Ornoth

So someone finally wrote a book about the Pan-Mass Challenge.

If you are one of my friends who care about (or are just curious about) the event, you might be interested in picking it up. It’s short—just 150 pages—with a handful of greyscale photos. It’s inexpensive too—just $9 at Amazon!—and the author is giving 75 percent of the profits back to the PMC.

The writing is first-person and informal. While that makes it readable, the author rambles around each chapter, covering diverse topics with no real focal point, yielding a book that also has no coherent theme other than the experience.

But to be fair, the PMC—the event—is all about that experience. The entire weekend is intensely emotionally charged, and that’s something that is nearly impossible to convey in words. This is astutely summarized in a quote from one teen rider, “When you explain it to a friend they sort of know what it is, but until they’re there, they don’t really know.”

Sure, there’s the obligatory nod to the event’s long history, including how the idea came to the founder during a ride in Boston’s Arnold Arboretum, how he ran the event for fifteen years from his father’s dining room, how everyone reacted to the first rider fatality, finally getting permission to use the campus of the Massachusetts Maritime Academy as an overnight stop, and the event’s phenomenal growth.

And there’s plenty of interesting factoids. On PMC weekend, riders will pedal a collective three-quarters of a million miles. 70 percent of riders return to the event each year, and scores of PMC kids rides serve as a farm club for the main event, iculcating future generations into a culture of philanthropy and caring about others.

Combine all the other single-event athletic fundraisers in the nation, then multiply that by 3.5—that’s what the PMC raises every year. Having passed 100 percent of rider-raised money through to the charity, the PMC constitutes 60 percent of the Jimmy Fund’s revenue and—at 20 percent of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s entire budget—is DFCI’s largest single source of funding.

All this enables Dana-Farber to conduct over 700 clinical trials and 350,000 outpatient visits per year. But more importantly, the PMC gives Dana-Farber the power and security to do the impossible. The PMC has directly underwritten research that led to treatments and cures for rare pediatric cancers that threaten the lives of a thousand kids per year, a hundred kids per year, even just 32 kids per year.

The book tells the stories of a number of these kids, including the PMC’s poster boy: Jack O’Riordan, who at one year of age was cured of Wilms Tumor, which only six children had at that time. And how, after cheering on PMC riders for 14 years, he finally was old enough to do the ride himself (despite a broken leg).

The book also includes stories from the more than a hundred Dana-Farber staffmembers who ride, and gives a pointedly realistic assessment of Lance Armstrong’s single visit to the event in 2011, shortly before his confession as a doper and resignation from his own cancer-related charity.

Many of the people in the book provide quotes that further illustrate the attitude and atmosphere the event creates.

“There are widows and there are orphans, but no word exists for a parent who loses a child.” -One 17-year rider’s fundaising email

“At first when I get the call my heart goes out for the family; it’s so hard. But then my heart soars because they’ve found the right place, the right team.” -A pediatric oncologist who rides

“To the world you may be just one person, but to one person you just may be the world.” -One of hundreds of signs lining the route

“You’re never done, you’re never done with the event.” -A 25-year volunteer

For me as a 13-year rider, the book left me with mixed feelings. I so want to be able to share with others what the PMC experience is like. Although the book relates a handful of very emotional narratives, it’s simply impossible to capture all the amazing and heart-wrenching and grace-laden stories in an event that spans hundreds of miles with 5,500 participants, 3,000 volunteers, countless roadside spectators, and a quarter million sponsors over 33 years.

One of the difficult things to capture about the PMC is the emotional impact. All weekend long, you’re primed, because you never know when you’ll see something that instantly moves you to tears, whether it be to the heights of inspiration or the depths of despair. Will it be the kid holding an “I’m alive thanks to you!” sign? Riding next to a Red Sox or Patriots player? Or exchanging greetings with an 80 year-old rider, or an amputee riding with only one leg?

Will it be hearing the story of someone who has raised a quarter million dollars, or a rider with a loved one’s photo or dozens of ribbons with names pinned to their jersey? The tandem bike with an empty seat, representing a lost loved one?

Will it be the sincerity and passion with which hundreds of people lining the route thank you for riding? Or watching the tens of thousands of people—riders, volunteers, sponsors, supporters, patients and their families, doctors, and nurses—who have come together to make a real, meaningful difference in each others’ lives this often impersonal and uncaring world?

As a longtime writer myself, I don’t envy anyone who tries to capture and communicate the PMC experience, in whatever medium. So I won’t criticize the author for falling short of 100 percent success. But I’m very glad he did it, and I think it’s well worth the $9 for anyone who has ever felt attachment to this singular and irreproduceable event.

And, of course, if you have yet to sponsor my upcoming 13th PMC ride, now’s the time!

Sometimes you’re fortunate enough to know when something historic is about to happen. When I heard that there was going to be a formal dedication of the PMC Plaza at the Dana-Farber Cancer Insitute’s new building, I had to be there.

Think about it: Dana-Farber—the place where chemotherapy was invented—hasn’t opened a new clinical building in 36 years. At that rate, it’s an incredibly rare honor to have the building’s main entrance named for your organization. It is a very concrete, tangible method of recognizing how important the Pan-Mass Challenge is to the Dana-Farber’s mission of curing and eradicating cancer.

