Wheels in motion for cycling challenge.
Five hundred miles in one month. That's the goal.
It’s not a race. It’s not a test. It’s just a challenge for Waukesha North High School volleyball coach Jeff Freitag.
The 51-year old is attempting to bike 500 miles this month to support the Great Cycle Challenge, a monthlong national fundraising effort that benefits The Children’s Cancer Research Fund.
This year, 30,000 cyclists across the country plan to pedal more than 3 million miles and raise more than $4 million to fund childhood cancer research.
The intent is to get donors to pledge donations for every mile and right now Freitag is the top fundraiser in the state.
And that sounds good to Freitag because he can’t imagine going through cancer treatment as a kid. It has been bad enough as an adult.
Six years ago, Freitag finally stopped ignoring the large lump he could feel just in front of his left ear and got it checked out. The biopsy was negative for cancer.
But he was given the option to have the 4-centimeter tumor removed anyway.
“Get it done,” he told the doctors, because he was tired of the throbbing pain he felt that prevented him from getting sleep.
The surgical removal of the tumor revealed that it was adenoid cystic carcinoma.
He needed seven weeks of radiation treatment and a great deal of patience to get through that time. He was grateful for the start of the club volleyball season because those two hours a day with the Midwest Penguins cleared his mind.
“I didn’t have to think about cancer for two hours a day,” Freitag said.
And shortly after, he took up biking because he just wanted to be active again. When he saw the Great Cycle Challenge on Facebook, he knew he was the right man for it.
“Knowing that kids were going through what I had – and I had in the prime of my life,” said Freitag.
This will be his third Great Cycle Challenge. In 2015, he rode 500 miles and raised $3,000; in 2016, he did 400 miles and raised $2,800. The goal this year is 500 miles – or more – to raise $3,000.
The cyclists are using the apps MapMyRide, Strava and Garmin Connect to track their miles. Freitag’s donors can follow his progress on his page on the greatcyclechallenge.com website.
Any cycling counts toward the challenge – spin classes, riding on a trainer, mountain biking or road biking – but he prefers the scenery of the Oak Leaf trail.
To achieve his goal this month he will have to average 16.7 miles a day on his new Diamondback. So far he’s accomplished 250 miles and raised (as of June 16 at 8 a.m.) $4,632, best in Wisconsin and No. 19 nationally.
And when he’s on that bike, it allows him to consider how far he’s come.
“It’s alone time. You can clear your head and not think about anything or you can think about everything,” Freitag said