Sports, challeges and purpose

Mar 13, 2020

Extreme athlete/Rotarian Rob DeCou

Raise your hand if you have ever heard of an athlete who swam from Catalina to Palos Verdes, dried off and mounted a bicycle to pedal 400 miles (48 hours) to Death Valley, and then dismounted and ran the Badwater 135 to the portal of Mount Whitney. How about doing it to raise money for the District 5280 fight against Human Trafficking? That superhuman athlete is Playa Venice Sunrise Rotarian Rob DeCou, who will be plunging into the Pacific at Doctor's Cove, Catalina, at 9 p.m. October 8, arriving in Palos Verdes at noon the following day.. You will get to meet him today at Rotary.

Rob is the Executive Producer and Co-Founder at Lux Virtual, a creative studio that creates Hollywood-grade video, animation, and immersive experiences to simplify and illuminate brilliant ideas. Highly involved in ultra-endurance sports, to raise awareness and build community around important issues., in 2017, Rob completed a 146-mile run across Death Valley to the top of Mt. Whitney raising almost $700,000 for End Polio Now, Rotary’s global campaign to eradicate polio. The prior year, Rob completed the solo Race Across America, known as “the World’s Toughest Bicycle Race”, a 3,000-mile journey from coast to coast raising over $21,000 to fund brain cancer research. Rob recently completed a 31-mile swim from Port Angeles Washington to Victoria Canada across the strait of Juan de Fuca raising over $10,000. In October 2020 Rob will be taking on the world’s toughest ultra-ironman known as Uberman and projecting raising over $100,000.

Rob is also a proud member of the LAX Chamber of Commerce. He lives in Westchester with his wife Kristin son Hudson, and daughter Kalea. Bring a guest!