The roads of Massachusetts might seem quiet now, but come the first weekend of August, they’ll play host to the largest athletic fundraising event in the country. The Pan-Mass Challenge, an annual two-day charity bicycle ride, brings riders and volunteers together to raise money for Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Since the first PMC ride in 1980, which had 36 riders and a staff of 10, PMC has grown into an operation that each year coordinates more than 6,000 cyclists and 3,000 volunteers along more than a dozen official routes. The event has raised over $1 billion overall for cancer research, including $75 million just from last year’s ride.
PMC cyclists comprise a mix of first-timers and veterans who have been riding in the event for decades: some who ride alone and many who join PMC teams that prepare together; riders from almost every U.S. state and from a dozen foreign countries.
Orion and Canis Major. (Courtesy photo)
Several of this year’s riders also come from, or have close ties to, Harvard. One such rider is Rolando Lora, set to ride in his 20th PMC as a member of Team Lick Cancer. Lora began riding after his daughter was diagnosed with cancer as an infant, and while she will celebrate 20 years in remission this September, Lora continues to ride. “Once you do it,” he says, “you’re hooked.” Other cyclists share a similar sentiment. Rosie VanDorpe, Lora’s Lick Cancer teammate, says of the PMC’s appeal, “You have to do it to be able to understand it.”
Cyclists speak with affection for the friendly faces they see along the ride, like the Pedal Partners, the pediatric patients linked to PMC teams. Cyclists often meet their Pedal Partners before the PMC weekend at a special event at Fenway Park and then again during the ride, at a water stop in Lakeville. These children often cheer on the riders, some holding up signs with messages like “I’m alive because of you.”
Sometimes fellow riders provide inspiration, like one cyclist VanDorpe recalls encountering during her first PMC. “We were coming out of Wellesley, I was second-guessing myself, and a rider passed me. He had no leg—no prosthetic, just pedaling with one leg, with a crutch strapped to the frame of his bike. I thought, ‘just get your ass to Bourne, Rosie!’” The sight, evidently, was galvanizing; this year, VanDorpe is riding in her 14th PMC.
Getting a good thing done
Lisa Eisenberg (the author's mother) lines up with other riders at the starting line of the 2024 Pan Mass Challenge.
“It’s a wonderful feeling, so upbeat, and everybody is involved, the donors, the volunteers, the riders, everybody coming together to get this good thing done,” says Lisa Eisenberg, preparing for her second PMC ride. Eisenberg, a longtime PMC supporter, signed up to ride after the sudden passing of her brother, Jim Adelson, who rode for almost 20 years as a member of Team Kinetic Karma. Now a member of Kinetic Karma herself, Eisenberg rides in memory of both her brother and their father, Bill Adelson, who passed away from colon cancer in 1991. “I’ve caught the bug,” she says. “I foresee myself doing it as long as I’m able.”
Each cyclist determines how best to prepare for the ride. Whereas some, like Eisenberg and VanDorpe, begin training months in advance—Eisenberg estimates she biked 1600 miles ahead of the 2024 event—others get started closer to PMC weekend. “I loathe biking,” admits Lora, noting with some laughter that he went for his first practice ride of the year on June 19th. “But you gotta keep going,” he adds. “Our work isn’t done yet.”
That sense of purpose is common among riders. “It’s a great support for people that have been impacted by cancer, which is most of us,” says Janet O’Shea, another member of Team Lick Cancer, preparing for her 15th PMC. O’Shea and her husband, former Bromfield principal Jim O’Shea, know all too well the impact of cancer, their daughter Charlotte having passed away in 2010 at the age of six from ATRT, a rare form of brain cancer. Charlotte had been the Pedal Partner for Red Sox Team 9, a PMC team made up of members of the Red Sox organization; at the 2011 PMC, O’Shea’s first as a rider, Team 9 dedicated their ride to Charlotte. “It was overwhelming,” she says. “Until you see what children with cancer go through, you really can’t imagine how horrendous it is and what they go through and what the families and siblings and everybody go through. Once you experience that, it’s hard not to support a cause like [PMC].”
Recent financial issues and budget cuts, however, are threatening the progress of cancer treatments and research. O’Shea, who works with Dana-Farber to manage TLC Cures ATRT, the Charlotte Fund for Pediatric Brain Cancer Research, says researchers have told her “the situation is dire.” Luckily, 100% of PMC’s rider-raised funds are donated to cancer research, with nothing taken off to cover overhead costs. As Eisenberg notes, “It’s even more important this year for people to rally around preserving and protecting the work that goes on at Dana-Farber.”
The cyclists themselves do the bulk of the fundraising, taking on fundraising minimums of as much as $6,000 (depending on the route). That aspect of the event can be daunting, but as VanDorpe says, “I have people I haven’t seen in 20 years who give me money every year. You never know who’s been impacted by cancer.”
For all the physical, emotional, and financial challenges of taking part in the PMC, the riders are unanimous in their gratitude for the event and for how it brings people together. On the long, arduous ride, Lora says, “I’m carried forward through memories of people who have passed, thinking about all the people that get to live another day because we’re able to help them.”
It also doesn’t hurt to be a PMC rider from Harvard. “There’s nothing like the Harvard hills,” says O’Shea. “If you train on the Harvard hills, you’re good. Nothing will bother you.”
You can donate to the rides of the cyclists mentioned in this article by following the below links:
- Rolando Lora’s ride, visit profile.pmc.org/RL0100
- Rosie VanDorpe’s ride, visit profile.pmc.org/RV0032
- Janet O’Shea’s ride, visit profile.pmc.org/jo0111
- Lisa Eisenberg’s ride, visit profile.pmc.org/LE0066
To find out more about Team Lick Cancer, visit profile.pmc.org/TL0054. To find out more about Team Kinetic Karma, visit profile.pmc.org/TK0045.
Danny Eisenberg grew up in Harvard and for many years reviewed movies for The Harvard Press. He is currently completing an MFA in creative writing at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia.
