The Pan-Mass Challenge | New England’s Gifts

The Pan-Mass Challenge — The Ride That Won’t Stop

There are people who possess a gift they don’t really know they have, until something unexpected happens, and their life takes a turn, and then their gift becomes the life itself. For instance, Billy Starr.  When his mother died from melanoma, he asked himself, “How can I turn my interest in sports, my sweat, into something meaningful?” What if he could get people to donate money toward cancer research for each mile he pedaled from Williamstown to Province-town, Massachusetts, some 300 miles by bike? This was in 1980, long before athletic fundraising became popular.

What began with a single gift of $10,200 to the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute has grown today to more than $450 million. There’s nothing quite like it in the world. “When they write the history of how cancer was conquered,” notes Dana–Farber president Dr. Edward J. Benz Jr., “the PMC will be in chapter one.” 

This August, some 5,500 riders will start out, each one riding for someone they love, someone they lost, or someone fighting the disease now. Hundreds of riders themselves have or have had the disease. “We are not just cancer survivors,” one says. “We are cancer warriors.”

There are now eight routes, with different mileages, starting points, and endings. The longest ride starts at Sturbridge on Saturday and ends 190 miles later on Sunday morning in Provincetown, the riders sweeping past the dunes in a sea of color, jerseys and helmets flashing by in the morning light, as the crowd cheers. “You pedal 200 miles for that last 50 yards,” Starr says.

They keep pumping, going from water stop to water stop, not questioning whether it matters, because they know it does. Because this is what is possible: to fight back. They know why they do this: because we’re all on this one ride.

—“Billy Starr’s Long Ride,” by Mel Allen, July/August 2009

Mel Allen

Now editor at large, Mel Allen's first byline in Yankee appeared in 1977 and he joined the staff in 1979 as a senior editor. Eventually he became executive editor and led the staff as editor from 2006 to 2025. During his career he has edited and written for every section of the magazine, including home, food, and travel, while his pursuit of long-form storytelling has always been vital to his mission as well. He has raced a sled dog team, crawled into the dens of black bears, fished with the legendary Ted Williams, profiled astronaut Alan Shephard, and stood beneath a battleship before it was launched. He also once helped author Stephen King round up his pigs for market, but that story is for another day. Mel is author of Here in New England: Unforgettable Stories of People, Places, and Memories That Connect Us All (Earth Sky + Water LLC, 2025).

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