Texas 4000 for Cancer: The World’s Longest Charity Bike Ride, Part 2

Intro: [00:00:00] We are a resource for learners, including every member of the Livestrong Cancer Institute’s on track educational pipeline from middle school to residency. We are a growing collection of interviews, talks, and experiences that uncover the myths and the uncertainties of cancer and careers in cancer in order to empower and inspire.

Generations of thinkers and leaders. This is Cancer Uncovered, an education and empowerment podcast by the Livestrong Cancer Institutes.

Laura Pavitt: Hi everyone. And welcome back to Cancer Uncovered. My name is Laura Paveit. I know you’ve probably heard my voice on the last few episodes. I am a prior employee at the Livestrong Cancer Institutes, and I’ve been helping out with editing and [00:01:00] producing the podcast. As usual, Kristen Wynn, Program Manager at the LCI, will be conducting the interview for this episode.

Today we’ll be diving into part two of our two part episode series about Texas 4000 for Cancer, the longest annual charity bike ride from Austin, Texas to Anchorage, Alaska. If you did not have a chance to listen to part one, click here to watch part two. I recommend it because it really covers the basics of the Texas 4000 program, including their mission, the ride routes and logistics, and more about its leadership development component.

In part two of this series, we will be talking with three more students, one of whom is an alum of UT Austin and has already completed the ride. We will get into pre ride lessons, post ride takeaways, and we’ll hear about the very personal and moving reasons for why these [00:02:00] students decided to join the program and ride their bikes over 4, 000 miles from Austin to Alaska.

I hope you enjoy.

Kristen Wynn: So first I’m going to have you all introduce yourselves, the year you are in school and what you’re studying or what you’re doing now. And then where you’re from and your Texas 4000 route, which I understand you just found out, so I’m excited to hear. How this is going to go. Okay, I’m going to have Belle go first.

Okay.

Belle Marley: Hi, my name is Belle Marley. I was on the 2022 Sierra route and on the route I was also a ride director. I’m originally from Austin, Texas. I recently graduated from UT in May of 2023 with a Bachelor of Science in public health. I’m now currently on a gap year, but I will be starting to get my master’s of science and anesthesia with Case Western Reserve University in May of this year to ultimately become a certified [00:03:00] anesthesiologist assistant.

Yay. And you started in May? Yes. Yeah. All right. So

Kristen Wynn: pretty soon. Nice. Okay.

Carmen Capitani: Sure. I’m Carmen Capitani and I’m a junior in College at UT and I’m studying psychology with minors in sociology and Italian I’m actually from Austin. I’m lucky enough to go to UT and I just found out that I’m going to be riding the Rockies route

Kristen Wynn: Nice.

Congratulations.

Belle Marley: Thank you. I’m so excited.

Yes. Josh.

Josh Bedingfield: Hey guys. My name’s Josh Beddingfield. I’m a junior, uh, here at UT studying public relations. I’m from Boston, Massachusetts, but I also lived in Alabama and Virginia. So yeah, I’m on the Ozarks 2024 route, so excited to do that this summer.

Kristen Wynn: Awesome. Okay. So we’ve got Rockies.

We’ve got Ozarks. And [00:04:00] Belle, you are? I was

on Sierra.

Kristen Wynn: You’re Sierra. This is perfect. We have the trifecta. Um, could I please have, and you all can decide how to start this, uh, brief versions, maybe nutshell versions of your why I ride? Sure.

Belle Marley: Yeah. Awesome. I ride primarily for my mom, Dana Marley. She was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer.

In the summer of 2020 and unfortunately, she passed, um, in the winter of 2021 and a month later, I started riding the bike and preparing for the ride, which was a really crazy experience, but, um, losing her was was really difficult. As one of the first things she told me after she got diagnosed was, I’m so sorry, I didn’t get screened sooner.

Um, unfortunately, she got diagnosed when she was 59 years old and had never previously gotten a colonoscopy before. And, you know, I, we now [00:05:00] know, and we’ve, we’ve known that, um, having those sort of preventative measures often prevents cancer from getting to that, to that stage, especially with, uh, lifestyle cancers such as colon cancer.

Kristen Wynn: Yeah, thank you for sharing that.

