dan emery
Joined: 11 Jan 2004
Posts: 6897
Location: Maine4/6/13 7:45 AM |
Great Cycling Movie
Last night I attended the "World Premier" of the documentary "Peleton Project," an amazing movie about an amazing ride. It is more about cancer support than riding, but has plenty of both. It chronicles a ride that 30 some riders from Calgary did last year, riding to Lewiston, Maine in 10 days to the Dempsey Challenge. There is a similar ride every year, to a cancer benefit ride (they've ridden to Austin twice for Livestrong, for example).
They ride in relay with 5 teams of 6 or 7 riders, each team riding a 6 hour shift targeted at 90 miles. There are four vans so one team is on the road with the other 4 in vans sleeping, eating, recovering, etc. So I guess it's more or less like riding 8 centuries in 10 days. All the riders are connected with people with cancer and survivors. It is a pretty unflinching documentary, showing the difficult parts of the ride (a crash, injury, two guys getting sick) as well as very honest talks with people with cancer and their families. Patrick Dempsey is executive producer and narrates, but does not appear in the movie.
So the movie finishes last night at the Franco-American Heritage Center in Lewiston, and then walk out all (except 1) of the damn riders from Calgary! To me that is quite a statement of the power of this cause and this type event. I got to talk with some of the riders, and amazingly this is something they do without major sponsors, they just raise the $ themselves ($10k per rider fundraising commitment) and do it. It started when a guy with testicular cancer was in the hospital, Lance visited, and the guy decided to ride Livestrong. The next year he decided to ride to Livestrong, and it grew from there.
I've thought about linking cycling with cancer support activities. This shows where there's a will there's a way, I guess. And hats off to these Canadians.
I believe this movie will be shown by cancer support groups. I recommend it.
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