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Going the distance: Resident to ride 150 miles for National Multiple Sclerosis Society
By Elizabeth Knighten, eknighten@starlocalnews.com
Frisco resident Jack Anderson will make a 150 mile journey in two days from Frisco to Texas Motor Speedway in Justin for the twenty fifth annual Bike MS: Sam's Club Frisco to Texas Motor Speedway Ride.
The cycling race, which begins on Saturday at 7 a.m. next to Dr Pepper Park and will run through Sunday, has been held its starting line in Frisco since 2005, Justin Martin, Development Manager for the North Texas Chapter of the National MS Society said in an email.
Martin said the event is critical to the organization because it funds about 80 percent of the "organization's annual operations."
Anderson, who is the director of global transaction strategy at Hewlett Packard (HP), will ride with a group of 62 fellow team members from HP and is among 2,912 registered cyclists. Martin said the organization is hoping to gain 3,000 riders.
In 2003, Anderson said he began ridding in Philadelphia, Pa. because he was inspired by a fellow coworker.
"This will be my seventh time actually," Anderson said. "The first couple of times I did it was because I worked with a woman who had MS, and the company that I worked with supported MS through the MS 150 bike rides. I thought it would be a really good challenge and would be a worth while thing because I really like this person, so that's why I started riding for MS."
Anderson said he completed three MS rides in Pennsylvania before moving to Frisco in June of 2006. As an avid athlete, he used to run half marathons.
"I've gotten old and I hurt my leg, and that's when I turned to cycling because I couldn't run distances anymore," Anderson said. "I turned to cycling because it's a lot easier on your legs, so now I have ridden up to 100 miles in a day."
He has participated three times in a cycling race in Wichita Falls and rode in the Shiner G.A.S.P. (Great Austin to Shiner Pedal), which he said is when he decided he would compete in the MS cycling ride for a seventh time.
"A number of us decided to do something different and we rode in the Shiner ride," he said. "The Shiner ride is a 100 mile ride and it's for a different charity, so last year a bunch of us went down to Austin to ride the Shiner ride ... and I pretty much decided last summer that I would ride the MS 150 again this year."
Anderson said he is also one of the founding members of the Shawnee Trail Bike Club along with Joel Hoback and several other cyclists.
"We stared the club a couple of years ago and now we have over 100 members," he said. "It's mostly a Frisco club, there are people from Plano and McKinney and other towns, but it's mostly Frisco people who are in that club."
Though his work schedule has not allowed him as much time as he would prefer to train, Anderson said he is "confident that I can still do it ... I just won't do it as fast."
He added that the ride and the MS organization are important for residents to be involved in.
"It's very well run, very well organized and a great organization to work with," he said.
For information, go to biketxh.nationalmssoci ety.org
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