, the skies opened up in a brief but soaking six-minute sunshower, complete with a brilliant rainbow. It was delightful while it lasted, but it was still hot and sunny, so the rainfall quickly evaporated and left the air even heavier with humidity than before.

Not ten minutes later I was setting up another drone shot near the tennis center when the Violet Crown bike club’s Sunday group ride swept past me, a pack of around forty riders, including my friends Tommy and Paulie, whom I greeted “en passant”.

After a delightful gradual descent back south, I veered off the path to a convenience store on 51st Street to refill my bottles with ice, cola, and water to help make it home as the temperature had climbed past 34°. Starting to get hot again…

I retraced my route and finished the remaining Walnut Creek Trail before making my way over to the historic, pedestrian-only Montopolis Bridge for another photo opp. Then it was just an easy pedal back up the Boggy Creek trail and straight home. 120 KM done in 6½ hours with 865 meters of climbing, and I finished it in reasonable condition.

Final totals for my remote PMC ride: 300 KM with 2,650 meters of ascent, completed in 17½ hours’ clock time.

Finally, let me share two short anecdotes about my post-ride experience.

First: back when I did the IRL ride in Massachusetts, after Sunday’s ride out Cape Cod to Provincetown, my support person and I usually went to Race Point Beach and spent the afternoon relaxing and trying to swim in the often brutally cold Atlantic Ocean.

This year I wanted to mimic that experience by going to the (free, uncrowded, and delightful!) neighborhood outdoor pool that Inna and I have enjoyed all summer long. Unfortunately, not long after I finished my ride, one of those thunderstorms opened up in a downpour that closed the pool and lasted a couple hours. However, by 4pm the storm had passed, and as soon as I thought the thunder had abated, I made my way to see if the pool had reopened yet. In fact, I was their first customer to return and initially had the pool to myself for a long, well-earned, relaxing soak. A bathtub-warm outdoor pool in Texas wasn’t quite the same as swimming at a Cape Cod beach, but that might not be a bad thing, actually!

And finally: it’s always heartening to receive notifications when my supporters make donations during PMC weekend, and especially when I’m actually out on the bike pounding out those long, hot kilometers. Of course, it’s better to get donations before the event, but receiving them during always evokes a smile. This year I received two new donations during my ride, plus an email and a text message from two supporters who had already donated. But most memorably, about two hours after I finished on Sunday I received a surprise $1,000 donation — my biggest of the year – which totally made my day.

Fundraising

Every year, when I sign up for the PMC, I worry that I won’t be able to make the fundraising minimum, and every year my friends prove me wrong… way wrong!

This year, all my fundraising goals fell during the lead-up to PMC weekend.

I kicked off my fundraising campaign in June and pretty quickly received my 1,000th lifetime donation, surpassed $125,000 in lifetime funds raised, and met the $2,000 fundraising minimum for a remote rider. Particularly heartening was a donation with the following encouraging words from my friend and Pan-Mass Challenge CEO Jarrett Collins: “Keep that PMC banner waving in TX, O! Thanks for doing your part to help end cancer”.

In July, health issues left me with extra time to fundraise. I passed the $4,000 goal I’d publicly listed on my rider profile, and my secret, unspoken goal of beating my $4,778 fundraising record since returning to the PMC as a remote rider in the pandemic year of 2020 after a five-year hiatus.

With August and PMC weekend, my fundraising began at $5,000, and it ended on August 4th at $6,000 after that big $1,000 donation that came in mere hours after my ride!

In the final tally, 2024 was a resounding success. I received a total of $7,300 in donations from 59 people this year, yielding an average donation of $125; all three of those are new post-pandemic fundraising records for me. That was a 62% increase over what I raised in 2022, and brought my lifetime fundraising for cancer research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute to $130,800.

Of those 59 donors, 38 (65%) were continuing sponsors from my last ride (2022), nine (15%) were former supporters who returned after a lapse in sponsorship, and twelve (20%) were first-time sponsors.

Each of those groups of people deserve a specific kind of thanks. My most heartfelt appreciation goes out to my ever-loyal returning sponsors; also a hearty thank-you to those returning after a hiatus; and a very special warm welcome to my first-time donors. Thank you so much for being part of my team!

Of those twelve first-time sponsors, six were associated with Austin’s Mariposa Sangha meditation group, and four were from the Austin Kyūdō archery club. It was a special delight having first-time support from so many of the awesome friends I’ve made since moving to Texas a year and a half ago!

I still only account for one percent of one percent of the PMC’s billion-dollar impact, but I’m incredibly honored by the support my friends have given me, and proud of the amazing impact and the lifesaving progress that our entire PMC community has made possible. As I wrote earlier, every one of us – riders, volunteers, and donors – is a small but irreplaceable part, represented in this year’s PMC tagline “One in a Billion”.

I am honored and humbled by the support I have received from each and every one of you. Thank you so much for helping me make an impact on the most important humanitarian cause of our lifetimes: curing cancer.

