{"id":81078,"date":"2013-07-26T09:22:06","date_gmt":"2013-07-26T13:22:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=81078"},"modified":"2013-07-26T10:12:40","modified_gmt":"2013-07-26T14:12:40","slug":"coast-to-coast-in-43-days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2013\/07\/coast-to-coast-in-43-days\/","title":{"rendered":"Coast to Coast in 43 Days"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Coast<\/a>
A crowd greets Pat Field (left) and Dan Beauvais at the UConn Health Center’s academic entrance. (Chris DeFrancesco\/UConn Health Center)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The 2013 Coast to Coast for a Cure cycling team is back in Connecticut, arriving six weeks and a day after landing in San Francisco. That\u2019s a new record for the nearly 4,000-mile cross-country ride that\u2019s been completed by a different group of students each year since 2006.<\/p>\n

Thinner and darker-skinned than when they left June 12, UConn dental student Dan Beauvais and UConn medical student Pat Field arrived at the UConn Health Center to the cheers of friends and family Thursday evening. A Farmington police cruiser trailed them up the hill and they pulled into the academic entrance riding side-by-side, each holding the end of an American flag.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just had the mentality that every mile counts, and at the end of the day we were tired, but sometimes if we saw another town 10 or 15 miles ahead, we\u2019d just go for it,\u201d Field says. \u201cWe just kept pushing and pushing and just tried to get as far as we could every day.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce we were past the Rockies we just tried to set a minimum of 100 miles per day, and if we were feeling good, we just pushed, and most days we felt fine,\u201d Beauvais says. \u201cWe really just kept home in mind and we were able to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Coast<\/a>
UConn dental student Dan Beauvais and UConn medical student Pat Field pedaled from San Francisco, CA to Farmington, CT in 43 days, a new record for the Coast to Coast for a Cure ride since it began in 2006. (Chris DeFrancesco\/UConn Health Center Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Beauvais and Field make up the eighth group of students to tackle what has become an annual UConn School of Medicine tradition to raise money for Lea\u2019s Foundation for Leukemia Research<\/a>, a Hartford nonprofit and philanthropic supporter of UConn\u2019s Carole and Ray Neag Comprehensive Cancer Center<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The rising second-year students say cycling coast to coast was a lot harder than they thought it would be.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always thought that you could kind of pedal nonchalantly and just relax and go slowly but it wasn\u2019t like that,\u201d Field says. \u201cIf you wanted to get to your destination you had to really work for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought we\u2019d be going at a pretty easy pace all day, we would be coasting and talking, but when you\u2019re riding with 40 pounds of gear on your bike and you\u2019re going up a hill, you really have to work hard,\u201d says Beauvais, the first dental student to complete the ride. \u201cBut also, I really couldn\u2019t imagine how eye-opening this trip was, just meeting different people, seeing how people in different parts of this country live, their outlooks, all the beautiful scenery that you can see just in this country, it\u2019s amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Along the way the riders kept a blog with daily updates, photos and videos of the people and places they encountered: http:\/\/coasttocoastforacure2013.blogspot.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was very cool meeting people of a lot of different cultures, different lifestyles in general, it\u2019s like a different world out there,\u201d Field says. \u201cOn a bike ride you see the entire country from one point to the other, so we visited places that normally people don\u2019t visit and we got to see their perspective on life and see how they lived.\u201d<\/p>\n

Field and Beauvais have managed to raise several thousand dollars so far. The campaign is still open, and anyone wishing to support the 2013 Coast to Coast for a Cure is asked to go to http:\/\/leasfoundation.org\/events<\/a>, find the \u201cCoast to Coast\u201d box, and click \u201cDonate.\u201d<\/p>\n

The early homecoming leaves them with about three weeks before the fall semester starts.<\/p>\n

\"Coast<\/a>
Family and friends welcome the 2013 Coast to Coast for a Cure riders back from their cross-country bike tour to raise money for leukemia research. (Chris DeFrancesco\/UConn Health Center)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll probably be lazy for a couple of days at least, but I\u2019m hoping that the drive I\u2019ve built up over the last six weeks sort of carries over into the rest of the summer and into the school year,\u201d Beauvais says.<\/p>\n

Field says the trip taught him a lesson in productivity.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s amazing how much you can get done; in six weeks we got across the country. For the rest of my life if I apply this mentality of working hard and pushing through\u2026We were very efficient on this trip, and if I apply that efficiency to my life, it will be cool to see what I could do as a doctor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Coast to Coast for a Cure officially ends Aug. 24, when the riders\u2014and anyone who wants to join them\u2014pedal a final 40 miles from the UConn Health Center to Hammonasset Beach State Park in Madison. There, Field and Beauvais officially end the ride by dipping their tires in the Atlantic Ocean, with a celebration at nearby Malone\u2019s Restaurant to follow.<\/p>\n

\n

Follow\u00a0the UConn Health Center<\/a> on\u00a0Facebook<\/a>,\u00a0Twitter<\/a> and\u00a0YouTube<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Medical student Pat Field and dental student Dan Beauvais made record time pedaling cross country to raise money for leukemia research.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":111,"featured_media":81088,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[179,1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[57,2010],"class_list":["post-81078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uconn-health","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-26 08:30:13","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81078"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83459,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81078\/revisions\/83459"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/81088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81078"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=81078"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=81078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}