August 9, 2017 | Chris DeFrancesco '94 (CLAS) - UConn Health

UConn Med Students Complete 3,500-mile Fundraising Bicycle Tour

UConn medical students Sonali Rodriguez and Brett Lehner return to class this fall having completed the school's 12th cross-country fundraising bicycle tour.

Classmates and faculty greet Sonali Rodrigues and Brett Lehner (front) on their return to UConn Health. (Photo by Frank Barton)

Upon their arrival to the Atlantic in Guilford, Brett Lehner (left) and Sonali Rodriguez raise the bikes they’d pedaled for the previous eight weeks. (Photo provided by Brett Lehner)

Sonali Rodrigues and Brett Lehner return to school later this month having added their names to the short list of UConn medical students who spent their last free summer bicycling across the country to raise money for a health cause.

They covered more than 3,500 miles, starting in Anacortes, Washington, June 10, and arriving late Friday afternoon at UConn Health. Cheering friends, family and faculty welcomed the two future physicians, their skin darkened by two months of sun exposure.

Brett Lehner and Sonali Rodrigues celebrate in Guilford, where they reached the Atlantic coast less than two months after leaving the Pacific coast by bicycle. (Photo provided by Brett Lehner)

“It’s so hard to believe at this point,” Rodrigues said, moments after getting off her bike. “In the first week I was trying to imagine today, to keep me going. So the fact that we’re actually at this day, it’s a shock.”

Standing next to her under the academic rotunda, Lehner added, “I feel pretty good. It’s maybe the best shape I’ve been in in a long time, not like we could go forever, but even today, 50 miles, wasn’t too bad.”

Two days later, they pedaled the final 42 miles from Farmington to Guilford to reach the Atlantic Ocean and complete the 2017 Coast to Coast for a Cause ride. The cause this year is a public health initiative to improve awareness of and access to nutrition in Connecticut schools called “An Apple a Day.”

Rodrigues and Lehner averaged nearly 70 miles a day as they pedaled east largely along a bike route known as the Northern Tier.

Thanks to Warm Showers, a growing network of people willing to open their homes for touring cyclists throughout the world, there were many nights the students didn’t have to use their camping gear.

Sonali Rodrigues (right) is greeted by third-year medical student Emily Wilkins, who completed last year’s Coast to Coast for a Cause. (Photo by Frank Barton)

“It was such a great way to meet people who were from the area and get to know that town,” Rodrigues says. “Having that in so many places, not knowing any of these people but them treating you like family, was probably one of the best parts of the trip.”

It also kept their traveling expenses down, enabling more of their fundraising proceeds to benefit An Apple a Day. They’ve raised more than $4,000 so far. More information about how to support the cause is available at bit.ly/17c2cfundraise.

“People continued to donate during the trip, which was really nice,” Lehner says.

Over the last 12 years now, while the causes and the itineraries have changed, it’s become an annual tradition at the UConn School of Medicine for a small group of students to finish their first year of classes, fly west, and pedal home on a fundraising cross-country bicycle tour. Many medical students consider the summer between the first and second year of medical school as their last free summer, as the academic schedule that follows does not include a lengthy summer break.

Brett Lehner and Sonali Rodrigues shortly after arriving at UConn Health, the second to last stop of their cross-country journey. (Photo by Frank Barton)

“I think I learned that in order to accomplish something that is large in scale, I needed to find things I enjoyed, and do them everyday, even if it was getting ice cream or coffee, and set many small destinations along the way to look forward to, not looking at the trip in its entirety at any point,” Lehner says. “I think this holds true for a career in medicine as well, that it attracts many people who are so good at self discipline that they work so hard they burn themselves out in the process.”

The riders’ blog this year, coast2coastforacause2017.wordpress.com, primarily maintained by Lehner, included some of his inner reflections on the journey in addition to details of their daily progress.