Lynbrook man to bike more than 300 miles for cancer research

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Steven Muller has been biking for two to four hours every Saturday and Sunday since April and will continue to do so through the first weekend in August. “I like the sense of achievement from the distances you can travel or the hills you can climb, the freedom of the road and seeing and smelling all that you pass at a speed that you can take it all in,” he said.

But Muller does not ride every weekend solely for a sense of enjoyment. He is training for the Pan-Mass Challenge, a two-day and 192-mile bike ride from Sturbridge, Mass. to Provincetown. The endurance challenge raises money for the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, a cancer research center in Boston.

For Muller, the issue is personal. He lost his brother-in-law, Bob Foy, his mother-in-law, Barbara Hannon, and father-in law, Larry Hannon, to cancer in 2010. Shortly after their deaths, he started participating in the Pan-Mass Challenge after he heard about it from his wife’s cousin, Joe Tack. “I guess I can say I do it because I find it’s a way to give back,” Muller said, adding that there are many people who are unable to ride their bikes for charity.

Muller’s team captain, Matt Dillis, lives in Boston and also started participating in the event because he lost someone to cancer. He started riding in 2001 in memory of his friend, Joe Giovinazzo, who died from T-cell lymphoma. That first year, Dillis said, he did not have the proper bicycling equipment and was in a bad mood because he kept thinking about his friend who had died. But he recalled that his mood soon changed as he continued his ride. “I remember coming over the hill and there was a mother and father who had lost a child to cancer,” Dillis said, fighting tears.

Dillis also saw people pedaling with only one leg because they lost their other leg to illness and a father who was riding a bike that belonged to his son, who was in treatment during the challenge. “It’s an incredible flood of emotions,” he said.

Five years later, he created the team Forza-G in memory of Giovinazzo. Dillis said that because nobody was able to pronounce Giovinazzo properly, most people called his friend Joe G. That inspired the name Forza-G, which is Italian for G-force to honor Giovinazzo’s Italian heritage. “It was going to be G-force, but the Lithuanian guy said ‘Why don’t we make it more Italian sounding?” Dillis recounted, referring to himself.

Dillis also decided to take the challenge further, and make it a true Pan-Massachusetts trek. “We kind of thought if you’re going to call it a Pan-Mass Challenge, you should go all the way.”

For that reason, the bike riders start riding one day earlier in Lennox, Mass., near the state’s border with New York. That extra trip adds another 100 miles to the challenge, and incentivizes people to donate more. “If 200 miles in two days doesn’t get you to donate, how about 300 miles in three days?” Dillis said.

In fact, Dillis said he considers the fundraising to be the hardest part of the challenge. Each participant this year had to raise $4,800 to ride both days. But the team members help each other out and offer advice to their teammates on how to fundraise. “We take it very seriously, but we don’t leave people out there to do it on their own,” Dillis said.

Last year, Forza-G, raised over $536,418 for the institute, and this year they are on track to raise more than $3 million. Muller raised $5,055 himself last year. Typically, Muller said, the challenge raises about $50 million for cancer research. “I truly believe that the funds raised through events like this are helping to find and fund new therapies for treatment,” Muller wrote on his fundraising website, “and hopefully one day a CURE!”

To donate to Muller’s ride, visit http://profile.pmc.org/SM0358.