Father's dream of pushing his disabled son in the Boston Marathon has to wait

Logan (right) and his father Johncock at Geitner Park in Hickory, North Carolina, the United States. Photos: TNS

Bill Johncock and his differently-abled son Logan have gotten pretty accustomed to rolling with the punches over the past year, as Dad has pushed them – quite literally – toward a big running goal: the 2020 Boston Marathon.

The first major milepost came on March 2,2019, when Johncock fought through leg cramps at the Myrtle Beach Marathon but ultimately won the battle, pushing then-20-year-old Logan across the finish line in a borrowed racing wheelchair in a time fast enough to qualify them for Boston as a “duo team”.

Much more recently, a different borrowed racing chair turned out to have a steering problem that wore out Johncock’s arms more than his legs at the Atlanta Half Marathon, a tune-up race he ran with Logan just a few weekends ago.

And now they are having to roll with something Johncock never could have anticipated when he first started down his personal road to Boston: With the coronavirus pandemic and the current trend of cancelling large public events continuing, the Boston Marathon – originally set for April 20 – has been postponed to Sept 14.

Johncock’s trying to take it all in stride.

“It’s just like the chair, or the weather. It’s something that is beyond our control, ” says the 55-year-old podiatrist. “We’re gonna control what we can control. The rest, we’ve gotta put it in God’s hands.... We’ll go to Plan B.”

But at the same time, you can tell how big a blow it is to him. After all, getting to the Boston Marathon with Logan – who has a rare genetic disorder called Angelman syndrome, which makes walking difficult and talking impossible – has been Johncock’s dream for the past 15 years.

‘Maybe I’ll be good at something’

Johncock developed a nearly instant passion for running when he was 13 years old, and it’s kind of a funny story. His older brother Phil was the homecoming king, his class valedictorian and an all-state football player, all rolled into one.

Johncock had never beaten Phil at anything in his life, save for maybe a game or two of marbles. One day, Phil decided to enter an 8-mile (13km) footrace with some teammates, and their father gave permission to Johncock to run it, too. Phil and his pals charged out like rockets, but Johncock caught them and passed them about two miles in – and Johncock never saw them again.

The Johncocks have qualified for the Boston Marathon as a dual team.

“I said, ‘Maybe I’ll be good at something here, ’” Johncock recalls, laughing.

The following year, his father also decided to take up running, at the age of 50. They bonded over it quickly and deeply, and the year after that, they ran their first marathon together. Once they developed enough speed to go with their endurance, they qualified for the Boston Marathon, toeing the line together at the storied start in Hopkinton, Massachussetts, when Johncock was 19 and his dad was 55.

Even after Johncock started having kids of his own, he kept running, eventually logging more than 100 marathons. He pushed his first son, Drake, in a jogging stroller on the weekends. But by the time Logan came along, Drake was on to other things, and as his three kids grew up, Johncock bonded with each of them over different activities.

His and Logan’s was running; in fact, by the time Logan was about two years old, they were already entering races together.

“My oldest son used to like to ride in the running chair that we had well enough, but... Logan just lit up – in a different way, ” Johncock says. “I guess maybe because of some of his lack of mobility, he really enjoyed the movement of it. It was just like, ‘Wow.’”

Angelman is somewhat similar to Down syndrome, marked by delayed development and intellectual disability.

Logan can’t speak at all, communicating either via a very limited sign-language vocabulary he uses only “if he’s really motivated”, his dad says, laughing – “he signs pretty good for cheeseburgers, but he doesn’t sign very well for broccoli” – or by either pointing or pulling his parents or siblings toward what he wants. He can feed himself, but he can’t dress himself. He can walk, but not very far or for very long; and he certainly can’t run.

Oh, and one other thing about people with Angelman: They generally are unusually happy. Logan is no exception. And the more his dad ran with him, the happier he seemed.

‘The best motivation in the world’

As an individual, Johncock has qualified for and run the Boston Marathon six times – in 1984 with his dad, then again in 1991,1992,1993,2002 and 2005.

But it was while there solo in 2005 that he got the idea to mix things up a little bit. While at the race expo in Boston, he happened to meet Dick Hoyt and his son Rick, who for decades were a fixture at the event, with Dick pushing Rick (who has cerebral palsy) and the pair inspiring countless spectators and runners along the way.