Carmen Capitani: Ride for primarily my cousin, Wyatt Pope, who had small desmoplastic round cell tumor, which is extremely rare. I think there were at the time three cases in the United States. So it took us all by shock and he was six at the time of diagnosis and he passed at 13. So we had a long stretch of, um, a really hard time for our family.

And I ride in his memory. He was. He was. The coolest and the happiest and just such a rock star kid. Yeah. Um, in addition, my, my grandma, she passed nine years ago, like two days, the anniversary was two days ago. Wow. And she was just also like, a ball of sunshine. Um, I’m the [00:06:00] oldest grandchild, so we had, we had a really special connection and I, I miss her so much and I think about her every single day.

Yeah. So to be able to honor those two in my family is really, really special to me and I’m grateful.

Kristen Wynn: That’s awesome. Thank you for sharing that. Josh?

Josh Bedingfield: Yeah. So I ride primarily for my sister, Katie Bedingfield, who was diagnosed with Uh, brain cancer, uh, a little over five years ago, this is October of twenty eighteen.

She was twenty years old when she was diagnosed and I was, I was sixteen. And yeah, uh, through a bunch of ups and downs, trials, uh, she passed away about two and a half years later. And, uh, That was July of 2021 and I started on T4K about a year after that.

Kristen Wynn: Wow. [00:07:00] Okay. Thank you for sharing that. Wow.

Josh Bedingfield: Yeah.

Kristen Wynn: Those are beautiful reasons to ride. Can you all tell us more about your personal ties to the main pillars or the values of Texas 4000? So we talked about this in a bit in the first recording, but hope, charity, and knowledge.

Belle Marley: Um, yeah, based off of my experience, I mostly ride for knowledge. My mom, you know, she wasn’t a smoker.

She didn’t drink. She maintained a healthy weight her entire life. And yet, She still was diagnosed with late stage cancer. And, you know, had she had the knowledge that screening services were so important, I do believe that she would still be with us today. So a big part of why I ride and the message that I was spreading when I was on the ride.

Was how important it is to access, um, you know, preventative care services and just the knowledge of what is out [00:08:00] there. You know, many people just think of mammograms, but it’s also important to get your colonoscopies and know what age you should start getting those services and know your family history with cancer.

And so I really ride for spreading knowledge around cancer and how it can be prevented.

Kristen Wynn: Awesome.

Josh Bedingfield: Yeah, I would definitely say Hope. I think that’s the one I resonate with and value the most. So, with my sister, she was, in terms of like brain cancers, they usually rate it out of a grade, and grade has to do with aggressiveness, and it’s out of 4.

And when she was 20, she was diagnosed with a grade 4 out of 4 brain tumor. And Intentionally for my parents and my family, like I wasn’t, I wasn’t told that she had a six month life diagnosis. Uh, and it was, yeah, I think honestly intentional and a good thing that I didn’t know. [00:09:00] And what it did was inspired a lot of hope from my sister, like to be able to just like forget about it and be like, I’m hopeful that I’m going to beat this or like, I’m going to live a good life with cancer.

And it really worked, honestly. Uh, and I think, again, like, you know, she had a six month diagnosis, survived two and a half years.

Kristen Wynn: Wow.

Josh Bedingfield: And I think Hope really inspired that. So, I think for, for everyone, cancer is, it’s really important to have hope and to believe you can beat it. Believe you can live with it.

I, I think that just has so much to do with, with outcomes.

Kristen Wynn: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Thank you.

Carmen Capitani: I certainly also resonate with hope. I think it keeps the fight alive and it’s so important for not only the person going through cancer, but their community surrounding and supporting them to believe that they can all get [00:10:00] through it.

I think it played a large part of Wyatt surviving for as long as he did. Um, he was also given, um, God, like maybe max a year max. And he lived for seven. So, um, there were ups and downs too, but we, if the Capitanese can do one thing, it’s, um, like gather around and be hopeful together and cheer each other on.

But I also really ride for charity. I identify a lot with it because my family, the Popes would not have been able to it. Get through their battle with cancer without all of the services that were able to be provided Um stayed at the Ronald McDonald house. They benefited a lot from Community assistance and it was beautiful what people were able to come together and do for Wyatt.

