Revisiting an awesome story

Last month my oldest daughter had to choose a biography to read and do a project on.  She had wanted to do Michael Jordan but had already done a report on him on other time (she loves basketball!) so even though the teacher said they could use the same person, we thought she should pick someone else.  We searched the internet for some interesting figures, people who had similar interests as she does.  I also leaned toward women, because, well, she is a girl and it's good to learn about powerful, influential or successful women.  Some on the list were:  Larry Bird, Dana Torres, Pat Summitt, Mia Hamm and Joan Benoit (runner AND from Maine = double bonus!).  Not all of these people had a biography written and not all were really good stories.

She finally ended up choosing the story Devoted, which is the story of Dick and Rick Hoyt.  If you aren't familiar with the story, watch below and have tissues ready.

I was completely blown away by this video when I first saw it.  How could you not be?  This man was completing marathons and ironmans all while pushing and carrying his son.  As if it's not a great enough achievement to complete those things as a single person, Dick Hoyt was doing it with the added weight of another person.  Wow. 

All this time I thought they were just completing the races.  But then I read the book.

Dick and Rick were not allowed to register for the Boston Marathon the first few times they ran it.  The BAA did not have a category for them so they were only able to run as bandits.  Eventually, the BAA finally decided that they could run officially,  but they had to qualify.

In Rick's age group. 

20 year old age group. 

Dick and Rick did it.  They qualified for Boston with a time under 3 hours and 20 minutes. 

Dick ran that marathon, pushing his son, AND STILL qualified for Boston in an age group 20+ years younger than his actual age. 

That is freakin' impressive. 

Want to hear some more stats about Team Hoyt?

~Best Marathon time--2:40:47    Joan Benoit's winning time in the 1984 Olympics 2:24:52
~Best 5K--17:40   My best time ever was 24:01.  I'm feeling pretty dang slow now.  Thanks Dick.
~Best Ironman--13:43:37
For those of you that might not know, an Ironman is 2.4 miles swimming, 112 miles biking and 26.2 miles running.  Back to back. 
~One other thing--Dick didn't even learn how to swim until he was 41. 

Let me repeat.  He. Learned. How. To. Swim. At. 41.   

Moral of this post:

You can do it.

If Dick can do any and all of that above, pushing and carrying and towing his son, you can certainly do whatever it is you are wanting to do.


Oh, and my daughter should get an A on her project just for the sheer awesomeness of this story.