Font ResizeThe impact of her cancer fight tends to come to the surface when Alger has some solitary moments riding her bicycle.
"I cry. I ride that bike. And tears just stream down my face thinking of the people I've lost. The people I just met," Alger says.
Everywhere she goes her yellow Lance Armstrong Foundation LIVESTRONG bracelet
"That has a link on it that has Sheri and Carrie's name on it," Alger says. "There's not a day that doesn't go by that I don't wish they were here."
Kidney cancer took Alger's cousin Sheri Stears. Melanoma skin cancer killed her best friend Carrie Forrest.
"When I first got on the internet I put in cancer cures," Alger says. She searched Google with the mind set not every doctor knows everything. Maybe one missed something, Alger thought. That is when she
"What stuck with me was trying to do something to where quite frankly I wasn't in this position again," Alger says. "Or I wasn't mourning a friend or loved one. And I wasn't listening to stories from other people that were escorting their friends and families to chemo."
That took Alger and her husband to all four Lower 48 LIVESTRONG challenges. They biked 100 miles at each event.
"My husband looked at me and said how are we going to prepare for 100 mile ride?" Alger recalls. "And my response was how do people prepare to take the step into treatment, and prepare for chemo. You don't. And so we just did it."
Just do it. That is exactly what Alger did when Providence officials asked her to bring an Armstrong foundation volunteer branch to Alaska. That's how the Last Frontier's first LIVESTRONG Army came into being.
"It could be as simple as wearing a shirt like this (LIVESTRONG shirt) in the Tuesday night races, so everybody sees that hey there's people around here that are familiar with the Lance Armstrong foundation and what LIVESTRONG means. It could mean having a LIVESTRONG event of any kind," Alger says.
In October she brought the first LIVESTRONG Day to Alaska with cancer survivor and Iditarod Champion Musher Lance Mackey.
"It's not an individual cancer we're trying to take on here," Mackey says. "We're not specifying breast cancer. Pancreatic cancer. Whatever it is. Cancer as a whole."
LIVESTRONG Day began in 2003 as the Armstrong Foundation's effort to influence cancer laws by bringing local advocates to Washington DC. In 2006 Armstrong changed strategy, thinking there should be LIVESTRONG Days across the country to amplify the foundation's voice.
"Everybody coming together to cure cancer," Mackey says. "Not just one kind."
"I'm just hoping the LIVESTRONG Army can provide information for everybody with all their different types of cancer," Alger says
She also hopes her army can bring a new understanding to battling Alaska's number one killer.
To join the Alaska LIVESTRONG Army, named after Alger's father, here is a link to their Facebook page.
To view the Lance Armstrong Manifesto click here.
To contact the Newsroom, call 907-274-1111.
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