Dan Wright: in Star City Striders "Footsteps"
More Than Just a Face in the Crowd
published in "Footsteps" the newsletter of the Star City Striders
by Rick Watkins
Dan Wright has ALS, a disease without cure. Yet, he still has a goal for himself, one he sets each day. “My goal is to keep doing whatever I can do, however long I can do it,” he says.
Dan began running in 1986, and in the next eighteen years logged thousands of miles in training and ran, by his recollection, “approximately 188 races”. He joined the Star City Striders early on and served as the club’s president from 1995-1997.
But more than that, Dan became a fixture among the Roanoke Valley running scene; a group run organizer, training partner and mentor to many runners, race director, Team in Training leader, Greenway Project volunteer, and so much more. With his wiry frame, heavily-muscled legs, balding dome laced with wisps of red hair, and distinctive gait (I called him “the windshield wiper man”), Dan was truly an original. Add his Yankee accent and easy smile, a farm-chore induced work ethic, and an obsession with punctuality, routine, and accurate training distances, you had a memorable character indeed.
Or, as Dan so aptly puts it, “I’m one weird dude.”
Dan regrets, like many runners, that he never qualified and ran the Boston Marathon. “I never had the speed, but it was my goal for years.”
But he did travel and run the Dublin Marathon in Ireland, and accomplished the elusive ‘negative split’ one year at the Virginia Beach Marathon. His favorite race is the Charleston Distance Run (15-miler) despite the fact that one year he collapsed from dehydration within sight of the finish and awoke on a cot at the first aid station in the stadium infield.
Dan’s last race was at Charleston in 2004 when he finished the Charleston Distance 5K. At the time, doctors had theories about his illness, but no answers. All Dan knew for certain was that 3.1 miles in 39:32, his slowest 5K ever, left him as exhausted and spent as finishing fifteen miles the prior year. Since 2000, Dan had “started getting way too slow in races” for no apparent reason. Treatments, tests, training harder, training less, rest, nothing seemed to help him return to form, and muscle loss and weakness made Dan suspect the worst. His running days were behind him.
Doctors theorized that Dan had a serious illness, but only recently was a diagnosis of ALS confirmed. Commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, ALS is a progressive neuromuscular disease that attacks its victims’ muscles, causing atrophy in their arms, legs, and hands, and often affecting the throat muscles as well so that speech and swallowing are major problems. The disease can result in total paralysis in its later stages though the mind remains unaffected. There is at present no cure.
“I’ve known for 22 months that I probably have ALS but I just got the diagnosis in August.” Dan said. “I decided I’d do whatever I can” to get more help for ALS patients in the Roanoke area, not for himself, “but the people coming up” who will need support.
Dan believes the mental adjustment from being a fit and active runner to an ALS patient was his hardest challenge. “When I first started walking instead of running, I’d wait until dark so no one would see me out” because (I) “was embarrassed” to be so slow and weakened. The help of Strider friends who came to walk with him made exercise remain “very enjoyable” and staying active in the club is how “I get to see my friends nowadays.”
Dan says the most important lesson he learned from running is to “start slow and gradually pick up the pace” as your body warms up. “It took me years to understand” that the best races came when he was conservative early and saved some energy for the final miles.
This lesson has been well-applied to Dan’s current life. Despite ALS forcing Dan to quit his job and curtail the rigorous physical demands of training, he refuses to sit around or feel sorry for himself. In fact, in many ways he’s more active with the Striders than he has been in years. He wrote a recent well-received article for Footsteps, has participated in all but one Strider fun run in 2006, is working behind the scenes for the upcoming Women’s 5K Distance Run/Walk, and is passing along his vast knowledge of the Greenway Project so the Striders can become better involved in seeing the project successfully completed.
But Dan’s service work continues beyond the club and into the community at large. His pet project today is to raise awareness of the need for Roanoke area ALS patients and their families to have better access to information and help, such as medical equipment lending, home care visits, respite care, and more. And, of course, to help fund research to find a cure for a fatal disease which affects as many as 30,000 Americans at any given time.
Dan has volunteered time to the DC/MD/VA Chapter of the ALS Association to help organize and support the first “Walk to D’Feet ALS” which is scheduled for 1:30pm October 8 at the Salem Memorial Baseball Stadium. With Strider support, Dan has formed a team, the “Wright Track” to participate in the event and help raise funds for the ALS Association. The goal is not just to raise money and awareness locally, but to establish the basis for the organization to expand its services into the Roanoke Valley and Western Virginia. Dan plans to walk as much as he can at the event, and encourages Strider members and friends to join him.
Information about the event, Lou Gehrig’s Disease, or the ALS Association can be found at the website www.ALSinfo.org. While online, you can also volunteer to help at the event, join Dan’s team as a walker, and/or make a donation. The Strider Board has voted to make a donation to help Dan’s team, and many Strider individuals have already donated or signed up to walk.
Dan’s attitude is remindful of the late Johnny Kelly (the Elder), who ran the Boston Marathon 61 times, the last at age 85, finishing 58 times and winning twice. Asked in later years about his slowing times and difficulty going the distance, Kelly remarked that “I don’t judge success by what I once did, but by what I keep doing.”
So, Dan Wright gets up every morning, sets his goals for the day, and “keeps doing” all that his body will allow. It is a lesson from which we all can learn.
As runner and writer, the late George Sheehan wrote in his book The Running Life, “There is nothing more certain than the defeat of a man who gives up, (except) the victory of one who will not.”
Dan Wright, as he moves to the finish line, slowed by disease, runs faster to victory.
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