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...May we all find inspiration both within and outside of ourselves every day to be the very best we can be...

Best Dad in the World
Langskie/BruceLi

A son asked his father, 'Dad, will you take part in a marathon with
me?'. The father who, despite having a heart condition, says 'Yes'.

They went on to complete the marathon together. Father and son went on
to join other marathons, the father always saying 'Yes' to his son's
request of going through the race together.

One day, the son asked his father, 'Dad, let's join the Ironman
together.' To which, his father said 'Yes' too.

For those who don't know, Ironman is the toughest triathlon ever. The
race encompasses three endurance events of a 2.4 mile (3.86 kilometer)
ocean swim, followed by a 112 mile (180.2 kilometer) bike ride, and
ending with a 26.2 mile (42.195 kilometer) marathon along the coast of
the Big Island . Father and son went on to complete the race
together...... 

We all try to be a good father. Give our kids mulligans. Work nights to pay for their text messaging. Take them to swimsuit shoots.

Now let's know what this man can do for his son....

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."

                          I CAN - an inspiring true to life story of Rick & Dick Hoyt

KAILUA-KONA, Hawaii -- When Rick Hoyt developed cerebral palsy at birth in 1962 after his umbilical cord became wrapped around his neck, cutting off oxygen to his brain, doctors suggested to his parents that he be institutionalized. But Dick Hoyt and his wife refused, insisting that their son have as normal a life as possible.

Although some might question whether running nearly 1,000 marathons and triathlons over 27 years is normal, the Hoyts think it is. On Saturday, Dick and Rick will attempt their fifth Hawaii Ironman Triathlon World Championship.

The normal life saw Rick, who cannot talk or walk, graduating from a public high school and going on to Boston College, where he earned a degree in special education. After

 teaching for one year, Rick turned to his interest in computers, and helped Boston College develop the "Eagle Eyes" computer system that uses eye and head movements to help him communicate.

While attending a college basketball game, he heard an announcement about a benefit run for a cross-country runner who had become paralyzed in an accident.

Dick remembers his son coming home and saying, "Dad, we have to do something for him. I want to show him that life goes on even though he is paralyzed."

"It was Rick who was the motivation," for their racing career, Hoyt said. "He asked me to race."

That first race, in 1979, was a five-mile run with Dick pushing Rick in a two-wheel running chair.

"We started building up to marathons, and entered our first marathon in 1981," Hoyt said. Their list of racing accomplishments includes 64 marathons, a distance of 26.2 miles, including 24 consecutive Boston Marathons.

"We did our first triathlon in 1985 -- a one-mile swim, 40-mile bike ride and a 10-mile run," Hoyt said.

In 1988, they attempted their first Ironman race, featuring a 2.4-mile ocean swim, a 112-mile bicycle ride and a full marathon. They had to drop out when Dick became nauseated during the swim and failed to make the cutoff time. They returned the next year and finished the race. In 2003, they crashed at the 85-mile mark of the bicycle ride and spent five hours in a hospital emergency room. But they finished again in 2004.

They also completed a triathlon over the Ironman distance that was not sanctioned by Ironman. That race, in 1986 at Cape Cod, Mass., gave them their best finish time of 13½ hours.

"Rick loves sports," his father said. "He really looks forward to the Ironman and gets very excited. He is getting the same benefits I get. His adrenelin really gets going."

During the swim, Hoyt tows his son in a 5-foot-long rubber inflatable boat, with a tow line attached to a belt around his waist. Rick sits in a seat in front of the specially built bike, and in a three-wheel chair for the run.

"The chair has been updated to make it lighter," Hoyt said.

The long bicycle ride takes athletes from the pier in this seaside village over barren lava fields to the rolling ranch lands at the northern end of Hawaii Island.

"I don't mind the hills, but the winds can be brutal," said Hoyt, who pushes a total of 365 pounds during the bike ride.

"I don't know how much longer I can do this," said Hoyt, 66, adding that this will be their last Ironman-distance race. "But we're not giving up on triathlons."

He said he and his son, now 44, plan to compete in the new Ironman 70.3 series of races, which cover a distance half that of the regular Ironman course.

Now retired from the Massachusetts Air National Guard after 37 years, Hoyt spends much of his time traveling extensively as a motivational speaker. He also promotes the book he wrote during the first six months of his retirement. The book, "It's Only A Mountain," book chronicles how Rick's parents "went about raising him," and "is selling all over the world," the father said. "It was recently translated into Korean and is in the process of being translated into Japanese."

The Hoyts also are featured in two DVDs, including one called "Team Hoyt Ironman" with "My Redeemer Lives" as background music that Hoyt said is "very powerful."

Their impact is evident when they walk down the street here and are constantly stopped by fans who wish them well, thank them for their inspiration and ask to pose for pictures.

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TEAM HOYT IN BOSTON MARATHON 2008