The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 78

6 Globe West The Boston Globe THURSDAY, AUGUST 3, 2006 Raising dollars for charity with a tour de Mass. i JB fit PAN-MASS. Continued from Page 1 utive producer of the TV show three-time Boston Marathon winner Uta Pippig; and Olympic speed skater Johann Olav Koss. The traffic crunch Saturday morning will take place between 6 and 8: first as cars carrying cyclists park at Babson and Olin, and then as participants pedal out on Forest Street in Wellesley to Central Avenue in Needham. On Sunday, bikers will stream back between 9:30 a.m and 2 p.m.

Additional riders will be pedaling through the area over the weekend on routes between Stur-bridge and the Cape. The challenge consists of eight courses in all, two of them added this year. The mix of one- and two-day routes ranges from 70 to 192 miles, the longest of which ends in Provincetown. The challenge has raised more than $145 million for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, comprising more than half of the annual revenue for the Jimmy Fund. This year, riders have pledged to raise between $1,200 and $3,300 each, and whatever they don't get through donations will be billed to The ride by the numbers The following are for both starts in Wellesley and Sturbridge.

15 Youngest rider 80 Oldest rider 43 Average rider age 3 Average training period in months 2,500 Volunteers 16,000 Bags of trail mix 10,000 Hamburgers 408 Bottles of mustard 600 Gallons of chowder 140 Kegs of beer 58,000 Bottles of water vZ- n0J 'j in 1980, stands in a warehouse parents didn't let on about his mother's illness for a year. Starr said youths in those days had little access to information about cancer. He was left to figure things out on his own. After learning the sad news, he dropped his travel plans and decided to continue living at home. He worked as a truck driver and visited his mother at the hospital as often as three times a day, She died when he was 23.

Not long after that, Starr hiked through the Appalachians with some buddies. He said he wasn't trying to escape the sadness at home, but the trip was therapeutic. He had been athletic all his life, playing soccer, tennis, and basketball as a student at Newton South and picking up kayaking and backpacking at the University of Denver. To push himself even more, he turned to cycling. "For kicks," he challenged himself one weekend to a 120-mile ride from Newton to Provincetown.

He recruited friends to join him on two more 2 i filled with supplies for this year's rides. Cycling had yet to catch on as a glamour sport in the United States. It really took off in 1986, when Greg LeMond became the first American to win the Tour de France. Starr said he conceived the idea for the Pan-Massachusetts Challenge as a "confluence" of his life experiences namely his passion for outdoor sports and the losses of his mother, uncle, and cousin to cancer. From the beginning, Starr said, he hoped to see the challenge grow into a major event, tapping into his generation's emphasis on fitness.

"Baby boomers and Gen X-ers embrace health, exercise, diet," he said. "They don't smoke. It makes sense why the 'athon' industry is a billion-dollar industry." He worked briefly for a public relations firm to pay the bills while trying to expand the bike-athon. But he found that it required a full-time effort So he quit his job and worked out of an office in his father's house for the next 15 Billy Starr, who founded the ride their credit cards. Starr, who is 55, was just a few months out of college, planning a trip to Nepal, when he learned that his mother was suffering from melanoma, or skin cancer.

Starr grew up in Newton, one of three brothers. He described the family as close-knit, with traditions such as weekend brunch at his grandmother's house. But his In Our Store Daily 9-6 Ripened PEACHES APPLES, BLUEBERRIES CIDER D0NUTS, PIES CARAMEL APPLES HEDGEMAZE FARM ANIMALS OPEN DAILY CALL NOW TO BOOK SCHOOL FIELD TRIPS ftte. 20W to 27N for 3.3 bearing loft Vi mi. beyond Sudbury Ctr.

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Here are the main events: Opening ceremonies: 8 to 9 p.m. Friday at the Sturbridge Host Hotel, featuring music by Soul Asylum and "American Idol" contestant Ayla Brown. Broadcast on New England Cable News. Two-day rides; (Saturday-Sunday) Sturbridge to Provincetown (192 miles); Sturbridge-Bourne-Wellesley (180 miles); Wellesley-Bourne-Provincetown (163 miles); Wellesley-Bourne-Wellesley (153 miles). One-day rides: (Saturday) Sturbridge-Boume (111 miles), Wellesley-Bourne (84 miles), Welles-ley-Sturbridge (72 miles), Sturbridge-Wellesley (72 miles).

it I i JANET KNOTTGLOBE STAFF Pan-Mass. Challenge. years. "Nobody saw me as a great date for their daughter," said Starr. Biking, though, did turn out to be good for his love life.

One of his riding buddies introduced him to his future wife, Meredith. They and their two children live in Wellesley. Now, a half-dozen people work year-round on the challenge out of an office in Needham. Starr earns $330,030 as founder and executive director. He said the salaries are determined by the PMC's independent board of directors.

As he has for the past 26 years, he plans to ride the full 192-mile course this weekend. Starr has raised about $773,000 for the Jimmy Fund since he founded the ride. In the early years, planners had to deal with their share of mishaps, from running out of food to redirecting lost cyclists. Now they have the event down to a science, figuring out where to put 600 portable toilets, ordering 58,000 bottles of water for the riders, and recruiting 2,500 volunteers. Starting in the fall, coordinators assess routes, choose rest sites, and advise participants about fund-raising.

