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Brett's ride rolls on

Event raises money for cancer research

Ragan Robinson | Hickory Daily Record

Jessica Lineburg (left) and Kida Robinson, both 17, ring cowbells and cheer for a cyclist nearing the end of the Brett’s Ride for Rhabdo 10-mile loop on Sunday. Riders raised money for cancer research in the 10-, 32-, 52- and 72-mile rides that began and ended at the Hickory Foundation YMCA.

By Ragan Robinson | Hickory Daily Record

Published: October 5, 2009

HICKORY - Sweet and sad mingled Sunday at Brett's Ride for Rhabdo.

The sweet was in the whirring wheels of bicycles. It was in gliding riders, some with training wheels, others with gray hair peeking from under helmets. It was in the thrill of air rushing by red faces and in pedals pumping with the exhilaration of a morning bike ride, the easy joy reserved in too large a part for untroubled childhood.

The sad was in the name they wore on bright green and soft yellow T-shirts: Brett.

Brett's Ride for Rhabdo, now in its sixth year at the Hickory Foundation YMCA, honors the memory of Brett Gosnell. The Hickory man was 20, not many years beyond those carefree childhood days of training wheels and 10-speeds, when he died from rhabdomyosarcoma. It is a cancerous tumor that originates in the body's soft tissue and affects 2- to 20-year-olds.

The sweet and sad was in Mary Ann Gosnell, Brett's mother, as she stood in a swarm of shirts emblazoned with her boy's name. She blinked and did not the let tears fall as she talked about Brett, how he loved Lance Armstrong, how he always kept up with the Tour de France and how he rode in the first ride named for him in 2004.

She had not expected as many riders this year as in the past, given soaring unemployment and economic uncertainty throughout the region.

"But we've done just as well if not better than in the past," she said.

The money riders pay to register for Brett's ride — $10 for children on the Tot Ride and $25 to $30 for adults on 10-, 32-, 52- and 75-mile rides — goes toward pediatric cancer research.

Last year's event raised more than $100,000, said Jim Powers, the ride director. The hope is to give more this year, when donations are split between Brenner Children's Hospital in Winston-Salem and Levine Children's Hospital in Charlotte, both part of a childhood cancer research network.

Gosnell said more than 1,400 people registered to ride Sunday.

And as the first stream of cyclists hitting the finish line slowed, rider No. 1 came down the street to cheers and cowbells and applause.

In 2004, Brett Gosnell wore the No. 1. Since then, the number has gone to a rider who embodies the spirit of the event.

This year, it was Allen Bowman, an 18-year-old survivor of rhabdomyosarcoma. He finished his last chemotherapy treatment Monday, and then climbed on a bike to make the 10-mile run Sunday.

A couple of hills were pretty tough for Bowman, a Newton resident who lost 30 pounds during chemo and hadn't ridden a bicycle since before his diagnosis in July 2008.

He never thought about quitting. He had to finish, he said, "for Brett and for everybody out here."