This Guy Is Running The Pan-Mass Challenge
Pan Mass Challenge image via Facebook
The annual Pan-Mass Challenge kicks off this weekend and more than 5,500 cyclists will ride up to 190-miles across the Commonwealth to raise money for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. The routes and exact milage over the two-day event vary, but the field looks a lot different this year. Adam Scully-Power, an ultramarathoner and father of four, will make history by running the cycling event. The Holy Cross graduate currently lives in Florida, but his employer is located in Boston. He’s running the course in tribute to the 2013 Boston Marathon victims.
Having a runner on the road is a first for the event and it will be the longest run (by 53 miles) of Scully-Power’s life. He took off this morning from Babson College in Wellesley and will finish in Provincetown, for a total of 163 miles. ESPN reports:
Scully-Power emailed Billy Starr, the founder and executive director of the PMC bike-a-thon, to suggest he do something that has never been done before: run the 163-mile cycling event that’s scheduled this year for Aug. 3 and 4, in honor of the runners and bystanders in Boston. Starr, who’d never had anyone propose running the event (though he’s had proposals from inline skaters and early 20th-century “High Wheeler” cyclists) was amenable.
Scully-Power’s on a different route than the cyclists, who depart Saturday and stop for dinner at night. By having a full day and evening head start, Scully-Power can finish the race with the cyclists on Sunday.
“Someone the other night was asking me, ‘How long do you think it’s going to take you?'” he said. “I said I have a number in my head, but I don’t really know. I said, ‘Let me ask you this: If it took me whatever, make up a number, 40 hours or it took me 50 hours, would you think any differently of it?’ She goes, ‘No.’ Then it really doesn’t matter. The goal is to finish and hit my fundraising goal.”
He’s set out to raise $25,000 for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
