Team Hoyt: What are the PRs of dad pushing his disabled son?

That 2:40 PB in a marathon is just fantastic. What a great couple of guys.

Prof. Rob M. wrote:

That 2:40 PB in a marathon is just fantastic. What a great couple of guys.

Dick began competing at 41 yrs old...that 2:40 was when he was around 45 or so, and only a few yrs into running!

Also, back in the day, he was required to qualify for Boston by pushing his son in another marathon. This, I believe, was when the qualifiying time was 2:50 for his age group.

I've had the very good fortune of meeting Rick and his son at the expo for the Boston Marathon. Their story is simply incredible.

If you have a few minutes, watch this video:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ryCTIigaloQ&mode=related&search=

Word of caution...if you're at work, close the door unless you're comfortable with your co-workers seeing you dry your eyes at your desk.

Seriously, this guy was out of shape at the time.

His son said to him, "Dad, when we were running, I felt normal."

This made his dad want the normal life for his son and take up running. They later moved on to triathlons and are competing again at Kona this year. He will not do a marathon or tri without his son, as people have asked before.

If you watch the video with the music and a tear doesn't come, you're probably an asshole or have a medical condition in which you can't cry.

looks like the half marathon PR is a little soft compared to the other times.

[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 suck.

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 same

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 another 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.''

He pushes a bag of concrete when training...if his son isn't able to go. His son went to BU.

this is a great inspirational story

The 2:40 must be good for a sub 2:30 if he's running solo.

He was doing this before there were good wheelchairs designed for this sort of thing too.

runnerryan wrote:

I meant dad in the title, oh boy I wish there was a way to fix that.

There you go. You're welcome.

nothing against this guy, as I think this is a great story , BUT I think the wheelchair actually aids his times.

If you watch the video, you can see the wheelchair has some kind of aerobar setup on it. So in essence he's gaining a mechanical advantage from the wheels on the chair, and being able to unload some of his weight by leaning on the bars. His son provides enough weight so that he can fully lean on the chair without it tipping up. He's sort of half cycling and half running. I realize it'd be a bitch on the uphills, but I bet they fly on the downs. I think that explains some of his pretty stout p.r.'s

I'd be surprised if he ran that fast without the wheelchair.

Nevertheless, I still think he's an amazing guy doing a wonderful thing for his son.

I agree that it may help on the downhills, but there is absolutely no way the net effect is beneficial, for the same reason that there is no such thing as a perpetual motion machine.

I've passed this guy or watched him go by as I spectated a few times. It won't matter how many times it happens, I get teary-eyed. I literally had tears coming out of my eyes as I passed him in a marathon. It makes you want to offer to help or find someone else who could benefit from the same thing. It's simply staggering. 13 hours for an ironman may be even more impressive than the 2:40 marathon when you consider how hard the swim must be. Reilly can be a cornball but that is a great column. I've read it many times and I still love it. If I could every one of my athletes to see the Hoyts go by in a race, I would drive them all to see it. Maybe for a day or two afterwards nobody would be whining when they realize how big a task others are taking on.

disagree. One of the problems in a marathon (aside from glycogen depletion), especially for the bigger guys is the pounding your legs take. You unweight your legs to a certain degree, and your legs don't feel half as bad at 20 miles as they do if you're standing (or running in this case) upright with all your weight on them.

Also consider where the p.r. was run (at Boston), lots of downhill there, but the guy doesn't take the pounding on the quads he would if he were running upright. I imagine the wheelchair thingy has a set of brakes on it as well, so he doesn't need to modulate his speed with leg muscle, just with a pull of the brake levers.

I know this is a little bit different, but when I push my 22 month old son the baby jogger, I sure as hell don't set any PRs. Not only is there additional weight, it's a pain in the ass - and I'm standing upright. I couldn't imagine running bent over for 26.2 miles pushing an adult. Sorry, but you'll never convince me Dick Hoyt has an advantage over us guys running solo.

when you're sitting on an exercise bike (or a regular bike for that matter), and you start pedaling, is it your inclination to sit upright for the duration of your exercise, or do you lean forward and place your hands on the handlebars? why?

Try doing both and tell me which one seems easier.

Traditional baby joggers require the pusher to stand upright, and run while pushing the thing. Hoyt's set up allows him to rest (some of) his weight on the jogger. Big difference IMHO.

You don't lean on aero bars with a baby jogger do you? But the Hoyt contraption has one. I agree with midwaste on this one.