As we
enter into a time when people are making resolutions for 2013, many of them
health related, I wanted to share my experiences with an international running
group for people with disabilities, Achilles International. It has become one of my favorite weekly
activities, and it’s challenged both my body and
my mind. I hope that you, too, will get involved in the new year.
Growing
up in Atlanta around a lot of other people in chairs, I was involved in a variety
of organized sports from an early age. Being born with spina bifida, I have
good arm strength, so a lot of options were available to me. When I went to
college in Greenville, South Carolina, I knew that there would be far less
people in chairs around, but I wanted the challenge of creating my own
opportunities when it came to needs relating to my disability, including
fitness. Just because my team sports days might have been behind me, or at
least on hold, didn't mean that I wanted to let my fitness level fall by the
wayside. It was at that point that I turned to running and never looked back.
I always
assumed that running was something that I couldn't do with other people,
especially able bodied people, because my pace is erratic depending on if I'm going
uphill, downhill, or flat. Like most things with my disability, I took the
situation for what it was and figured out a way to adapt. I love music, so
through college and my first 8 years of living in Nashville, I used running as
my way to listen to music to unwind while getting in some great cardio work
outdoors. Even though those solo runs on familiar asphalt became something that
I really enjoyed, I always knew that running for most people was a social kind
of thing, and that was something that I was missing out on, especially since I’m generally a really social person. I participated in Race
For The Cure twice in just the walk portion and saw how much camaraderie being
part of my team brought, and it stayed in the back of my mind for several years
that I would love that kind of experience on a more regular basis.
The past
two years, I got the opportunity to watch parts of the Country Music Marathon
in Nashville as part of a fundraising initiative for our local youth wheelchair
sports and independence program, and especially this past year, it really
brought me back to my previous race experiences. Race day logistics can be
tough on your own in a chair, so I hadn’t entered any more races, but
watching the other runners, I knew I had to do something to get that experience
again. I started talking about it with someone else in our group, and he asked
if I knew about Achilles International because a new chapter had just been
started in Nashville. I wasn't familiar with Achilles, but after learning more
about it, it sounded like the perfect group for me.
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On Thanksgiving, Amy ran in one of Nashville's more popular races, The Boulevard Bolt. Amy and her guides brought some holiday cheer! |
Achilles
International was founded in 1983 New York by Dick Traum, an amputee who had
found running to be a powerful way to raise self-esteem while keeping in shape,
and he wanted to provide that same opportunity to other people with
disabilities. As part of Achilles, each
athlete with a disability is paired with another athlete without a disability,
referred to as a guide, to run together.
To Achilles, as it always had been to me, running is defined as any kind
of forward locomotion, and athletes represent a wide range of disability
groups, from chair users to walker, crutch, or brace users to amputees to those
who are blind and a variety of others. Some
Achilles athletes use a power chair for their daily mobility but switch to a
manual chair for their Achilles workout. Some people use a racing chair or a
handcycle, but I use my manual everyday chair for my runs, which I like because
I don’t have to have any extra
equipment, other than the pair of gloves from a local bike shop that I started
using within the past few months to cut down on the blisters on my hands, to
participate. Many people come to
Achilles with no running experience, some only able to go a very short distance
on their own at first. For people in
chairs, the guides can even help push if needed. Achilles athletes have participated in
numerous events, and chapters exist across the US and in dozens of countries
around the world.
A
few weeks after the Country Music Marathon, I went to my first Wednesday night
run, and I was immediately hooked.
Sometimes fitness groups for people with disabilities feel so modified
that it can be a setback to reaching a higher level of success, but not with
Achilles. Each pairing of athlete and
guide is free to run independent of others in the group so that everyone can
have his or her own goals. It’s the goals of the athlete that rule the pairing, but there’s plenty of advice to go around from the guides. Something that I love about Achilles is that
most of our guides have done at least one marathon or half marathon. As someone who has been at least a casual
athlete my whole life, that brings a credibility to the group to know that I’ll always have advice from an experienced runner and that
the guides are capable of pushing me to do more than I thought I could.
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Amy's first race this past Spring |
From a fitness standpoint, I started with
Achilles without really having goals. I wasn’t a new runner, and I was
just there to be able to run with other people and to run somewhere different
from my normal route. However, I’m way too competitive to maintain that
attitude. Now, I get disappointed when I
don’t beat a previous time and constantly work to get faster, especially when
it comes to hill climbing. I also have realized a goal that I didn’t even
know I had when I first started with Achilles, running throughout the year. My favorite running spot for years had been a
park near my house, but there aren’t lights along the path, so I didn’t run
much from November to March since it gets dark early. Now, I have a lit place to run on Wednesdays
and have scoped out a few more lit pathways that I didn’t before know existed. I also have the people to run with to make
running at night safe. Even though I
didn’t think that I’d like running in the cold, I’m actually really enjoying it
now that I’ve been at it a few months. (You can ask me if I changed my mind
when it gets frigid in January and February!) I’ve lost weight and gained
muscle, something that isn’t always easy from a chair, and I’m proud of what
I’ve been able to accomplish from a fitness perspective since joining Achilles.
