C3 riders battle cancer on the bike
Thirteen-hundred-plus miles is a long way to go. Especially when you’re on a bicycle. But the members of Challenge to Conquer Cancer go the distance to fight the nation’s second-leading cause of death.
“I still ride for those that can’t,” says Brian Severa, a disabled veteran. “There’s so many people out there that are fighting cancer who can’t ride a bicycle even if they wanted to.”
C3, as the Greenville nonprofit is known, marks its 15th anniversary this year. For its first five years, cyclists rode to Austin, Texas. Now, four to five teams of as many as five riders pedal 24/7 in a weeklong relay to Lewiston, Maine—all commemorating those who fight and those who’ve lost the battle; riders Sharpie those names on their jerseys.
When Severa’s wife, Tricia, challenged him to take his first ride, he thought she was joking. “My wife comes up to me, she goes, ‘Can you ride a bicycle?’” He hadn’t ridden one for twenty years. “Dumb joke: you never forget how to ride a bicycle; but I said, ‘I don’t have one, either. My last one got stolen.’”
He had a month to train for a ride on behalf of Tricia’s mom, Pat Daugherty, who’d been fighting ovarian cancer for thirteen years. Pat was also a C3 “Warrior.” Members nominate Warriors and fly them to Maine, all expenses paid. Some participants are Warrior/riders, some join the support crew. In 2015, Severa hopped on the saddle for his mother-in-law. Pat died at the end of July that year. In May 2019, Brian was diagnosed with bladder cancer.
To outrace the disease, the organization has raised more than $2 million so far, reports Will Yancey, the C3 director. Most of the funds stay here: Prisma Health and The Cancer Association of Anderson. Proceeds also benefit the Patrick Dempsey Center in Lewiston, a project of the actor known for his role in Grey’s Anatomy—yes, that McDreamy—who typically greets the C3ers in Maine.
Dave Benham has been among those, though he doesn’t have cancer. A semi-retired architect who joined the group in 2012, he says, “Here we are exercising. We’re doing something for you that you wish you could be doing.”
Rhapsodizing about the rides’ evening shifts, he says: “We call out their names and talk about them and what they mean to us. And it’s really a spiritually moving time. You’re connecting with both those that are still fighting and those that have passed, and it really gives you strength and inspiration to keep moving.”
Milton Bowen shares an anecdote about his first ride in 2009, when he had just turned 55. He’d met a woman who couldn’t ride, but joined the support crew. In Austin, Texas, she shaved her head. Well, tradition at the time held that riders had to purchase something at Mellow Johnny’s Bike Shop. Bowen bought some pompoms, typically attached to the handlebars of children’s bikes. He put them on his helmet.
“When people see me on other rides and make a comment about my helmet,” says Bowen, who retired from Sealed Air in 2017 and now drives a bus for Anderson School District Five, “I tell them why I wear them.”
His two brothers battled prostate cancer. Ovarian cancer took his aunt. His grandfather died from pancreatic cancer. Late last year, he was diagnosed with malignant melanoma. In September, he will ride as a Warrior.
Sandy Trasher was named a Warrior in 2013 after her diagnosis with acute leukemia. Now she handles logistics for the 40-odd riders, support crew, and Warriors. Last year, thanks to COVID, renting vans and purchasing airline tickets, she says, “almost did me in.” Last year, she attended three funerals. “I felt like, well, if I’ve survived, I’m here for a reason.”
Says Benham: “The more I got involved, I started to understand the passion of the people in the organization and how much cancer really touches everybody. This group of people is so dedicated to at least help try to find a way to beat it.”
The Maine Event
C3’s Sept. 17-25 relay ride from Greenville to Lewiston, Maine, needs riders and support personnel, such as drivers, medics, and masseurs.
To participate, riders and support people must each pay a $275 registration fee. Each rider also must raise a minimum of $5,000; support personnel raise $2,500 each. Virtual participants are asked to raise $500 apiece. Fundraising can include corporate sponsorship or in-kind services.
Go to c3ride.org to register for the fall event. This year’s goal: $150,000.
Source: Challenge to Conquer Cancer
