2020: That was some year...
It’s hard to even know where to start with 2020. The pandemic? The election? Social uprising? Masks? Shutdowns? Social distancing? There was a lot of things to learn how to navigate, and figuring out a way to “do” the Pan-Mass Challenge was one of them. The PMC is a huge part of our year and our 2020 plans kicked off quite normally in retrospect. We had our sponsorship letters and raffle tickets printed in early March and it was the weekend that we had planned to stuff envelopes when the entire world changed.
We paused all of our fundraising and, over many lengthy conversations, we decided to pull back on our business letters and raffle tickets entirely. 2020 just wasn’t the year to fundraise like that, especially when nearly all of our sponsors are small businesses. Like everyone else, we took on a wait-and-see approach. What else was there to do? Thankfully, bike riding was relatively safe activity.
When it was announced that the traditional PMC would be “reimagined”, we all went into our own planning modes to creatively figure out what we could accomplish. Some of us rode in small groups, some headed out on solo rides. To say the least, it was weird not being together on PMC weekend, but we texted and shared photos along our journeys. It certainly wasn’t the PMC that any of us wanted, but in retrospect, the freedom to create our own route was really quite exciting. In the end, our fundraising came well under our original goal, but it FAR exceeded what we thought we were capable of raising during a pandemic. We are so very fortunate to have great supporters, even when times are tough. Cancer didn’t take a pause during 2020 and we’re still fighting that good fight. Thank you.