Johncock went home inspired, eventually signing up to push then-six-year-old Logan in the Thunder Road Marathon in Charlotte later that year. Johncock also decided to tie a charity component to his efforts, and wound up raising US$30,000 (RM127,500) for a playground for Logan’s school – the Conover School, which serves children with special needs.

After their long run in Charlotte, Johncock pushed Logan through another marathon in 2007, and a third in 2013. But while these other marathons permitted children, Boston’s rules specify that riders on duo teams must be 18 or older.

Logan became “legal” in 2017, and in 2019, Johncock mustered up the time and the motivation to try to qualify, at age 54.

Johncock wasn’t sure he could do it. In their previous 26.2-mile (42km) jaunts, he’d run for fun. To get to Boston, he’d have to run fast. While pushing Logan, who weighs about 110 pounds (50kg), and the chair, which weighs about 40 (18kg). (To maximise his odds of securing a spot in the Boston Marathon, he’d need to run well under the standard for his age group – three hours and 35 minutes or faster. Officials don’t ease the requirements for the “pusher” on a duo team.)

So he smartly picked the flattest race he could find: the Myrtle Beach Marathon, last March. It most definitely was no cakewalk.

“A lot of times when I’m pushing Logan, I’m kind of playing with him and singing to him, even though nobody on this earth likes to hear me sing except for Logan. But he laughs and we have a good time, ” Johncock says. “Well, that day, I wasn’t singing much.”

“Honestly, I didn’t think there was a way that I was going to be able to qualify, especially the first time trying to do that. Just on paper, me trying to run a 3:30 marathon while pushing an extra 150 pounds (68kg), I would have said there was no way that I would have been able to do that. But I had the best motivation in the world in front of me. He’s the motivation that allowed me to do that.”

After Johncock fought through the leg cramps, they finished in three hours, 30 minutes and 53 seconds.

And Johncock says that when he went to lift Logan out of the chair, Logan made it clear he wanted to stay seated.

“He looked at me as if to say, ‘Come on, Dad, let’s go for some more!’” Johncock says, laughing. “I’m like, ‘No, dude – not today. I’m pretty cooked.”’

To go for that long a run with his dad again, Logan would have to wait for the 2020 Boston Marathon.

‘Would it be sad? Absolutely’

There’s always been something special about Boston to Johncock ever since he ran it with his dad back when he was just 19 years old. But Johncock is doing his best to make this journey feel special for Logan, too.

In fact, Logan’s family is trying to make this year one of the most special years of Logan’s life. Johncock has scaled back on his commitments this year as they’ve trained, and Boston isn’t the only special trip – he and Logan spent the day before the half-marathon in Atlanta two weekends ago watching the US Olympic Marathon Trials together. According to the Boston Athletic Association, there are only 12 duo teams registered for this year’s race, and only eight of those ran qualifying times. (The other eight came in through its charity programme.) So Johncock and Logan are in rare air.

Logan also will graduate from high school this June, and that’s something worth celebrating, too.

“Look, Logan’s not gonna get married, ” Johncock says. “Logan’s not going to go to college. Logan’s not going to have children or grandchildren. So these are really the last big life experiences that he’s probably gonna have. He doesn’t really understand that, but his mum and I do, so we’re just trying to make this... year extra special for him.”

Originally, practically everyone in their immediate and extended family – including Jerry Johncock, who ran his first Boston with his son Bill 36 years ago and is now 92 – was planning to be in Boston next month. The postponement could shake things up a bit, however, and it’s possible some won’t still be able to make the September date work.

But, as always, all Johncock can do is just roll with it. “A life is more important. As big as this is for us, the health of a lot of other people is more important. So yeah, it looks like we’ll have to wait. But... eventually, we’ll get there.”

Johncock is more than halfway to his goal of raising US$10,000 (RM42,500) as part of his and Logan’s run-up to the race; US$4,000 (RM17,000) of that paid for a new racing chair for Logan, and the remainder will go to Ainsley’s Angels (ainsleysangels.org), an organisation that promotes active lifestyles among individuals with special needs. – The Charlotte Observer/Tribune News Service