The Tour de Kids

Ace Distribution Center riders Mary Mauer (from left), Tom Wagner, Tom Van Damme and Dennis Toth prepare for their upcoming 340-mile bike ride to raise funds for the Children's Miracle Network. The Princeton Ace riders hope to raise $25,000 for sick children in 170 hospitals across the country. (BCR photo/Barb Kromphardt)

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PRINCETON — In the end, it’s simple.

All the heat, and the sweat, and the aching muscles ... and it’s all about the kids.

And so, beginning on Sept. 11, five employees of the Ace Hardware Distribution Center in Princeton will wriggle into tight black suits, perch on tiny hard seats, and bike 340 miles from the Chicago suburbs to St. Louis for a bunch of sick children they don’t even know.

The fifth annual Ace “Tour de Kids” charity bicycle ride, which will begin at Ace’s corporate office in Oak Brook, will attempt to raise $1 million for Children’s Miracle Network, almost double the amount employees raised in 2007. Children’s Miracle Network is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping kids by raising funds for 170 children’s hospitals across North America.

Riders will also stop at Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago, Children’s Hospital of Illinois in Peoria, St. John’s Children’s Hospital in Springfield, and Cardinal Glennon and St. Louis Children’s Hospital in St. Louis.

Riding from Princeton are Dennis Toth, Tom Van Damme, Mary Maurer, Thomas Wagner and Michael Moit, and they have set a goal of $25,000.

This is Toth’s third ride, and it’s by far the shortest. His previous two rides were the 1,126 miles from Chicago to Denver, and the 1,064 miles from Minnesota to Niagara Falls.

Toth said this year’s ride is shorter because Ace’s fall show is in St. Louis, as opposed to last year’s show, which was in Denver. He said he doesn’t mind the shorter trip at all.

“They can raise just as much money and be a lot cheaper of a ride, so they can give more money to the hospitals,” he said. “That’s the main reason, to just give as much money as we can to the hospitals.”

Last year Toth and the riders visited five different children’s hospitals on the ride to Denver.

“Seeing these kids encourages me to raise as much money as possible this year,” he said. “This opened my eyes to their challenges and how each day they looked at four walls of their room.”

Van Damme, who also has ridden for three years, doesn’t mind the shorter trip either.

“It’s irrelevant,” he said. “A mile’s a mile, as long we’re riding for the kids and raising money.”

Some of the riders are participating for the first time. Maurer said she was inspired by hearing about the children in the hospitals, and for a more personal reason.

“It also gave me a good reason to get healthier myself,” she said.

Wagner, who is also riding for the first time, said, he, too, was moved by the stories of the hospitalized children.

“I’m also going to be having a grandchild born later this fall, and I’m doing it for that grandchild, too,” he said.

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