What is Texas 4000?
I will spend the next-year-and-a-half preparing for a 70-day, 4,500-mile cycling pilgrimage to Alaska. In the summer of 2023, I, along with 60 other UT Austin students, will cross the continent for the longest annual charity bike ride in the world. 

Why I Ride
Why am I doing this? Why am I traversing two countries and many more states with little more than my bike and my Texas 4000 companions? While I love biking the quick 2 miles to my neighborhood Dunkin Donuts, I never planned (and still don’t plan) to become a competitive biker. So what will keep me going for 4500 miles? And how do I know I will be able to do it? These are probably all the questions on your mind (I know they’re on mine), but I don’t have a single answer to these questions. Instead, I’ll offer three.

I ride for love. In my life, I’ve been lucky enough to avoid watching a loved one suffer from cancer. Still, my family and friends are my primary reason for taking on this crazy journey. Every cancer story that I’ve heard has been a painful reminder that no one is safe. I ride for everyone who has loved someone with cancer, and I ride for the continued health of those that I love.

I ride for knowledge. I’m a scholar at heart, and though that might not make me the most obvious candidate for a cross-country bike ride, it is one of my biggest reasons for doing this. My ultimate career goal is to obtain an MD-PhD in clinical oncology so that I can offer my patients personalized treatment while pursuing broader research. In any case, I am learning (and will be learning even more) about cancer. One of the most striking facts I have learned is that between 30-50% of all cancer cases are preventable. There are some reasons we all know- smoking, suntans- but there are also others, like the lack of cancer screening and awareness that is especially prevalent in some of the communities we will visit on the summer ride. My goal, counterintuitive as it might seem, is to spread enough knowledge so that at least one person who might have been at risk will never have to see an oncologist.

Finally, I ride for hope. I ride because I am one of the ones who can. I know and love people whose struggles make the simple tasks of day-to-day life impossibly difficult. So yeah, as impossibly difficult and long as this bike ride may seem, I’m doing it for the people who deal with the impossible every day and still find a way to keep moving forward. Every mile I log for this cause honors their hope (and my hope) for a better future.