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Getting back on track
Thread Starter
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Raleigh, NC
Posts: 500
Height: 5' 9"
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Prepare to be inspired!! (not a joke)
> **This is a great read and will leave you in awe. The video is beyond
> words, be prepared to be humbled. It's at the bottom of the story -
> don't forget it.**
>
> ** ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~***
> * **Strongest Dad in the World***
> *
> [From Sports Illustrated, By Rick Reilly]
>
>
> I try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans. Work nights to
> pay for their text messaging. Take them to swimsuit shoots.
> But compared with Dick Hoyt, I don't compare!!!!
> Eighty-five times he's pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in
> marathons. Eight times he's not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a
> wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming
> and pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars--all in the
> ame day.
>
> Dick's also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back
> mountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. on a bike.
> Makes taking your son bowling look a little lame, right?
>
> And what has Rick done for his father? Not much--except save his life.
>
> This love story began in Winchester, Mass., 43 years ago, when Rick
> was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him
> brain-damaged and unable to control his limbs.
>
> ``He'll be a vegetable the rest of his life;'' Dick says doctors
> told him and his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. ``Put
> him in an institution.''
>
> But the Hoyts weren't buying it. They noticed the way Rick's eyes
> followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the
> engineering department at Tufts University and asked if there was
> anything to help the boy communicate. ``No way,'' Dick says he was
> told. ``There's nothing going on in his brain.''
>
> "Tell him a joke,'' Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed. Turns
> out a lot was going on in his brain.
>
> Rigged up with a computer that allowed him to control the cursor by
> touching a switch with the side of his head, Rick was finally able
> to communicate. First words? ``Go Bruins!'' And after a high school
> classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a
> charity run for him, Rick pecked out, ``Dad, I want to do that.''
>
> Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described ``porker'' who never ran
> more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still,
> he tried. ``Then it was me who was handicapped,'' Dick says. ``I was
> sore for two weeks.''
>
> That day changed Rick's life. ``Dad,'' he typed, ``when we were
> running, it felt like I wasn't disabled anymore!''
>
> And that sentence changed Dick's life. He became obsessed with
> giving Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such
> hard-belly shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston
> Marathon.
>
> ``No way,'' Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren't
> quite a single runner, and they weren't quite a wheelchair
> competitor. For a few years Dick and Rick just joined the massive
> field and ran anyway, then they found a way to get into the race
> officially: In 1983 they ran anoth! er marathon so fast they made the
> qualifying time for Boston the following year.
>
> Then somebody said, ``Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?''
>
> How's a guy who never learned to swim and hadn't ridden a bike since
> he was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon?
> Still, Dick tried.
>
> Now they've done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour
> Ironmans in Hawaii. It must be a buzzkill to be a 25-year-old stud
> getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don't
> you think?
>
> Hey, Dick, why not see how you'd do on your own? ``No way,'' he
> says. Dick does it purely for ``the awesome feeling'' he gets seeing Rick
> with a cantaloupe smile as they run, swim and ride together.
>
>
> This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th
> Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters.
> Their best time'? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992--only 35 minutes off
> the world record, which, in case you don't keep track of these
> things, happens to be held by a guy who was not pushing another man
> in a wheelchair at the time.
>
> ``No question about it,'' Rick types. ``My dad is the Father of the
> Century.''
>
> And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he
> had a mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of
> his arteries was 95% clogged. ``If you hadn't been in such great
> shape,'' one doctor told him, ``you probably would've died 15
> years ago.''!
> So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other's life.
>
> Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in
> Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland,
> Mass., always find ways to be together. They give speeches around
> the country and compete in some backbreaking race every weekend,
> including this Father's Day.
>
> That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really
> wants to give him is a gift he can never buy.
>
> ``The thing I'd most like,'' Rick types, ``is that my dad sit in the
> chair and I push him once.''
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~
>
> Here's the video....
> Click here: YouTube - (Can ) Father-son bond of Dick and Rick Hoyt
> <http://youtube.com/watch?v=ryCTIigaloQ&mode=related&search=>
>
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