SEVEN FIELDS — Five years ago, Ryanne Forcht Palermo didn't even own a bicycle.

These days, it's hard to keep her off one.

Two years from now, you won't.

Palermo, 29, a 2001 Butler graduate and former girls soccer player for the Golden Tornado and Seton Hill University, is joining forces with three other women in the 2014 Race Across America.

Their team, known as Team PHenomenal Hope, will take turns bicycling from California to Maryland in a continuous eight-day, 3,000-mile trek. The race course is 30 percent longer than the Tour de France.

“It's 24-7 all the way through,” Palermo said. “Someone from the team has to be biking on the course at all times.”

The team will be assisted on the journey by a 10-person crew and supported along the way by PHA members who have battled pulmonary hypertension.

UPMC is sponsoring the quartet, which is participating in the event to promote awareness of pulmonary hypertension, or high blood pressure in the lungs than can leave its victims short of breath, dizzy, tired, even in need of a lung transplant.

“If you enter this race in the team format, you have to ride for a charity,” Palermo said. “One of our riders (Patricia George) works in the pulmonary hypertension clinic at UPMC.

“It's a very worthwhile cause, which only adds to the excitement.”

Palermo's husband got into mountain biking a few years ago and she wanted to try her hand at a sport triathlon at Moraine State Park in 2007. That was when she went out and got herself a bicycle.

She's taken off with it since.

“I tried mountain biking and got hooked,” Palermo admitted.

Among Palermo's recent endeavors as an endurance mountain bike racer are the conquering of more than 100 miles and 24,000 vertical feet of climbing in one day in Northern Georgia, winning the Leesburg Baker's Dozen 13-hour race in 2011 and organizing a Pittsburgh to Washington D.C. round-trip bicycle trek, covering nearly 700 miles.

Palermo got involved in the Race Across America through a friend in mountain biking, Stacie Truszowski, who works closely with pulmonary hypertension physicians as an administrative assistant at UPMC.

“Stacie and Patty are members of the Steel City Endurance Cycling team and got the idea to do this,” Palermo said. “They asked me to join the team and I was intrigued by the challenge.

“None of us had ever done anything like this before.”

Their other teammate, Anne-Marie Alderson, has completed eight marathons and 17 triathlons.

Palermo and her teammates have full biking schedules this summer. They are convening Sunday at a Pulmonary Hypertension Association (PHA) meeting in Orlando, Fla., to formally announce their team.

They will begin training for the Race Across America in the fall.

“We're lucky enough to have various qualified people available to us to help direct our training for this thing,” Palermo said. “I'm sure we'll do a number of long endurance rides as preparation, but we have no formal training plan in place just yet.”

The quartet is planning to complete the Race Across America in short intervals.

“Probably 30 minutes at a time,” Palermo said. “Overnight, we'll alternate riding in pairs for a number of hours so we can sufficiently rest two at a time.

“There are certain checkpoints throughout the course and the non-stop clock begins running as soon as the first cyclist leaves the starting area. We would love to win it, of course, but our expectation is just to finish as strong as we can ... and definitely finish.”