Kristen Wynn: Yeah. Yeah for sure

Maybe we can kind of jump into that now, based on kind of Carmen saying your family [00:11:00] really benefited from these services, right? And you can’t really get through cancer without some of these community support services. Can you all maybe expand on that? Because I think that’s really important and something that our listeners who.

Our teenagers or young adults who are like, I’m going to med school. I’m going to be a doctor. I’m going to cure cancer. That’s all beautiful. We hope you do that. But also, like, maybe it’s that you’re not going to be an MD because, you know, You know, you’re scared of needles, which is me. So like you have to go out and go do something else, right?

Like there are these ways to support people other than going to seven years of med school, right? So can you talk more about the importance of these services? Maybe how they’ve impacted each of your experiences?

Josh Bedingfield: Sure. Yeah. Um, I think one of the biggest things that I’ve learned while being in Texas 4000 is the importance of support services [00:12:00] as opposed to research and the main differences between those two.

And also how much, where you live, like how you live, your diet, everything has to do with if you get cancer or what happens when you do get cancer and how the quality of your, your, your care. I mean, to tie it back to my story, like my sister’s story, it’s, we, we lived 20 minutes away from downtown Boston, which is, which is a

Kristen Wynn: medical epicenter.

Josh Bedingfield: Mass General is where we went to.

Kristen Wynn: Yeah.

Josh Bedingfield: And that is the Harvard connected. And like, that was extremely, we were just like so lucky for that to happen. And they had like a brain cancer of specific floor, which is just like so rare. So just to that point, if we had lived anywhere else, we would have had to move.

I think that’s just so important to remember. And it’s not just the [00:13:00] care. It’s like also everything that comes with care. Like you mentioned the model McDonald house. Yeah, I think it could even be just like a ride to the hospital like people need that Nutrition advice on nutrition, you know?

Kristen Wynn: Yeah. Do you live in a food desert?

Like what’s available to you? Yeah,

Josh Bedingfield: a hundred percent.

Kristen Wynn: Yeah.

Carmen Capitani: Yeah. I was just about to say that like every little bit counts, especially when you’re in such a dire situation with such little resources. Yeah. And availability. It was a really hard time for our family and we had to pull together a lot of different resources to be able to make that happen.

But it, um. It took an immense effort to make sure that Wyatt was going to be receiving the care that he deserved. And not everybody is even that lucky. Um, they, they live in food deserts. They don’t have access to medical screenings that are life saving. They don’t have access to education that would help them lead the kinds of lives that would allow them to live [00:14:00] healthily.

Kristen Wynn: Right.

Carmen Capitani: It’s, there’s so many barriers that preventative care can step in and take care of and help hurdle. Um, and beyond that. The assistance that can go towards families battling cancer is so much more than medical or even so much more like you were saying, you don’t need a medical degree to help the fight.

So people really underestimate and undervalue the care that comes from next door or down the street.

Belle Marley: Yeah, for sure. And, uh, yeah, something I have to add to that and kind of going off of what Josh was talking about the difference between and support services. So Texas 4000 as an organization, we, you know, donate to both cancer research and cancer support services.

Um, but research is highly expensive and it takes years and so much manpower and while Texas 4000 has been able to help donate to get those seed grants started. [00:15:00] We’ve done so much when we donate to support services. They allow people to have dignity in the fight. Um, one that really stands out is that I believe that we helped patients at a cancer care facility in Kentucky Get cold cap therapy, which allows them to keep their hair.

And so, you know, people might not think about that or they might think that’s not absolutely necessary for them to live, but it’s, it’s not just about living with cancer. It’s about trying to thrive with cancer and maintain that sense of normalcy and that sense of self. And so to me, our money goes so much further when we donate to support services, even though it’s not going to be that magic, you know, miracle drug.

Kristen Wynn: Absolutely, and I think cancer research is very forward, like you’re looking like 20 years in the future, right? Support services is what can I do today? Yeah, exactly. So having both of those Pieces that you [00:16:00] fundraise for is really important because we can’t do it without the research for sure. The research is important.

Um, okay, cool. So, let’s talk about pre ride training experience. Carmen and Josh, you’re in it. You’re in it right now. Before we started recording this, you were talking about how life is looking very different than it even did a month ago, right? Because like, training is getting intense.

