The four founding fathers of ultra cycling are getting together for yet another big race! It’ll be their first together in a long time, I bet.
Lon Haldeman, John Howard, Michael Shermer, and John Marino did the first race across America in 1982. And these dudes have been active cyclists ever since.
Chris Kostman set up the reunion to happen at the Furnace Creek 508, an event he inherited from Marino some 21 years ago…
AND THE RACE IS THIS WEEKEND! Well, longer than that. It goes from 10/7-10. And it’ll be webcast live, so catch the action from the Founding Four. I’m not sure if they’ve been doing Ultras lately and they’ll be doing it as a Team, so who knows what the Live Webcast will reveal. Old farts having fun, or what?!
Here’s some of the PR news I just got from Kostman and his AdventureCORPS…
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This spring, 29 years after the original Great American Bike Race, I pitched Marino on the idea of the four founding fathers competing together as a four-man team in Furnace Creek 508, a race I have organized since he turned it over to me 21 years ago. Marino loved the idea and pitched it to Shermer. He figured he could just squeeze it into his schedule as the head of the Skeptics Society. Amazingly, Haldeman and Howard also both agreed. Lon would fly in for the race just hours after finishing leading one of his transcontinental PAC Tour events. Howard would make it happen between coaching engagements and setting more national or world records in one form of competitive cycling or another. They’ve all been training like crazy and making plans via email and cell phone.
It will be an absolute honor to share the roads with all 223 competitors in this year’s race, along with all the support crews, and the absolutely amazing race staff. None of us would be here if it weren’t for the vision, and pure sense of adventure, that Lon Haldeman, John Howard, Michael Shermer, and John Marino all displayed during the summer of 1982. After inspiring me on my own ultra path – as a competitor, as an event promoter, and as a human being – I am absolutely ecstatic to have them compete in this year’s 508. I am equally humbled, for I can think of no greater tip of the hat for my idols to offer than to enter this race which I love so much and which they begat. And for everyone in the race this year, I offer the solemn observation that you never know who YOU are going to inspire with your own efforts “out there” on the fabled Furnace Creek 508 race course. May we all roll so well and for so long as the founding four have done, and do.
Life has come full circle.
– Chris Kostman, Oak Park, CA
https://www.the508.com/2011web/fullcircle.html
