Congratulations to Kurt Pickle, he was inducted into the Furnace Creek 508 Hall of Fame this year! The Furnace Creek 508 Hall of Fame honors those athletes who have shown a long-term commitment to pursuing their personal and athletic goals on the famed and fabled Furnace Creek 508 race course. Inductees into the Hall of Fame have completed a minimum of five Furnace Creek 508 events. Kurt has been part of a 4 man team that has dominated their category at the 508, winning 5 years straight 2007-2011!

For 2012 Kurt’s has paired up with Keith Flood to take on the 2 man category. The 508 consists of 8 stages where each team mate must do either the odd or even stages there is no swapping out riders during a stage. This means that each rider will do 250+ miles with 18,000 feet of climbing for a total race of 508 miles and 36,000 feet of elevation gain. Temps can range from the 40’s to over 100 coupled with strong winds make this especially challenging. Fortunately, Sonoma County provides plenty of training opportunities to combat these challenges.

The race starts in Santa Clarita off I-5 in Southern California. Stage 1 ends in the Mojave Desert in California City. The race makes a rough horseshoe route through Death Valley and eventually ends in Twentynine Palms. Kurt and Keith will have a support crew of 2 in a follow car during the race which starts at 9:30am on Saturday Oct 6th. They hope to finish roughly 33 hours later by early evening on Sunday. There is a live webcast and feed of race updates through out the weekend on the 508 website. Kurt and Keith want to thank the Red Peloton and their sponsors for making this race possible. Also special thanks go to OSMO Nutrition for being our hydration sponsor and Clif for our food sponsor.

The Great Horned Owls: Keith (middle left) and Kurt (middle right) and their support crew