Retired Penn State women’s golf head coach Denise St. Pierre is swapping the links for the trails this spring.
In April, she’s embarking on a 1,600-mile bike journey to get people talking about climate, Third Act, and the East Coast Greenway. She calls it “Cycle Hope: Pedaling Toward a Brighter Future.”
“I’ve never done something like this before,” she said.
And yet she’s envisioned this adventure for several years. A recreational cyclist, she’s long wanted to ride the East Coast Greenway, a still-unfinished network of multiuse trails that will eventually stretch from Florida to Maine. But she wanted to ride with a purpose. When she learned about Third Act this summer, the project started to take shape.
“For a long time, I have researched ways to be a better steward of the Earth,” the State College resident said. “After hearing about Third Act and the great work they were doing in this area, it motivated me to get on board. I would like more people to know what is truly happening to our planet and that we do have some solutions IF we can get more people behind it.”
Her plan is to leave Miami on April 10 and arrive in Provincetown, MA, on May 29, covering 50 to 60 miles each day. Riding with her is her younger sister Barb, owner and operator of Trillium Sport and Fitness in Syracuse, NY. Other cyclists are welcome to join along the way by following the route on the Cycle Hope website or Instagram page.
Denise’s wife, Julie Lammel, a professor of sports management and recreation at Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania, will join her for the last leg of the trip as the sag-wagon driver. Christine Siena, another sister in this family of five daughters, will drive from Raleigh, NC, to Ashland, VA, where she lives with her husband, Mark, two daughters and seven grandchildren.
The sag wagon is an electric yellow-and-white VW bus, which took three years on a waiting list to snag. Affixed to the bus is an eyecatching Cycle Hope magnetic logo that Denise designed a couple years ago, uncertain of how she would use it. “I always loved cycling and had just finished reading Jane Goodall’s book called Hope. It inspired me to want to take something I loved and put it into action that would benefit and align with my interest in taking care of the environment.”
The van also sports magnetic logos for Third Act Pennsylvania and the Greenway.
When friends ask if she has time for such an undertaking, she responds: “I don’t have a choice.” Given what’s happening every day, she says, “the trip feels even more urgent.”
During summers, she typically rides 20 to 30 miles a day, although State College has been a mess of melting ice and mud lately. To get ready, she is cycling indoors for 1-½ hour stints, swimming and doing resistance training. “I’ve always done these things. It’s just now I need to ramp it up,” she said. “The biggest goal is to have my body as strong as possible to avoid injuries.” She’s using the Dynamic cyclist app to help work on various muscle groups.
A road bike with its narrower tires would have been faster on a paved surface, but she’s opting for a heavier gravel bike, which will be more comfortable on the uneven paths of the Greenway. She did outfit the bike with slightly narrower tires, though.
With less than three months before this very different sort of tee time, Denise is working to raise $50,000 to benefit Third Act and the Greenway and to defray some trip expenses. She’s hoping to connect with Third Act chapters and volunteers along the route and is looking for homes to stay in to help reduce the cost of the trip. She’s working on a list of places to stop – cafes, breweries and such – where people can meet to talk.
The cycling sisters will arrive in Philadelphia on Saturday, May 16, and stay in town the following day before heading to New Brunswick, NJ, on May 18.
While planning the trip, she gets a lot of questions: What’s Third Act? What’s the East Coast Greenway? Why are you doing this? So, she knows she’s already spreading the word.
“I’m hoping to raise a lot of interest and inspire people to take action. It’s unusual to have two people in their 60s taking on this type of trip. I truly believe my sister Barb and I were made for this time.”