Carmen Capitani: Yeah, um, I, I grew up doing sports and I considered myself pretty athletic.

I grew up diving, um, which is just a really different skill set than biking. So I, I kind of had this pseudo confidence coming up to Texas 4000 and I thought I would be able to just, Get in the saddle and take off. But that learning curve was steep learning curve was much steeper than I expected. I remember when we were learning how to [00:17:00] clip in, I was almost being puppy guarded.

I was up against a fence and people were already joking about how many times I had fallen and no, like I, I shook it off and I laughed, but after you fall, like 12 times in one day, it kind of gets to you and for some reason it took, took me a while, everyone knew before me that I wasn’t super coordinated.

So it, um, it only put a fire in me to really, there was nothing I could do, but get better, you know? And I think it was such a good learning experience for me to. walk into something that I was terrible at and work at it every single day. I still like, I, I’ll admit I took a fall yesterday, but, but it had been the first one in months.

Um, and I was just, what really happened is I lost my balance just standing over the bike. So it’s more common than you [00:18:00] think.

Kristen Wynn: Sorry, I’m laughing. I should not.

Carmen Capitani: No, please laugh. Like I, it was such a learning experience. I’ve learned more about overcoming shame than I expected to, or even thought was possible.

I am now able to laugh at myself. I’m able to take falls like how they should be. They’re just, they’re just falls. And it doesn’t mean that I’m not a good rider and it doesn’t mean that I’m not strong. And I’m really grateful that I was able to try something new and stick with it because I’ve got to, to fight cancer in the way that I want to.

Josh Bedingfield: Um, my impression of cycling before this was like basically like suburban men with their half to three quarters life crisis, like, I got to get out of bike and like wearing tights and like the Jersey and like, you know, and like my dad did that. Uh, My whole [00:19:00] family, we used to just, like, kind of make fun of him for doing the bike stuff.

Like, especially with just, like, Yeah, all the equipment and stuff. Yeah, the getup’s weird. It was just, yeah. It is. The getup. It’s an awkward getup. It’s a real awkward look. But, yeah, I mean, I feel like it’s been really cool to just, like, accept that and make it not dorky. Yeah. And, like, I don’t know. People in Texas 4000 are not your average cyclists, and I think that’s a really cool part of the organization.

Carmen Capitani: Sometimes I feel like I’m putting on my biking costume.

Kristen Wynn: Yes!

Carmen Capitani: Like with the straps and my bib, I feel like I’m like pretending to be a superhero almost. But it took a while to get used to the dorkiness of it. Like I had to take myself a lot less seriously.

Josh Bedingfield: Yeah.

Kristen Wynn: I feel like it’s full circle, Josh, too, that you were like, really giving your dad a hard time about the cycling, you know, you’re doing it.

I mean, talk about [00:20:00] humbling moments, right? And all of this and in our first conversation that we had a week ago, um, I, some of these same themes came up to me. These are like incredible life lessons, right? If this isn’t a metaphor, or. Like, I don’t know what is, but you’re falling down. You’re picking yourself back up.

You’re humbling yourself. You’re trying something new, right? Like you’re sort of eating your words as you put on the lycra, like your dad, you know what I mean? Like, so I think it’s, there’s so much that’s like just naturally instilled in what you all are doing. And to me, like just stepping back as an outsider, what a fantastic opportunity sort of from top to bottom of the metaphor here, but also all of the moving pieces that it takes to pull this off.

You have to work as a team, you have to be honest with each other. You’re on this really beautiful mission to help people. So I just, I love anytime I get to enter, interact with Texas 4, 000, it’s so [00:21:00] beautiful to me. So. post rag takeaways, Belle. What else can you, can you offer the people sitting across the table from you, but also our listeners?

Belle Marley: Yeah,

the most surprising thing to me was the Like, having people just like, come up to me. But I remember on like, day two, it was our first rest stop of the day. And you know, I was sitting there putting some peanut butter on bread. And this guy just like, locks eyes with me and starts walking up to me. And I’m like, oh gosh, like what’s about to happen?

