Been a tough week? Things kinda rough at work?

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Read about Dick Hoyt and his brain damaged son, Rick who have run 85 marathons and 212 triathalons including 15 Ironmans in Hawaii together, with Dick pushing or towing. Thanks to Georgette from Chronicle of a Meandering Traveller who picked up this Sports Illustrated story from another source.

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.''

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. [....snip] Meandering Traveller