Lessons Learned

2024 was such a groundbreaking year… So many firsts, and so many lessons learned! Here’s a list of things I learned that might not have gotten properly highlighted in my writeup. Plus, this is a nice, concise list of things for me to think about later, before future major rides.

Planning & preparation:

• It’s very likely that my stretching regimen contributed to the back issues I had this year and in previous years. I need to figure out a better routine that doesn’t risk injuring myself.
• I bought way too much endurance-ride-style food. The only stuff that was palatable was cold foods like fresh strawberries. Chocolate milk was great post-ride.
• Getting two take-out meals Friday night and saving one for quick post-ride prep on Saturday worked really well. You don’t want to spend time in the kitchen cooking after a hot 180 KM ride.
• My hydration strategy mostly worked. I started the days with a bottle of diluted OJ followed by sports drink, and ended with a bottle of cola and a bottle of water (for both drinking and dousing, tho dousing myself might have resulted in wet bibshorts and contributed to my saddle irritation). I tried not to take on too much fluid, because my thirst is an extremely unreliable indicator, and it got me in big trouble on last year’s Livestrong ride.
• Starting at 4:30am worked well to get kilometers in before it got hot. However, even earlier might be better, as I still wound up riding until 3:30pm on Saturday and suffered tremendously in the afternoon heat.
• Riding on a very popular bike path on a Sunday morning… expect a lot of other traffic!

Equipment:

• Pæthos – my 18 month old bike – had already handled two imperial century rides, and came through its first PMC weekend fine, if a little grimy from Sunday’s rain shower.
• I can’t fully count on my Garmin bike GPS’ battery. After 11 hours of navigation – three of them before dawn, with no solar charging – it was on the verge of shutting down. It also spontaneously rebooted on me mid-ride on Saturday, but picked right up where it left off, continuing both my in-progress activity, track log, and route navigation, so I only lost about 90 seconds of ride data.
• Don’t wear bibshorts with worn and/or damp chamois! Changing into clean, dry shorts mid-ride might not be a bad option. And be sure to have some chamois cream on hand!
• Heat management was critically important during rest stops. Key equipment included facecloths dunked in cold water, box fans, and a bed to collapse on. I should probably borrow my indoor trainer’s industrial fan next time.
• One of the benefits I miss from my IRL PMC days is the on-site massage therapists! Instead, I made use of the new Ekrin Bantam handheld massage gun that Inna bought for my birthday. I can’t prove that it specifically aided my recovery, but it felt good, and despite feeling a few twinges of cramps on Saturday, after using the massager I was good that evening and through the day on Sunday.
• I also made use of SaltStick electrolyte tabs. Again, I have absolutely no proof that they did anything, but they didn’t hurt, and cramps weren’t an issue.

Videography:

• My new HoverAir X1 selfie drone worked great and provided excellent footage, as you can see in my ride video above. It folds up to fit in a jersey pocket, and is pretty quick to boot up, give instructions to, and stow. The most ride time that I lost was because I had to wait for people to clear out of scenic locations so I could shoot myself unimpeded.
• I was fortunate, though, that there was almost no wind. The drone doesn’t have enough power to compensate for a strong wind, and even in still conditions it can’t keep up with a cyclist above ~20 km/h.
• Although note that they’re developing a new “Pro” model which claims vastly improved specs that will warrant checking into, if they ever get it to market.
• Don’t bother recording audio on rides. It’s really hard to get decent quality, no matter what device you’re using.

In Closing

I don’t like to predict the future; life is too messy to think that everything will predictably go on, the same way it has. But there are a couple things I can look forward to with hope.

In the near term, I expect to reunite with members of Team Kermit when they come back to Austin for this year’s Livestrong Challenge in October. And very shortly thereafter, the PMC will start up their wintertime indoor trainer group rides on Zwift. Those will be long-anticipated opportunities to reconnect with the greater PMC community after having comparatively little contact with them over the summer.

I hope to continue to ride the Pan-Mass Challenge, and hope you’ll be there to support me! My next big milestone would come in two years: my 20th PMC ride. Although my last four PMCs were ridden remotely, there’s always the improbable option of making the pilgrimage back to Boston for the IRL event, which is a little more conceivable after I surpassed its imposing $6,000 fundraising minimum this year. And farther ahead than I care to project looms the PMC’s 50th anniversary ride in 2029, when I would be nearly 66 years old. I’d dearly love to be there for that one!

After this first experience doing the PMC as a member of a team, that’s going to require more thought. It’s hard to feel like a legitimate part of a team when doing a solo Pan-Mass Challenge ride all alone, 2,000 miles away from everyone else. And I still have mixed feelings about restricting the funds I raise to a particular demographic.

But those are all just thoughts, and the future will unfold as it will.

But returning to the present, my remote 2024 Pan-Mass Challenge was, without question, a very memorable and eventful PMC. Thank you so much for being a part of my ride, and part of the cure for cancer.