Alysha Palumbo put together the first profile, of 15-year-old Lindsey Kimball of Ayer, Massachusetts – who has beaten acute lymphoblastic leukemia, and now gets to ride with her pedal partner team of past PMCs on the one-day Wellesley-Wellesley loop this year. Score one more for “Living Proof!”

Keep an eye on the NECN.com Pan Mass Challenge page for more profiles and coverage of PMC weekend!

If you think that wouldn’t be enough of an inspirational story on its own, Sarah got married yesterday.

They are great speakers, certainly, but the amazing thing is that their story, while unique in its details, is not uncommon in its theme. Hundreds of cancer survivors tackle the Sturbridge-Provincetown ride, and their signs and their stories help inspire the rest of us on top of the personal stories we already have spurring us on.

Speaking of personal stories – the 13 members of Team NECN are sharing in short form their stories on the Team NECN site. The longer versions, and your chance to give to the team as individuals or a group, can be found on the PMC site itself, on the PMC profile page for the team.

As the resident tech nerd, I am also hoping to get the team members – both the ones you know (like Jenny Johnson, Brad Puffer and Danielle Niles) and the ones you might not (like, well, me) to blog about their training, their inspiration, and their personal stories. Read them, and you’ll have that much more to talk about when the Team NECN Fundraising Party comes up on June 22nd at the Beehive in Boston’s South End.

We hope to see you there.

(Editor’s Note: We’re not saying Joe didn’t train much, but many of you out there may have put more miles on your bike wheeling it to and from the garage than Joe did on the road this summer.)

Joe and fellow NECN staffer (and PMC icon) David Beauvais set out together from Bourne at 5am on Sunday – and seven-plus hours later, they pulled into Provincetown with a great reminder of the support, mission and fun that makes the PMC the special event it is.

The Provincetown II made its way to Boston, filled with PMC riders who completed their rides earlier on Sunday.

Family and friends seemed to be a recurring theme when riders were asked their thoughts on the event.

“This is my second year riding in the Pan Mass Challenge. I ride in memory of my dad and a friend of mine,” Pam Bird said. “It’s been an amazing experience.”

“I have a friend who died a year-and-a-half ago,” Eric Hudson said. “You think a lot about your friends, people you love and people in your life.”

“My cousin Henry passed away of cancer, and he was an avid bike rider. I decided it would only be appropriate if I did a bike ride in his honor. There were borne the flying Henry’s,” Karl Beauloukian said.

And there were so many more riders who found the inspiration to ride from their family and friends.

For eight years, he rode to honor his mother, a cancer survivor.

This year, he’s riding in her memory.

Hidden in the sea of riders rounding the turn and heading into Nickerson State Park in Brewster is a man riding with a heavy heart.

On this second day of the Pan Mass Challenge, Rob Goodman pedals along, cheers from the crowd ringing in his ears, his mind wandering from the road ahead.

“I’m thinking about my mom, of course, I hit those hills, I mean I feel selfish for feeling tired because I just think about her, what she went through, and it gives you that extra bit of adrenaline,” Goodman said.

Joyce Goodman fought breast cancer 15 years ago and won.

Then in 2007, she was diagnosed with a rare form of uterine cancer.

She kept coming to support her son Rob in the PMC, ever the family matriarch, continuing to battle cancer and enjoy precious moments with her children and grandchildren.

“Her doctors didn’t give her much time, but amazingly she made it two years. And I’m sorry to say she passed away in May, the day before mother’s day, but she fought amazingly well,” Goodman said.

A Babson College grad who lived for several years in Boston and has now returned to Westchester County, New York, Rob’s first 8 years in the PMC were to honor his mother while she lived.

He is now riding to remember her life.

“This is all about her. We’re going to keep it up and ride in her memory, and it’s tough. It’s tough not being able to ride in Bourne and see her and get that first hug from her and kiss,” her son said.

Also riding in Joyce Goodman’s memory, is her son-in-law Mark Feldman who is riding for the 4th year.

“We’re just going to keep on going. You know, this is just, we’re a small cog in the long long wheel here. It’s a great cause,” Feldman said.

Only adding a layer of emotion on a day filled with them is that today, August 2, was Joyce Goodman’s birthday.

She would have been 72.

“We always had a birthday cake for her the Saturday night, but you know, we had a birthday cake for her last night, in her memory. And we keep going on because we want to help other people and hopefully the money we raise keeps someone else’s mother, sister, brother, father, still around,” Goodman said.

Goodman has raised close to $175,000 in nine years.

Even after losing his mother to cancer, Rob Goodman pledges to continue to ride the PMC in the years to come.

Our station is the media sponsor of the Pan Mass Challenge, but our commitment runs deeper than that title. Eight NECN employees rode in the 30th annual PMC as part of Team NECN, riding for pedal partner Caroline Lane.

Meteorologist Danielle Niles rode the Wellesley-to-Bourne route on Saturday, then hurried back home to prepare for her all day shift in the NECN weather center on Sunday. She chronicled her first ride on this very blog.

She joined R.D. Sahl and Beth Shelburne on NECN’s PMC Wrapup Show to share her experience as a first-time rider.

“It was my first PMC, it is definitely not going to be my last,” Niles said.

“I was having a difficult time going up one of the hills and a gentleman pulled up next to me and he just turned and said, ‘How’s your ride going?’ and I said it’s going well,” Niles said, who then asked him why he was riding. “‘Last year I was in remission from cancer, but this year it came back.’ I just though to myself, ‘I’m complaining about my sore muscles and this guy has cancer right now’.”

Cherry Street definitely knows how to keep the riders going.

And so do two sisters who have made rooting along the route an annual tradition.

Brenda Hebert of Leominster, Massachusetts and her sister Evelyn call themselves “the over-the-hill cheerleaders”.

On the first day of the 2009 PMC, the pair was yelling for riders while dressed as leprechauns.

“They struggle so hard and if we can give them a little lift along the way,” Evelyn Wisnosky said. “And the cause. Let’s face it — that’s the root of it, you know, the money coming in. If they’re willing to ride for it, we’re willing to kind of make ourselves look a little foolish for them.”

Brenda and Evelyn dress in costume each year. This was their 23rd straight year cheering along the PMC route.

The 30th running of the Pan Mass Challenge was in the books on Sunday night, as riders traveled back to Boston via boat.

The event raising money for cancer research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Donate to the cause by visiting Team NECN’s PMC profile page.

Fifteen-year rider Matthew Dustin thanked the good weather for making this year’s event a smooth one. Over the years, he has seen an increase in ridership.

“A lot of the changes have been in the number of people on the road,” Matthew Dustin said. “It’s really a hero’s welcome for people who spend a lot of time raising money for the PMC, that goes to Jimmy Fund and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.”

“The most memorable moment this year was we had great weather and we had no accidents on the road,” Dustin said.

Michael Filosa also road in this latest edition of the PMC, his third overall. This year, Michael decided to extend the PMC and ride from the New York border all the way to Provincetown.

“When you have things like that touch your heart, you need, something like that as a way of giving back and motivating you and fighting this terrible disease,” Filosa said.

“My dad’s a warrior,” son Peter Filosa said.