By Zack Sampson, News Staff
The pain will probably start hitting somewhere between Attleboro and Foxborough.
Aches and cramps and stiffness will likely creep up on the 12 Northeastern University police officers about halfway into their 65-mile bicycle trip.
The officers plan to participate in “Sean’s Ride,” a charitable event to raise money for slain Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer Sean Collier on Sept. 11. It’s the last leg of the Tour De Force, an annual memorial event for police officers.
Riders will depart from Ground Zero in New York City this year, bound for Boylston Street, where two homemade bombs ravaged the Boston Marathon finish line in April, killing three and injuring more than 200.
The NUPD officers will join the ride at T.F. Green Airport in Warwick, R.I. Their goal is simple: to stay together and finish.
“We start as one, we finish as one,” said Officer Brian Nocerino. “Nobody gets left behind, that’s kind of a principle in our field.”
That principle speaks to the larger law enforcement fraternity that almost all officers consider themselves a part of. It is that sense of union through service that is leading the officers to ride for the Collier family.
Collier was gunned down in his patrol car at M.I.T. on April 18. His alleged shooters are the same two men suspected in the marathon bombings. The murder of a fellow officer resonated deeply across the Charles River at NUPD headquarters.
Several campus officers graduated from the same police academy as Collier.
“Everybody’s looking at what happened to him, and it’s, ‘Oh man, I was just doing what he was doing last night,’ ” Nocerino said.
“We’re all vulnerable and we all could pay that price, and our families could pay that price,” Officer Jim Cooney said.
Nocerino, Cooney and the other 10 officers who plan to complete “Sean’s Ride,” have raised $5,000 for Tour De Force, which helps families of police officers killed in the line of duty. Each of the NUPD representatives are bike officers with varying degrees of long-distance riding experience.
For some, the 65-mile trek will be the longest they ever make in a day, Nocerino said. He said he’s done recreational distance riding in the past, once going from Boston to Cape Cod. Cooney said he has ridden in some 50-mile charity events for the American Diabetes Association.
Nocerino said he has not trained in any special way for the ride beyond acquainting himself with the foot pedals and hand brakes on his bike at Northeastern.
“The best training has been coming to work,” he said.
He said he’ll be riding his personal Specialized bike on Sept. 11. The officers plan to finish the ride in about five hours, taking advantage of rest stops every 15 miles.
“We’re going to be doing about 13 to 15 miles per hour,” Nocerino said.
The pre-determined course will take them roughly along the Route 1 line, he said. They hope to finish in the early afternoon. There will be a couple hours of rest, Nocerino said, but then he’ll be back at Northeastern.
“I’m scheduled to be in at 8 o’clock that night,” he said.
