The Pook’s Pedalers cycling crew has participated in the Pan-Mass Challenge for the last 14 years, raising thousands of dollars every summer for research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
Though the Pan-Mass Challenge (PMC) has been officially cancelled this year due to COVID-19 concerns, the team is continuing its fight by participating in “PMC Reimagined,” a day of collective smaller charity bike rides in lieu of the normal event.
Pook’s Pedalers began in 2007 with five riders, including founding member Judith Souweine of Amherst. Judith’s husband, Jonathan, received treatment for leukemia and a bone marrow transplant at Dana-Farber. The transplant helped him live for five more years before he died in 2009. The group rides every year in honor of him and his nickname, “Pook.”
Judith Souweine has continued as a leader of the group throughout the past decade, riding with Pook’s Pedalers every year and raising $12,000-$15,000 by herself each campaign. She’s 72 this year, making her among the oldest participants in the entire challenge, but she has no plans of stopping anytime soon.
When the PMC announced the 2020 cancellation on May 1, Souweine was hardly surprised, but was nevertheless disappointed. For her, the event means more than just the bike ride itself — it’s everything leading up to the event, the connections she’s made with other riders, and the impact she gets to make toward a disease that affected her deeply.
While she’s thrilled that she’ll still be able to accomplish the latter this year, she can’t deny that the event will be different without the former.
“It’s the one time ever in my life where I really feel like a hero,” Souweine said of the PMC. “The streets are lined with people saying ‘thanks for riding,’ ‘he’s alive because of you,’ … it’s so emotional. There’s all this energy and excitement, too. To miss all of that is just so sad for all of us.”
To keep the spirit of the original challenge alive as much as possible, Pook’s Pedalers will be riding on Saturday as part of the PMC Reimagined virtual event. Ted Diamond, of Amherst, who has been with the Pedalers for each of the last eight rides, organized the new route.
The PMC is normally a two-day event, but due to various logistical problems surrounding COVID-19 restrictions, PMC Reimagined advised riders to take the ride in one day. In line with honoring the intensity and rigor of the original event, Diamond hatched the idea to run a century route: 100 miles in one day.
“We wanted to demonstrate (to our potential donors) in some way that we were still pushing ourselves and making an effort to justify their support,” Diamond said. “So, like a lot of PMCers, we decided to do a century ride.”
Diamond, along with first-time teammate Gregory Trerotola of Andover, devised two routes for the team, both of which run along the Connecticut River. The first, entitled “Almosta Century,” goes from Amherst to Brattleboro, Vermont, and back and spans 97.1 miles, allowing riders to reach the century with their trip to and from the starting point.
The second, entitled “Metric Century Plus,” goes from Amherst to Northfield and back, spanning 69.5 miles and serving as a bit over a metric century at 111.8 kilometers. The Brattleboro riders will depart a little earlier than the Northfield riders so that they can converge for lunch, which will consist of individually wrapped meals and socially distant dining.
The riders will meet at Souweine’s house for a socially distanced celebration at the end of the ride, capping off the day with a catered, individually wrapped Mexican dinner and drinks.
Diamond has taken on a lot of the planning and coordinating duties for this year’s event, leading the charge along with Souweine. But nine years ago, when he set off with the Pook’s Pedalers for the first time, he couldn’t imagine how important it would eventually become to him, and how much he would want to fight to keep it alive.
A year and a half ago, Diamond’s brother, David Diamond, was diagnosed with leukemia. He received treatment at Dana-Farber, and doctors found that Ted was a bone marrow match. In January 2019, Ted visited Dana-Farber to donate and was forever changed by what he saw.
“It was very powerful for us to show up there and look around and see what we had been supporting,” Ted Diamond said. “The physical facilities — all the research towers, the clinics, the laboratories — it’s such an important place. It really brought home to us where the fundraising was going, and made it a lot more real.”
The transplant was successful and David continues to do well in recovery a year and a half later. He’s picked up a love of cycling himself in the past year, and now rides Ted’s old road bike.
“He’s got my red blood cells and now he’s a cyclist,” Ted Diamond laughed.
Though this year’s ride looks much more different than normal, Pook’s Pedalers remains motivated through what ties the riders all together: the people in their lives who have been affected by cancer. Hadley’s Margaret Mastrangelo, who will be embarking on her second ride with the Pedalers, may understand that motivation more than anyone.
Mastrangelo originally planned on riding with the Pedalers about five years ago. Like Diamond, she didn’t have a deeply personal connection to the disease in the beginning — she was supporting Souweine, a good friend of hers. That all changed when she was diagnosed with late-stage ovarian cancer a couple of months after signing up.
Mastrangelo believed that she would never be able to ride a bike again. But, through the years, Mastrangelo was able to regain her strength and continue to recover. Last year, she finally felt ready to tackle the PMC with a whole new meaning.
“I kept trying to ride and do training rides with (Pook’s Pedalers) over the years, but it was really last year where I knew I had it back — that I can do this,” Mastrangelo said.
As of last Thursday, Mastrangelo is five years cancer-free.
As she embarks on her second ride with the Pedalers, she feels a deep drive to continue the fight for those who have to face the fight she went through.
“I’m fortunate to still be here when so many others are not,” Mastrangelo said. “So I feel that it’s incredibly important to ride, even though riding isn’t a passion of mine. I do it because others cannot.”
Souweine, Diamond and Mastrangelo are just three of the nearly 20 riders who are raising money with Pook’s Pedalers this Saturday. And they’re not all local: due to travel restrictions, a few members of the team are conducting rides in their own hometowns. Isaac Souweine, Judith’s son, is raising money for the team through his ride in Montreal.
“Last week, Isaac decided to join in and do a century himself,” Judith Souweine said. “He made up a route, posted it on Facebook, and he’s raised a ton of money in just a few days. Some of his friends are even gonna ride with him.”
Pook’s Pedalers has raised over $130,000 so far this summer for Dana-Farber. Over the 14 years the team has raised $996,540, with hopes of surpassing $1 million by Saturday.
Despite the unique circumstances of 2020, Pook’s Pedalers has received an outpour of support for its new ride, though the riders understand that this year will be different financially. It’s not unique to the Pedalers: the PMC dropped their original $60 million goal to $45 million under PMC Reimagined.
“The support has been pretty close (to other fundraising years) — I think people really appreciate that we’re doing this,” Souweine said. “But we understand that some people are more stretched financially this year because of COVID, as well as donating to other very worthy causes related to COVID, racial justice, or the upcoming election.”
Riders on the “Almosta Century” route will depart around 5:30 a.m. Saturday, and riders on the “Metric Century Plus” route will take off about two hours later.
With an event that is different in almost every aspect, including name, the one thing that will remain the same for the Pedalers this year is the riders’ resilience and dedication to the cause. It may not be the spectacle they waited all summer for, but they know they’re still making a difference on Saturday.
“I just feel a responsibility,” Mastrangelo said. “I feel like I am the living proof for these women who are struggling now. I want them to see that you can be diagnosed with late-stage ovarian cancer and come out the other end. And not just come out, but thrive. Would I like to be doing it with the whole 6,000 people? Sure. But that doesn’t matter — it’s the individual who counts.”
Visit http://profile.pmc.org/TP0112 to donate.