My name is Mark Sherman I am 15 years old and you have the opportunity to save children's lives. What I am doing is riding my bike in races and I need your support! What I am doing is racing in the Cereal City Century (CCC), the CCC is a 100 mile road bike race, No I'm not asking for you to help pedal, fill my water bottles or give me a push up the hills (although that would be nice). What I am asking for is your financial support to help fight a nasty form of childhood cancer.

Since I'll be riding 100 miles, I thought it would be a good idea to accept "per mile" donations to help keep the numbers nice and simple."

Why am I asking for your hard-earned money? I'm riding for the Children's Neuroblastoma Cancer Foundation (CNCF for short) and raising money to help them find a cure. A very rare form of childhood cancer, Neuroblastoma affects roughly 600 children per year and there is no known cure for the disease.

Why Neuroblastoma?

There are a couple reasons that I chose to raise money for this foundation, one is because when I was 9 months old I was diagnosed with this cancer. I had a tumor raped around my kidney and spinal cord that took up 20% of my body. The doctors told my parents that I only had around a 15% chance of living. I was put through a series of high dosage radiation and chemo therapy. The Radiation was used to try and literally burn the tumor away. The Chemo was used to kill the cancer cells.One thing that made chemo such a dangerous treatment was that it killed blood cell that would help you fight of your infections, colds etc. So if too many of the cells were killed at once I would not be able to fight of even the slightest cold and could have died just from that because my body would not have been able to fight it off.

Today I am 15 years old and have been completely cured for almost 12 whole years, and I have few side affects from the treatments I received, probably the major one is that I have Osteoporosis, which means I have low bone density, so my bones are not as strong as yours. Consequently I have to get that looked at by the doctors about once a year, But as long as I keep having lots of Calcium I should be good. Plus, biking helps!

Unfortunately many kids aren't as lucky as me and don't survive this awful form of cancer. One that I would like to mention is Christi Thomas. Though I never got to meet her, but some one I know was good friends with her and her whole family, She unfortunately passed away last September at the age of only nine after putting up an amazing fight. To hear more about Christi please visit Christi's website http://www.christithomas.com/, it really lets you know how bad this can be.

By selecting CNCF it's my hope that funds raised through my efforts will somehow help all of the other innocent children that have fallen victim to this deadly disease. So, won't you help me in my cause and make a donation? Every little bit helps, and together we all can make a difference.

P.S. I'll be posting periodic updates to my Blog, so be sure to stop on over and check it out. You can make comments and offer words of encouragement during my training process!

Donations collected online go directly to the Children’s Neuroblastoma Cancer Foundation. CNCF is a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit organization, so your donation is tax-deductible to the full extent of the law. The CNCF's Tax ID # is 36-4370725. www.cncf-childcancer.org. The tax letter from the Internal Revenue Service is located here.

To read more about the CNCF go to www.cncf-childcancer.org

To read more about Eric visit www.EricCook.com Eric is the one who has made all of this possible so I would like to thank him for all he has done!

Feel free to visit my Homepage any time at www.MarkSherman.us

I would also like thank the folks at www.Active.com for making this site possible