By Allison Perrine
MIDDLETOWN – After riding 213 miles on her Peloton stationary bike for 24 hours straight, township resident Andrea Verdone Gorsenger has fundraised more than $75,000 to support childhood cancer research as part of her first “Spin 4 Kids” virtual event.
On Saturday, Gorsenger hopped on her Peloton at 9:30 a.m. with instructor Tunde Oyeneyin on screen and didn’t stop until the same time Sunday morning, aside from a few brief bathroom breaks. At a pace of between 7 to 14 miles per hour she cycled a total of 213 miles and burned 3,246 calories; she livestreamed the entire event on Facebook. The goal was to find a unique yet effective way to raise money for her nonprofit organization Infinite Love for Kids, a completely volunteer-run group that has donated over $1.2 million to childhood cancer research since 2013.
“I have been to the funerals of nine of my friends’ children. It’s just devastating,” she said as she got choked up. “It’s just too much and we need to end this because it’s just not fair.”
The cause hits close to home for Gorsenger and her family. Her daughter Natalie was diagnosed with high-risk acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) shortly before her 3rd birthday. Now 11 years old, Natalie lives a healthy and cancer-free life after about two years of treatment. Others have not been as fortunate.
“Obviously it rocked our world in every sense. I used to work in publishing and I had to quit my job in the city and care for her full time, take her to all of her appointments and stay at the hospital and all that stuff. Because of that we had to sell our home at the time,” she said. “It turns your world upside down. But at the end of the day, she’s here and we’re one of the lucky families.”
Gorsenger had been fundraising for childhood cancer research before she established the 501(c)(3) nonprofit. She started educating herself on the research shortly after Natalie’s diagnosis to learn what they were “up against” and found that the disease is the leading cause of childhood deaths. Feeling helpless for not being able to rid her daughter of cancer herself, Gorsenger decided to start Infinite Love for Natalie Grace, now Infinite Love for Kids Fighting Cancer. The family first posted on social media asking for $1 per person to see how much they could raise for research.
“My thought was maybe, maybe, and this was a big reach, we could raise like $10,000,” she said. “It went crazy viral…by the end of it we had raised $110,000. And you know what, that was like my outlet. It was my way of feeling like I was fighting Natalie’s cancer, even if it wasn’t directly. It really kind of empowered me and kept me busy.”
The next year, Gorsenger started another “Natalie’s Birthday Wish” fundraiser asking people for $1 and raised $164,000 by Natalie’s birthday in September. The next year, they raised $200,000. The fundraising continues to this day, including the Spin 4 Kids event.
Gorsenger purchased the Peloton she used during last weekend’s fundraiser amid the COVID-19 pandemic as, like many others, she was searching for ways to exer- cise without going to the gym. She started taking 30-minute classes and later did one- or two-hour-long rides on top of that. She pitched the idea of the 24-hour cycle to her Peloton team at that time and they thought she was crazy, she said.
“That’s how you really draw people in. You have something that’s a little crazy and it attracts some attention,” she said.
Training began at the end of October, but right around Thanksgiving her foot that she had surgery on the year prior started acting up, postponing her training until the new year. That’s when she got back on her bike and started training again. She was “very nervous” for the Jan. 30 event because she knew she didn’t have proper training going into it, so she created a back-up plan.
She set up a page for volunteers to register to cycle in her place for an hour in case she needed a break, but being a former athlete with competitive spirit, she completed the challenge by herself. Her daughter Hannah was around to give her water and food when needed. And some community members stopped by during her ride to see Gorsenger through the window, including Mayor Tony Perry and a local family that Infinite Love has been supporting whose child Brady is fighting leukemia.
“We have dozens of families that we’ve given grants to,” Gorsenger said. “We’ve paid bills, car bills, bought hot water heaters, had them installed. We’ve done backyard makeovers. Unfortunately, we’ve paid for funerals,” she said. “We just try to do anything the family needs, whether it’s for the fighter or it’s for the sibling. Sometimes for the parent, we send a very stressed mother and her sisters for a spa weekend.”
Overall, Gorsenger said, while her 24-hour ride was tiring and her knees required a good amount of icing, everything was totally worth it. Over 200 people registered and rode with her at points along the way on the leaderboard. The instructor also gave Gorsenger two shout-outs, along with one for Infinite Love, which she was excited about.
“Every pain and ache I’m feeling right now was just worth it,” she said. “The whole thing is that these kids, the amount of pain that they go through every day…what I did is nothing in comparison.”
For more information about Infinite Love, visit infiniteloveforkidsfightingcancer.org or its Facebook page @InfiniteLove4Kids.
This article was originally published in the Feb. 4-10, 2021 edition of The Two River Times.
