AiT: Joy, Purpose and Full Bellies

By 303 Ambassador Dennis Vanderheiden
My appreciation for southern hospitality has been nurtured twice in the past 6 months. Once at Beach to Battleship in North Carolina this past October and then just recently on March 26th in Louisville, KY at the Papa John’s 10 miler.
To really comprehend my appreciation, first, we have to delve back to my upbringing in the lower middle class of suburban Philadelphia where we were submersed in a variety of incomes, ethnicities, cultures and class systems. My father is half Colombian and spoke English and Spanish fluently. His work and social network brought people of varying backgrounds, ethnicities and cultures to our home. As a child you just accept people how they are as long as you are not influenced by parental prejudices and thankfully we were not.
Our next door neighbors, Boots and Willie and their kids David and Peggy who were a good 3-5 years older than my sister and I, we’re originally from South Carolina and the friendliest people with the finest southern drawl you could imagine. When they moved back to Columbia, SC in our later elementary school years they invited my sister and I to visit. We spent a week in their company and I remember learning how to time catching all the green lights in downtown Columbia in a VW bug and catch a very fast ball thrown by Peggy’s high school jock boyfriend.
I’ve been to Louisville several times in the past few years racing with individuals as Athletes in Tandem (AiT) and had three experienced athletes lined up to race the Papa Johns 10 Miler. My good friend, AiT board member and Louisville native, Travis
Silvers, was planning to be one of the pushers along with Dan Delph who has volunteered to push in the past. Unfortunately, Travis suffered a broken collarbone, fractured ribs and a partially collapsed lung when he crashed his bike coming down the infamous Dam Hill at Horsetooth Reservoir in Fort Collins a couple weeks before the race. I put out an APB on the Louisville Landsharks Triathlon Club Facebook page soliciting a volunteer pusher and got immediate interest from Kathy Kuhn. Kathy was willing to do the required minimum fundraising for AiT and was already registered in the race.
I had left three AiT jogging strollers from previous trips to Louisville with three different families and had to secure their whereabouts and how to get them in my possession for race day. One stroller was with an athlete who was planning to run the race so that was easy enough…they would just show up with it race morning. The other two were on loan to two separate individuals and would require me to either have them drop it off at my hotel or I would swing by their place and pick them up. Turns out it was one scenario from each case.
Two days before the race I was notified that two of the athletes would no longer be able to run. It’s a very common occurrence that I have learned to accept and deal with. Fortunately, southern hospitality and respect for Athletes in Tandem kicked in and one of the parents worked the phones to find two replacement athletes for us. This was nice because it turned out that these new athletes had never done a race before and were extremely excited to participate. The family that had to cancel brought the stroller that was in their possession to my hotel the night before the race while they were preparing to support their daughter who was to undergo induced labor the next day and the reason for their cancellation.
Kathy, who was a last minute replacement for Travis, researched the best meet up location for us all to avoid road closures and congestion and I set the meet up time for 7 am for the 8 am start. I told them all I would probably arrive by 6:30 am to set up the strollers, make sure they were in alignment and pump up tires as needed. Only problem on race morning was that I was awoken at 6:55 am by one of the athletes parents saying she was at the meet up location and wondered where I was. I had overslept and scrambled to make up for my gaffe. In the end it all turned out just fine and the rest of the day and race went without a hitch. One of the new athletes, Bella, who was partnered with Dan kept insisting he go “faster…faster!” My athlete, Jessie, would turn to me throughout the race and say, “I’m hungry.” Which her mom warned me she would. I would make up different responses each time to satiate her. “If we see a McDonalds we’ll stop and get something.” Or, “There’s Papa John’s pizza at the end.” Which was true.
Dennis Vanderheiden
Athletes in Tandem