My favorite part of Achilles, though,
has to be the people who I've met. Like I mentioned before, I never
really considered running with someone else because of my pace, and now I'm
loving it. I’ve made some awesome friends through running. It’s amazing the conversations that can
happen away from the busyness of life on an open road, and the friendships that
I’ve built out of conversations from running are ones that I cherish. My guides have been fun to be around, they
help me if something comes up, and they let me do my own thing the rest of the
time, never making me feel awkward that my pace might be much different than
their own. All races and training routes
are different, and sometimes there’s an unexpected curb that I need help over, a
crowd of people that I need help alerting that I’m coming, or something as
simple as race packet pick-up being in an awkward area, but for me, having a
guide is probably 90% social, which is exactly what I need to keep me
motivated. What's most important to me is that all of the guides that
I've had, especially the ones that I've had several times, want to run with me
because I'm Amy and I'm fun to run with, not because I'm the girl in the
wheelchair that might need help. People with disabilities want to be
seen for who they are and not for limitations that their disability gives them,
and that’s just the kind of thinking that Achilles guides exemplify.
My guides have also encouraged me to think
of running in new ways and to push myself to do things that I didn’t before
consider. Besides running on Wednesday
nights with the rest of Achilles, one of my guides who became a close friend
and I started running with another running group on Monday nights. For this friend and others who have run with
me outside of Wednesday nights, it’s still a little humbling that they would
ask to run with me on other nights knowing that they are going to have to go my
pace and not their own, but the extra work has certainly strengthened me as a
runner. Maybe the third time that my
friend and I ran together, towards the end of our run, she said that she was
thinking of doing the Country Music Half Marathon next spring. She said that she didn't want to do it for
time and that she would run it with me if I wanted. I was definitely caught off guard because I
had never before considered doing a half marathon. I had really only thought about 5Ks up to
that point, simply because I couldn’t think that far ahead in training. I started to say that I wasn’t sure about it,
but apparently my friend knew just how to persuade me. Right before she mentioned the half marathon,
she asked me how I felt, and I said that I felt good. When I hesitated about the half marathon, she
said that we had just ran 4 miles, and I had said that I felt good; a half
marathon, she reminded me, was almost just 2 more times of what we just
did. I don’t know why that clicked with
me, but I can say that someone asking me to do it and being really encouraging
about it made the difference. So, now I'm registered and about to really
get after training. I’m still not even
sure it’s hit me what I’ve gotten myself into, but I know that my supportive
guides will get me through it!
It’s clear to me how my guides have
helped me, but every once in a while, I get a unique compliment from one of
them. A few of them have said that the
interval training, running slowly with me while I go up a hill and then much
faster while I go down a hill, has made them a better runner. It’s really unique that an able bodied person
would comment that a person with a disability has helped them reach a higher
level of fitness, and it’s something that I’m proud to be part of making
happen.
![]() |
Achilles always works to keep everyone safe with guides and reflective gear. |
I have now completed six races as part
of Achilles, and each has been a uniquely awesome experience. The crowds on race day always energize me to
be ready to do my best. I will never be
the fastest person there, but that doesn’t matter; I’m doing something I love and
getting better at it in my own way, and that’s enough for me. With each race, I realize something. Ultimately, I'm a part of Achilles because
I love running and being part of a group of awesome people, but part of me
knows that I'm doing something much bigger than myself. Nashville isn't
yet used to wheelchair racers, and society in general still hasn’t fully caught
on to the capabilities of people with disabilities. I know that every
time I enter a race, regardless of how long it takes me to cross the finish
line, I'm letting other people see what a person with a disability can do. I’m hopefully helping Nashville to become a
place where wheelchair divisions of races are common and society at large to be
a place where the capabilities of people with disabilities are assumed rather
than questioned. And I’m already seeing
progress. Our Achilles chapter has
received amazing support from the Nashville Striders, Middle Tennessee’s
largest running club. At any race that
they manage where we’ve had wheelchair athletes compete, they always ask if we
would prefer a separate wheelchair start, and they always recognize the top
wheelchair finishers alongside the able bodied top finishers. I’ve gotten great feedback from other racers
at each race. I’ve been embraced by other
traditionally able bodied running groups, and someone is always excited to run
with me there if I don’t bring an Achilles friend. There may be a lot of progress to come, but I
have loved being part of what’s happened so far.
Being part of Achilles has helped to
make 2012 an awesome year full of experiences that I wouldn’t have imagined
having this time last year. I can’t wait
to see what 2013 brings, and I hope that you will join me in exploring what
Achilles has to offer this year.
Columnist Amy Saffell lives in Nashville, TN and works in the music industry. She enjoys spending time with friends, concerts, and volunteering for a local youth wheelchair sports and independence group.
Interesting site! It's just very inspiring to see a website which empowers women and PWDs ability to jive in and do what a normal person could do. Keep it up, I'll sure be following you all through out your activities.
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