Weekly Rides with Team PHAT Tuesday

What’s known as Mardi Gras for most, with a parade of floats, beads, masquerades and bright colors, has a completely different meaning, and spelling, in the PMC world.

Every Tuesday evening a parade of 30 cyclists, known as PHAT Tuesday, can be seen hitting the road for their weekly training ride, clocking in 25 miles in preparation for PMC weekend. While there’s no bead throwing and shirts remain on at all times, it’s a tradition that Tim Brightman, of Franklin, Mass. has come to look forward to every PMC season. He describes the bike-a-thon as a rolling party, meeting old friends and new along the route, while helping others.

Since PHAT Tuesday’s inception in 2001, members of the team have come together from towns in the Greater MetroWest area of Massachusetts as well as Georgia, Virginia, Florida, North Carolina and Colorado. Some of the team’s cyclists are cancer survivors or are currently battling the disease. Others represent family and friends of loved ones affected by cancer who wish to ride and raise money in their honor. All have grown to become a family that supports each other through good times and bad as they continue to pedal miles together to make a difference in the cancer fighting community.

“Team PHAT Tuesday is a group that is bound together for a common cause that is dear to our hearts,” says Brightman. “We come from different walks of life with varying personal and professional backgrounds, busy schedules and growing families, but we make time to participate in this event that has become an adopted way of life for the majority of us.”

Brightman is a 26-year PMC cyclist and team captain of PHAT Tuesday. He participates in the annual bike-a-thon along with his brother Mark in honor of their late brother and best friend, Steve, who succumbed to cancer November 23, 1986, one month shy of his 36th birthday.

“When my brother Steve was battling cancer, he visited Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and was inspired by the children he saw at the Jimmy Fund Clinic in treatment,” says Brightman. “He told our mother he wished he could do something to help those children. I ride to fulfill my brother’s wish.” Steve lost his life to melanoma a few months after his visit to DFCI.

PHAT Tuesday annually participates in the PMC Pedal Partner program and is matched with a pediatric cancer patient being treated at the Jimmy Fund Clinic. This year, PHAT Tuesday was matched with a three-year-old boy named Alex who was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia when he was one. This spring, members of the team cycled from Franklin to Webster to meet Alex and his mother and brother. Alex will finish treatment this December.

“It is an honor for PHAT Tuesday to be a part of the PMC Pedal Partner program,” says Brightman. “To see the faces of the children and their families who are able to receive new and advanced treatments because of the funds raised by the PMC is the reason we all saddle up and ride every August.”

In 2013, PHAT Tuesday raised more than $324,000 for the cause, bringing the team’s overall PMC contribution to more than $1.7 million. Next year, the team hopes to increase its fundraising dollars as well as secure a corporate sponsor. Until then, members of the team will continue to meet on Tuesdays for their weekly ride and conversation. All riders are welcomed to join. To read more about PHAT Tuesday at www.phattuesday.org.

The 35th annual Pan-Mass Challenge is set for Aug. 2 and 3, 2014. Online registration opens Jan. 1