While the idea of biking across the country for cancer research as a 20-year-old college student seems daunting, let’s clarify some things right off the bat. I am not a superhuman athlete. I am not a youth cycling prodigy. I am an incredibly ordinary person, who has quite a grudge against cancer and a very, very beautiful support system.
Cancer has run rampant through my family for generations. When my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer early on in my life, she fought it off as though it was just an ordinary illness. All these years later, she has yet to complain about the after-effects of chemotherapy a single time.
It took me a good while to realize such a strong history of cancer within your family tree isn’t normal. When I was in middle school, I remember my classmates being stunned that one of our teachers was a cancer survivor. When I told them about my mom, they were even more shocked.
As I grew older and more cancer cases and health issues popped up in my family, the dark reality of the disease began to weigh more and more on my mind. When I considered different majors to start my college application, I briefly thought about studying biology with an eventual goal of working in cancer research. My personal dislike for science classes in school quickly squashed that idea as I was more of a language arts kid, but I knew I would dedicate some portion of my life to helping fight the disease in some way.
Illini 4000 is a non-profit organization that has been completely student-run for 17 years. The group fundraises money each year for cancer research and patient support. A team of approximately 20-25 students bikes across the country each summer to document the American cancer experience.
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Being a local, I had heard about the organization through the University and seen the group’s journey documented on social media each summer. While I always thought the ride would be an incredible experience, I didn’t actually consider it until the summer of 2023, when I was bored enough to develop an obsession with the Tour de France and the world of ultra-endurance sports.
The organization was incredibly welcoming, which was helpful in preparing for such a huge task. Each member of the team was responsible for fundraising $4,000 before the beginning of the ride, which we did through bake sales, DJ shows, selling snacks along Green Street and reaching out to businesses for donations.
Going into the ride, I had a few expectations and a hope. I expected it to be very hard — which I wanted — and exhausting. I expected to see beautiful natural parks and things I had never seen before, living my whole life in central Illinois. I expected to learn more about the cancer experience from survivors outside of my family members. The one hope, which was truly the only hope, was to regain some faith in human kindness.
The 2024 Illini 4000 route took us everywhere throughout the United States. We hit hugely populated cities in the first few weeks, including our start point of New York City, Washington D.C., Columbus, Indianapolis and Chicago. Stretches in the Midwest and Northwest brought us to much more rural areas, as we rode through towns where our 18-person team increased their population by a significant percentage.
To me, the ride itself was analogous to the cancer experience. Our team had constant high highs and low lows, and we faced constant obstacles. We essentially had a summer filled with problem-solving exercise after problem-solving exercise, which forced us to work as an efficient team. On our first day leaving New York City, we had nine flat tires and biked through a complete downpour. We climbed mountains and then faced, at times, equally challenging descents on the other side. Waking up every day at 5 a.m. and choosing to get on a bike was a challenge in itself, not to mention the average 75 miles of riding every day.
But what drove us forward was what so many survivors, my mother included, shared. It is the force that guided their cancer experience: kindness. Day after day after day, I was continuously surprised by the amount of pure generosity we received from others. The number of people who let us sleep and shower in their homes, gave us a warm meal and felt comfortable opening up about their cancer experiences with us, was incredible. Wherever we found ourselves throughout the country, from the biggest city to the smallest farm town, there was always, without fail, someone who was willing to be kind.
This generosity wasn’t limited to the wide variety of strangers we met but was felt within our team too. Like I said about myself at the beginning, our team is not made up of superhuman athletes. Many of us have an athletic background — cross country and track runners, swimmers, soccer players, even a boxer — but only one or two of us actually came into the ride as cyclists. We are all incredibly different people; the only thing we have in common is quite possibly the fact that we were all crazy enough to sign up for this.
Despite the differences we brought to the group, our diverse team somehow always managed to be stronger together. We recognized our specialties and referred to those who were stronger in their respective areas. We felt comfortable being vulnerable around each other and shared our family experiences with cancer openly. We openly loved one another and showed gratitude, which is so often discouraged among people our age.
As I am writing this, we are less than 24 hours away from crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, which will officially mark the end of our ride. A cross-country bike trip gifted me many things, one of them being the coolest possible answer to the upcoming first-day icebreaker question: “What’s one interesting thing you did this summer?”
But ultimately, it gave me the greatest reassurance I ever could have hoped for: There will always be good people. Wherever you look, people are always willing to be kind. The many cancer survivors we spoke with have stood by this as their saving grace. While it seems like a very simple discovery to make, in such a divided world, this was the best thing I could have hoped to discover. Biking across a country is a daunting task, but is immeasurably easier when you have the most beautiful people at your side.