And he’s like, hey, I love what you’re doing. Here’s 20. And I was just like, oh my gosh, like, this is what it’s going to be like. This is what the next 70 days is going to be. And like, I am now this, I’m not just, I’m not just Belle. I was. More than just myself, and like, the takeaway from that is that once I got on the ride, it was no longer about me sharing my story.

What I became, and what you guys are gonna become, and what people have been for the past 20 years in this [00:22:00] organization, is that person that’s willing to listen. Because even though we can talk about cancer till the cows come home and it’s become something that’s so normal for us, it’s not normal for other people to talk about it.

So being able to stand there and just listen and hear that story that might have not been told yet because no one was there to listen was so important and was so valuable. Because in reality, the biking is arbitrary. The 4, 000 miles are arbitrary. Austin to Alaska is arbitrary. We could be doing cartwheels to, to New York city and it would still serve the same purpose.

It’s about the people more than anything.

Kristen Wynn: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. I want to say too, that I think I’m always blown away by, you just lost someone to cancer. And you’re like, you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to get on a bike and I’m going to help other people. Like, I think that in and of itself tells me [00:23:00] and tells the world like something very special about you.

So I think. To say, like, I’m experiencing this horrendous loss, this loss that makes no sense, right? And most people would, like, I don’t know, like, go into a hole, and, and not, I can’t imagine. Like, there’s no part of me that would be like, you know what? I’m gonna, I’m gonna get on a bike, and I’m gonna go to Alaska.

Because I just lost my mom or I just lost my sister. Like, I think, um, I’m really moved by that alone. And Belle, you are walking into a career in healthcare. How do you think Texas 4000 has impacted those decisions and how, can you talk maybe about how You’ll carry this with you into your work in anesthesiology.

Belle Marley: Yeah, absolutely. I think that there are so many mirrors to my experience in Texas 4, 000 and my future experiences in healthcare, [00:24:00] just like we say, it might be day 46 for you, but it’s day one for the person you’re interacting with, that’s how I hope to view patient interactions. It might be, you know, my, my third 10 hour shift of that week, but it’s.

That day that they’re getting surgery and they’ve never been in this in this environment before they’ve never been this vulnerable I mean when you get surgery you’re naked on a table You’re getting cut open and like I’m the girl that just walked in and like hey I’m gonna help make sure that like your hemodynamic stability is great and you’re well oxygenated and all of that To me, it’s just like, they have such history and their entire story is just years and years.

I have to walk in to every, you know, situation, every interaction with this immense level of gratitude for the vulnerability that someone is sharing with me and also with the idea that, you know, this might be a normal day for me, but it is not for [00:25:00] them. And, and I have to be so cognizant of that. And so sensitive to that.

Um, and I think, you know, Texas 4, 000 taught me that where it’s, it’s not just about that moment, it’s about the past, the present, the future, all of that, and all of that context. And so I think just overall, it’s given me this level of thoughtfulness in my interactions with people. And that is what I hope to bring in to my career and my attitude, the way I come across as a provider.

Kristen Wynn: Yeah.

Oh, it’s okay.

Kristen Wynn: Love that. Thank you. What have we not. covered that our audience should for sure hear. I’m looking to, like, everybody here. While I have you all at the table.

Laura Pavitt: Did y’all go over, like, what a day on the ride is like? No, because we don’t know.

Kristen Wynn: Give us a day! Give us a day!

Belle Marley: Alright, a day in the life of the ride.

So, you know, ideally, you’re waking up at [00:26:00] around 6am. You. Tear down your tent, you shove some oatmeal in your mouth, even though oatmeal is the last thing that you want to eat in the morning because you’ve been eating it the morning before that, and the morning before that, and the morning before that. But you know, once you’ve had breakfast, you’ve filled up your water bottles, and you made sure your bike was in working order, you get on the road.

You know, we would do our first 20 mile segment, and some days, the first couple of days of the ride, it was Texas, desert, and then it became Arizona desert, and New Mexico desert, and a lot of desert, and then, then we saw the ocean, and then it was the, the forest of Northern California, and every day was, every turn, essentially, was a new adventure.

biome, but we would do the rest stops every 20 miles. And those rest stops were yes, time to rest and drink water and eat. But it was also some of those key times where you got to interact with people. I remember having rest stops in Canada where we would, we would pull into gas stations. Cause that’s like quite literally the only [00:27:00] thing that is in Canada.

