Team Member Spotlight

Team Member Spotlight

The following article by Houston Chronicle reporter Dale Robertson was published in the paper's April 15, 2009, edition.

Year after year, MS150 stalwart pedals on

In all his years spent pedaling from Houston to Austin each April to raise money for the fight against multiple sclerosis, Tom Webster has had only a couple of regrets along the way.

The longtime sales rep for FedEx wishes he'd learned about the MS 150 earlier - he came on board one year late but hasn't missed one since - and he wishes a cure for the disease could be found tomorrow. If that happened, Webster admits he would probably hang his bike up in the garage and leave it there.

It's not that he doesn't enjoy the two days spent pedaling to LaGrange and then on into Austin, which happens for the 25th time Saturday and Sunday. It's just that he's 60 years old now and his purpose has never been to show off, to unveil the latest and coolest bells-and-whistles-laden bike or his snazzy new kit, or to prove to the whippersnappers around him that he's as tough, strong and bike savvy as they are.

Webster couldn't care less about any of that stuff. Nor has he ever been motivated to stand front and center with the BP MS 150 big dogs, the guys who, with a few turns of their cranks, can dump hundreds of thousands of dollars into the coffers of the Lone Star MS Society.

The sum of Webster's fund-raising since 1986 is about $27,000. Although he'll be riding this weekend alongside those who have brought in that much with a single donation, it doesn't make him any less proud of what he has accomplished.

Webster, who trains year-around by taking spin classes and almost never takes his road bike out except for MS weekend, has ridden the 150 more times than anyone - covering some 3,900 miles.

His efforts have been for the simplest and most noble of reasons only, to keep alive the memory his father, who died of complications related to MS several years before the inaugural MS 150.

Webster missed the 1985 ride because he didn't own a bicycle, and by the time he heard folks were riding to Austin to raise money to find a cure for the disease, it was too late for him to join in.

But he bought a used Peugeot for $150 soon thereafter, began training and has been to every start since. Hasn't missed a finish, either.

"Never had to sag once," Webster said proudly. "There have been a couple bad days, cold and rainy, and also pretty windy. But that's not much to complain about over 23 years."

Two of the rides stand out in his memory. The first one, of course, "because I didn't know if I could do it ... That'll get your adrenaline going." And the third, when his 9-year-old son Ryan pedaled the entire distance with him under poor conditions.

"The weather was pretty cold, and there was a serious headwind," Webster recalls. "But Ryan did the whole thing. Never complained. I get a little choked up thinking about that ride. I remember how proud he was to wear the T-shirt they gave him to school the next day."

That one 150 would be enough for Ryan, though. So dad soldiered on alone, riding without affiliation for many years until the Houston FedEx office, inspired no doubt by Webster's annual resolve, put together a team.

"That's been a wonderful way to meet (colleagues) I wouldn't have met otherwise," he said. "They're a super group of guys."

Webster can't say how many more Houston-Austin treks he has left in him, but he's guessing, "five to 10 - I'll be there next year for sure." That will be No. 25, a full quarter-century's worth of MS 150s. He realizes someone will eventually complete more and break his record, but it's not a concern.

"I've just done this for my father, hoping other people won't have to suffer like he did," Webster said. "And it's been a great experience. The event is so well run, so organized, with so many helpful volunteers. As I recall, we started with only a few hundred people, and now there's about 13,000. I don't know how they make things go as smoothly as they do."

The many Tom Websters in the pack probably have a lot to do with that.