Full Photoset

Leading up to the dedication, details were difficult to come by. I knew the date, and was tipped off to the time earlier that day. Although I hadn’t planned it out, I left work early so that I could swing by my place and grab my camera.

I wasn’t even sure the event was going to happen. Most of New England was under a thunderstorm and tornado watch. The sky was ashen, with a fierce wind blowing debris around the streets of Boston. As I descended the stairs to catch the subway from Copley to Longwood, a deafening thunderclap rattled the headhouse and the lights flickered. If the ceremony hadn’t been canceled, at least there’d be a dramatic backdrop for it!

Arriving at Longwood, I saw that the celebrants were gathering inside the lobby of the new Yawkey Center for Cancer Care building. Uninvited and underdressed, I pulled my camera out and made like I was supposed to be there. I later learned that due to space constraints, only 20-year-plus PMC riders had been invited, due to space constraints. But no one challenged the guy behind the camera, a mere 10-year rider, and I wasn’t about to let such a historic moment pass me by. My one nod to propriety was that at least I didn’t eat any of the hors d’oeuvres!

So I played photographer, and got a few good pictures out of the deal. I even got a bit of photographer-level access to the bigwigs, which amused me.

The sense of being on observer of history was reinforced during the speechifying. This recognition was arguably the most important moment in the entire history of the Pan-Mass Challenge, and it was a moment of deepest pride for me, standing there in a new building that the PMC’s donation was the lead gift for. In his remarks, Dana-Farber president Dr. Ed Benz articulated for the first time the astounding next milestone in the PMC’s fundraising road: a third of a billion dollars.

I won’t say much about the plaza itself. There are three granite planters/benches with “Pan-Mass Challenge Plaza” engraved that separate it from Brookline Avenue. There are dozens of granite pavers in a long line, each one representing one of the towns that the PMC route passes through. There’s two standing arcs of granite that comprise a sculpture called “Tandem”. And a plaque, which reads:

PMC PLAZA
This plaza is dedicated to the Pan-Massachusetts Challenge (PMC): to its cyclists, volunteers, and donors whose life-affirming efforts through the decades have provided critical support for cancer research and patient care at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Tandem is a tribute to the indelible bond between the PMC and Dana-Farber and reflects the extraordinary impact when two vital organizations work in tandem.

Yeah. Being part of an organization with that kind of power to do good: that’s something to take pride in. And as the inscription says, it’s not just about the riders. It’s the partnership between the riders, the thousands of volunteers, and a quarter million people a year like you who sponsor riders. And that’s just the PMC’s side of its partnership with Dana-Farber, its doctors and researchers, support staff, and cancer patients and their families.

I’m deeply proud to be one part of that extended family.

Last week I went to a talk and book signing by Dr. David G. Nathan, who has written a book called “The Cancer Treatment Revolution: How Smart Drugs and Other New Therapies are Renewing Our Hope and Changing the Face of Medicine”.

Of particular note for anyone involved in the Pan-Mass Challenge, Dr. Nathan is the former president of our beneficiary, the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He is the predecessor of Dr. Edward Benz, whom you should recognize from his regular appearances in support of the PMC. Dr. Nathan is also one of DFCI founder Sidney Farber’s contemporaries. So he’s unquestionably one of the most authoritative sources to speak on the topic, and his talk was very inspiring.

The book recounts the technical details of the amazing progress made against all forms of cancer during his fifty years in oncological research, and the equally amazing and heartening prospects for the future, thanks to the ongoing development of improved methods of detection and less toxic smart chemotherapy drugs, which more specifically target the cells which cause the unchecked growth of cancer.

He does this through the actual stories of three typical patients: an infant with a variety of leukemia that until recently was considered untreatable, an older woman who beat a very aggressive form of breast cancer, and a man who turned to very early clinical trials of emerging smart drugs to treat a rare and almost certainly fatal intestinal tumor that had burst.

Having spent much of his professional life working with or for the DFCI, the book has a lot of specific detail about the work which the Dana-Farber has done in the fight against cancer: work which has been made possible largely due to the nearly two hundred million dollars brought in by people who have donated to DFCI through the Pan-Mass Challenge.

Dr. Nathan’s successor, Dr. Benz, was also on hand at the reading, and I was gladly able to speak with both of them briefly and offer my thanks for their work. I consider it a great honor that my copy of the book is signed by both the former and current presidents of the Dana-Farber, for whom I have raised over $25,000. These are men who have presided over a tremendous transformation in what we know about cancer and how it can be prevented, treated, and, yes: in many cases cured.

As a way to thank my most generous sponsors and spread the word about how far we’ve come in the treatment of cancer thanks to the work done at Dana-Farber and elsewhere, I plan to offer a free copy of the book to every person who makes a contribution of $200 or more* in support of my ride this year.

If you’re desperate to get your copy of the book ASAP, you can sponsor my PMC ride here. However, I’m planning on getting started on my fundraising in the next couple weeks, and I’ll be sharing a lot more news in my fundraising letter, which will also be posted here shortly.

 
* That’s before any employer match