Coordinators meet monthly at Babson, with more meetings as the event nears. Registration began in January, and some of the routes were sold out by February. The goal, organizers say, is to let the riders concentrate on the pedaling and leave such worries as where to park and get their bikes fixed to others. Jeff Rimpas, the site coordinator for the Babson start, said part of the job is soothing nerf es. "Rid- out as he sat in the back seat of the car as his family rushed down Route 9 to Children's Hospital in Boston.

His lymph nodes were the size of baseballs. In the hospital, his family clustered around him. The movie "Apollo 13" played on a nearby television. The doctors arrived with the news they were dreading: Spencer had cancer specifically, acute lymphoblastic leukemia. survivor accepts the Challenge 9 Month CD I 600 Portable toilets SOURCE: Pan-Massachusetts Challenge ers are stressed.

Everybody looks like they're in better shape. They ask themselves, 'Am I ready for Despite all the planning, every year there seems to be a a "whoa" moment, said Rimpas, a volunteer and rider for the past 15 years. Last year, on the eve of the bike-athon, a volunteer waved an SUV into the Babson parking lot where thousands of bikes were stored overnight. The vehicle barreled into 10 bikes. The family inside was hysterical.

In the end, little harm was done, as the bikes were repaired overnight. But planners still cringe at what they call a "black eye." No rain date is set for the Challenge. In fact, it rains almost every year, said Les Laputz, one of the organizers at Babson. The planners just cross their fingers that the rain will fall on Friday, when the opening ceremonies are held in Sturbridge, rather than on race day. At meetings, they say "when it rains." Said Laputz: 'If is bad luck." "To this day, I can't have anything to do with 'Apollo said Spencer.

He underwent two years of intensive chemotherapy, losing all his hair. Steroidal medication bloated his once-trim body. But from the start, the teenager vowed not to let cancer defeat him. Against doctors' recommendations, Spencer checked himself out of the hospital to attend his high school graduation. The following September, he enrolled at the College of the Holy Cross, majoring in math.

"I sort of equated being sick to playing a sport, not wanting to lose," said Spencer. "People ask me if I'm mad that I had cancer. Ten years ago, when I was being treated, I would have said I was a stubborn kid. Having cancer allowed me to change." Spencer regularly speaks with children and the parents of children with cancer at the Perini clinic. He lives with the threat that his robust health could unravel again.

"I do look to the future. But I don't forget that tomorrow might not come," said Spencer. Married this past June, he and his wife, Mary, completely renovated their Westborough house. They turned a first-floor room into a "beach room," in honor of where they became engaged. Spencer recalled the rainy May day last year when he suggested that they go to Singing Beach, near Mary's home in Manchester-by-the-Sea.

"No way. It's pouring," Mary said, before giving in. The winds howled. The rained pelted down. Spencer proposed.

"After she said yes, the sun came up. It was so surreal. No one else was on the beach." No Maximum Deposit Deposit Which Exceed FDIC ijWWtlll Limits Are Insured By OIF MIA Cancer By Lauren K. Meade GLOBE CORRESPONDENT George Spencer of Westbor-ough pedals swiftly down Harvey Lane on his red and black LeMond Zurich bicycle in preparation for Saturday's 163-mile Pan-Massachusetts Challenge. The six-year veteran of the bike-athon has his training down pat: cycling 12.5 miles to work at Raytheon in Marlborough each morning and zigging and zagging up steep Harvey Lane to strengthen his thighs.

Spencer, 27, breaks into a light sweat in the July heat. He stands about 5 feet 8 inches tall. His deltoids pop out from his shoulders like apples. But thanks to his ever-present reading glasses, he looks like a cross between a computer junkie and a jock. The software engineer's active lifestyle and muscular physique belie his two-year battle with cancer as a teenager.

He is one of more than 200 cancer survivors who signed up to cycle this weekend. Spencer has raised $22,000 over the past six years for cancer research, riding with a team from the David B. Perini Jr. Quality of Life Clinic at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, which offers healthcare and counseling to cancer survivors. When his own life suddenly veered off course, Spencer was a 17-year-old senior at Saint John's High School in Shrewsbury.

The hockey player from Ashland had dreams of attending the Naval Academy and then becoming a doctor. He was fun-loving, "stubborn," and wanted to get as far away from Massachusetts after high school as he could. But for weeks after the hockey It's like caffeine for your social life. 7 Aw BILL POLOGLOBE STAFF 11 -a haw I 3' George Spencer training in Westborough. Over the past six years, he has raised $22,000 for Dana-Farber's Jimmy Fund.

season ended, Spencer felt drained and fatigued. He visited his doctor, with complaints of flulike symptoms. He returned a week later with symptoms suggesting bronchitis. More visits followed. "Finally, a doctor took an X-ray and said, 'You don't have pneumonia.

You need to go to the Spencer said he nearly passed Every Thursday. Che Boston 05lobe The Pulse of Boston 6 Wl.