Thank you so much Davina for sharing this story and video. It has changed my life and inspired me so powerfully. After watching this, I have committed myself to accomplishing my dream of running in a marathon. I ran today for the first time in several months and it had been several years before that. As I pounded the pavement for 3/4 of a mile, my feet and back were killing me and I was so exhausted so I walked a 1/4 mile back home. I know that I have a long time until I am ready, and that I will have to push myself beyond my physical limits, but I will not give up on my dream. I CAN do it.

The Story:

Strongest Dad in the World
[From Sports Illustrated, By Rick Reilly]

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.

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.

Now they've done 212 triathlons, including four
grueling 15-hour Ironmans in Hawaii.

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.

``No question about it,'' Rick types. ``My dad is the
Father of the Century.''

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.''