Sunday, May 3, 2009

More Supportive People

I am registered to participate in the North Shore Spring Triathlon on May 18. As it will likely take me 3 hours to complete this event, I have had some concerns about how my participation will impact the race. The biggest issue is the swim because I am very slow. Well I just talked to the race director about my concerns and his only real comment was you're doing the race - stop worrying about everything, that's our problem. It is all fine to make rules requiring acceptance of disabled athletes in your events, however, it does cause some interesting challenges for a group of volunteers to solve and work around in order for that to happen. The organizers of this race have openly accepted my participation and never once questioned whether I should be involved. The only questions have been what do I need to modify and how do we make it work. There have been more questions in my mind than theirs. If only the rest of the world was as accepting and willing to modify rules in order for everyone to participate. At least now the only barriers to completion are my own physical ones. Three straight hours of exercise will be a great achievement for me.

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