Manhattan Beach Resident Honored at the 2016 Amgen Tour of California Breakaway From Cancer Walk

Manhattan Beach, California - Robert Hess, Founder and President of the Manhattan Beach-based Prostate Cancer Awareness Project non-profit, participated in the Amgen Corporation’s Breakaway From Cancer Mile walk at the first Stage of the 2016 Amgen Tour of California in San Diego, California on Sunday, May 15, 2016.

The Amgen Tour of California is America’s largest pro-cycling event and the Breakaway From Cancer program focuses on helping cancer survivors and educating people about preventing cancer.

Robert Hess, a Manhattan Beach resident, one of 10 National Breakaway from Cancer Champions in 2015, was honored for his work in prostate cancer prevention and early detection.

“I’m thrilled to be invited to participate again in the Breakaway from Cancer festivities,” said Hess. According to Hess, “There are 14 million cancer survivor living in the United States and another cancer survivor begins their survivorship journey every 19 seconds. We need to show people the lifestyle changes they can make to reduce the risk of cancer and we need to provide more support to our current cancer survivors. Amgen’s Breakaway from Cancer is doing a wonderful job in this regard.”

Katherine Kelly Lang, best known for her role as Brooke Logan on The Bold and the Beautiful, CBS daytime drama, is the 2016 Breakaway From Cancer ambassador. She lost her father, grandfather, and grandmother all to colon cancer and her maternal grandmother to lung cancer. Said Lang, “This charity helps people from the moment of their diagnosis all the way through their surviving it. About 1,500 people die of cancer every day in the United States alone, and you can imagine what that number would be world wide.”

Bicycling is great exercise and can help cancer survivors stay healthy and help prevent cancer progression and recurrence. The Prostate Cancer Awareness Project has created an Around the World Cycling Challenge to give cancer survivors an exercise goal. The program is self-reported and details are available at

It took Prostate Cancer Awareness Project founder Robert Hess, himself a prostate cancer survivor, 10 years to cover the 26,901 miles – the distance around the world. “Cycling has been a key part of my personal cancer battle plan, and I try and ride 2 or 3 times each week and at least one 100 mile century ride each year. I created the Around the World Cycling Challenge to give cancer survivors a goal they can use in their own cancer battles,” said Hess.

About The Prostate Cancer Awareness Project: The Project Cancer Awareness Project is a Manhattan Beach-based 501 (c)(3) non-profit charity that works to reduce the level of prostate cancer awareness deaths through early detection and awareness. Men can activate their free prostate cancer risk detection system at http://ProstateTracker.org.