Pedal Power

The first time Laura Packer finished the Pan-Massachusetts Challenge, tears sprang from her eyes.

It wasn’t the difficulty of the ride, though the two-day, 163-mile trek across the commonwealth was rigorous.

It wasn’t the physical or psychological pain, though both were profound and real that August day.

It was the realization that, in spite of herself, Packer had transformed from what she called “someone with cancer” – who had entered her training barely able to ride uphill – into a Cancer beater, with miles behind her to prove it.

“I got off my bike at the end and burst into tears. I went from being someone with cancer to being a cancer survivor, a cancer fighter,” she said. “I didn’t have to go through radiation, so I didn’t feel like I had the whole cancer experience. Ten years after I had cancer, it became really tangible.”

Packer was diagnosed 13 years ago with hemangio pericytoma, a rare cancer that evinced itself in a walnut-sized malignant tumor in the orbit of her left eye. It has a 40 percent rate of recurrence; if she develops another fast-growing tumor, she’ll almost certainly lose her vision.

That she got hemangio pericytoma at all is rare. It usually shows up in men, and is more common in the stomach. She only noticed something was wrong when her vision started to falter, blacking out on her left side when she looked up from her desk at work.

“I had no insurance at the time, but in three weeks I got a new job and got insurance and I went to the doctor. At that point, my eye was bulging out,” said Packer, who is a professional storyteller. “A CT scan and a blood test showed it.”

Then, a few years later, she met someone who rode the Pan-Mass Challenge, the highest-grossing athletic fundraising event in the nation, raising more than $171 million to date for the Jimmy Fund – making up nearly 50 percent of that charity’s annual revenue. Each year, the PMC donates 99 percent of all funds raised by riders and volunteers to the Jimmy Fund.

Packer is now one of the nearly 5,000 riders who participate each year, all of them required to raise between $1,000 and $3,600 depending on which of the nine routes they choose to ride.

“I was heavier than I am now (the first year), and pretty inactive, but I supported (my friend) financially,” said Packer, who then found herself buying a beginner’s quality hybrid bike and toying with the idea of training for the PMC. “I could barely ride five miles, but I liked being outside. Going to the gym was not even something I did. I thought it was something fit people did. But then I met more people in the riding community, and a lot of them did the PMC.”

It wasn’t long before she signed up.

“I kept hearing that all kinds ride the PMC,” said Packer. “When I signed up, my hands were shaking. I signed up and I burst into tears.”

That was six years ago; every year, she has done a tougher ride, getting fitter each time.

“The first time, I thought I was going to die. But I was really proud I finished,” she said. “It took eight hours, which is a respectable time. I’ve never been a fast rider.”

She commemorate her first ride with her first tattoo – a dragonfly overlaid on a bike wheel, etched onto her calf – easy to spot pedaling downward as she rides an upgraded road bike that she purchased to train for the PMC the second time around.

“I started riding with purpose when I signed up for the PMC, and I started thinking about what it meant to have cancer, which was really something,” she said. “It became very real. Having had cancer is a very small part of my life, and it doesn’t define me. But we as a mass were an important symbol to everyone.”

Each year, she rides not only as a survivor, but as a courier of the names of those who are still fighting – or who have lost the deadly tug of war with cancer. She carries their names scribbled on a sheet of lined paper and tucked into the back pocket of her bicycling shirt, so it can absorb the sweat and grit of the ride.

“I kept feeling it crinkling in the small of my back,” she said. Some of them are survivors, but so many of them are dead.”

Last year, there were more than 190 cancer survivors on the ride – and several times more than that lining the sides of the course, all the way from Provincetown to Bourne. Many hold signs and line up as early as 4:30 a.m. to cheer on dawn-chasing riders.

“Last year, it was every bit as powerful as the first,” Packer said. “I had made a difference in the world, and in myself.”

She’s beginning her fundraising now – earlier than in years past, but then the minimum has risen each year she’s participated. She’ll do a storytelling concert whose proceeds will benefit her PMC ride, but aside from that she’ll rely on the kindness of friends and strangers. 

She said the support she gets from strangers cheering along the ride route keeps her going and motivates her to get back on her bike each year.

“When I got there that first morning, I was scared and thought I couldn’t do it. I had no conception of the level of support I would receive,” she said in an interview last week, brushing a tear from the top of her cheek. “When you ride in the PMC, you’re changing the world.”

To learn more about Laura, visit her Web page, www.laurapacker.com. To donate to her campaign or to find out more about the Pan Mass Challenge, visit www.pmc.org and click on “PMC Profiles” to search for Packer’s personal page by last name.