Bicyclists Will Put Pedal to the Mettle

Marty Starr knows pain. Every day, his overtaxed muscles tell him that, at 40, he’s just not as nimble as he used to be.

“I ache all over,” says Starr, a health insurance analyst at UCLA. “I get up in the middle of the night to stretch and then I’ll go back to bed.”

There’s a point to his misery. Starr is in training for the California AIDS Ride ‘94, a charity event in which more than 500 bicyclists will pedal from San Francisco to Los Angeles during the first week in May.

Yet the 500-mile trek has an added significance for Starr. The West Hollywood resident lost a friend to AIDS and has tested positive for HIV. Just this week, his roommate was admitted to the hospital with AIDS.

“I’m not a biker,” admits Starr.

But since November, he has averaged 100 miles a week in training rides, sometimes through rugged mountain courses, and has followed a regular weightlifting and aerobics regimen. That he pedals on despite limited athletic gifts, he says, just proves his devotion to the cause.

“I would do anything in my power,” he says, “to stop this illness.”

Starr has raised about $5,000 in pledges so far. Organizers estimate that $1 million will ultimately benefit the Jeffrey Goodman Special Care Clinic of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center, one of the largest AIDS clinics in Southern California.

The journey, which starts May 1 at San Francisco’s Fort Mason, will snake along Pacific Coast Highway, occasionally darting inland to such sites as Pinnacles National Monument and the town of Solvang, the “bicycling capital” of California. The trip ends May 7 at West Hollywood Center.

Organizer Dan Pallotta, a professional fund-raiser, hopes that the ride, to be inaugurated this year, will become an annual event. To qualify, riders have to collect at least $2,000 in pledges. Pallotta says some participants have met that sum in one night at fund-raising parties held on the Westside.

What makes the ride unusual is that 10% to 15% of the participants, like Starr, are HIV-positive or have AIDS. While the trip would be exhausting even to a person in the best health, doctors say it should pose no special hazard to an HIV-infected person.

“It’s not known what the effect of long-duration exercise is on the immune system and HIV infection,” says Dr. Douglas Lowery, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at UCLA who is taking part in the bike ride and will be one of four physicians available to treat riders. “But it is known that a positive mental attitude and healthy exercise can benefit the immune system.”

Starr concurs. He sees the ride as a chance to “re-channel” his anger over the disease and to memorialize his friend, David Lyon, who died of AIDS in November, 1990.

“Every time he starts to lag, (Marty) thinks about David,” says Bruce Bailey, a free-lance television producer.

The aching quadriceps have been worth it, Starr says. But the AIDS Ride is just a small part of a larger personal journey.

“Just going through the process of illness has made me a strong person,” he says. “People say to me, ‘You’re not the same person you were a few years ago.’ I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but I know I’ve come out a fighter.”