Once you get north of Whistler, it’s just like a gas station, every 100 miles. And a lot of times you would be interacting with, Um, indigenous populations in Canada, and they would be, they were so kind and they would warn us that they’re like, your data, your service is about to cut out for like the next five days or so and be like, Oh, that’s fantastic.

Awesome. And so it was, you know, those rest stops were so key for like yourself, but also interacting with people and, you know, getting to spread the mission of Texas 4, 000. Um, you would rinse and repeat the ride 20 miles rest stop for about 80 to a hundred miles, and then. If you’re camping again, set up tents, cook dinner, hopefully we had gotten some food donated that day.

But if we weren’t camping, then we were staying with a host family, which was some of the most beautiful moments because you would be, you kind of segmented into smaller groups of about five or six and spread among houses within like a neighborhood or a city. And those were [00:28:00] some really great nights because oftentimes those are people that had hosts Years prior and so they would tell you the stories of previous routes and they would talk about their own experiences with cancer And you had that little sense of home, even though you were thousands of miles away from from where you call home And and yeah, every day was different, but also every day was kind of the same because Life became, becomes so simple when you’re on the ride because your whole goal is to just get from point A to point B.

And that’s all you really have to care about. So it gives you so much time to really pay attention to the people around you, which was beautiful. And there were definitely days where, especially in Canada, that was like the biggest test of mental toughness. And there were definitely days where, especially in Canada, that was like the biggest test of mental toughness.

Because at that point you have been riding for 55 days and you look at your GPS and it says, turn left out of, you know, reside in [00:29:00] junction campground, continue straight for 99 miles. And you’re just like, Oh my gosh, like I’m going to be on the same road for 99 miles. I haven’t been able to charge my phone or my speaker for three days, so I have no music.

So it’s me and these people around me for the next eight hours or so. And you just get talking and you start getting to know your teammates, even though you thought you knew everything about them. Um, so that was a test of mental toughness of just being able to. Sit with the uncomfortableness of being on the bike and being on the same road for 99 miles.

But then there were also days where it was the exact opposite and you were trying to navigate downtown LA when there’s like 18 wheelers with the shipping containers on the back of them. And you’re just like, Oh my gosh, like I am an aunt, like I have an aunt in this city. It’s a giant city and these roads don’t make any sense and like you just get so frustrated and then you find out that you made the wrong right turn and so there’s going to be struggles [00:30:00] every single day, whether it be immense boredom or immense overstimulation, but I think you guys are getting, you’re being introduced to new routes every week.

You’re getting a new Saturday ride where you’re going to face new challenges and that’s just a little taste of what you’re about to experience. But, you’ll be surprised at how quickly it becomes normal, and how quickly you become This sounds so dumb, but you become one with the road, and you are literally just like, It’s just a road.

So, with everything in Texas 4000, it’s weird at first, and then it becomes your new normal. Yeah, you’re gonna You’re going to love it, and then you’re going to hate it, and then you’re going to miss it. And that is how it’s going to go. Probably.

Laura Pavitt: Thank you to Carmen Capitani, Bill Marley, and Josh Beddingfield for sharing their stories with us, their wisdom with us, their time with us.

We really appreciate you all giving our listeners that example of How to make an impact on cancer [00:31:00] care, even in small ways. Um, that’s one thing that I love about this podcast is just that we get to hear from such a variety of people about how there’s not just one way to make an impact and you can really use your own strengths and interests as a way to guide you in how to get involved in cancer care.

And in healthcare in general, you can find out more about Texas 4,000 for cancer and its riders@texasfourthousand.org, and you can help support the Texas 4,000 Mission at Texas four thousand.org/donate. If you have questions for us or if you have other topics that we can uncover, please email us at Livestrong Cancer Institutes at delm med u texas.edu and make sure institutes is plural.

You can find out more about the Livestrong Cancer Institutes at delmed. utexas. edu and about the Livestrong Cancer Institutes Clinic [00:32:00] at uthealthaustin. org. If you enjoyed this episode, please make sure to subscribe and once again, thank you for listening. We will see you next month.