Navy veteran James Ridgeway has always had a knack for running.
“You have to be in shape at least enough to pass your physical tests,” he tells PEOPLE, referring to his military service. “I’ve always ran short races like 5Ks. I don’t think I ever did a 10K.”
Speaking at the Rock ‘N’ Roll Series’Half Marathon weekendin Las Vegas, where he helped celebrate 25 years of races, Ridgeway recalls returning home to Visalia, Calif., in 2019 after a deployment and going for a run with his son.
“She can’t put sentences together,” says Ridgeway. “She has vocabulary words, but she’ll tell you when she’s upset. We would go out on the weekends and as soon as she hears somebody leave, she wants to know where you’re going. We would come home from a run and she would be visibly irritated and we asked her, ‘Are you mad?'”
James Ridgeway
“[She said] ‘Yeah.’ ‘Why are you mad? Because we go running without you?’ ‘Yeah,’ " Ridgeway recalls. “So I asked her, ‘Do you want to run with us?’ and she’s like, ‘Yeah!’ I was like, “Oh, wow. How do I do that?’ "
She was also born with cerebral palsy and scoliosis, which affect her speech and mental development. Although she’s able to stand for limited amounts of time, she cannot walk on her own.
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James quickly figured out how to train for races in all kinds of weather and terrain, adjusting accordingly to fit his daughter’s needs.
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“It’s all for her. She loves it. That’s all that matters,” says the proud father.
“We did pretty well,” James says. “This is where she was born and raised.”
With some assistance fromHoyt Racing, a non-profit that supports people with disabilities at races, “we walked across the finish line,” James says.
“I just basically hold her shoulders and she’s screaming and the crowd’s going wild and she’s having a ball with her hands up,” he recalls of ending the race in Las Vegas. “It’s Amazing.”
Although Team Ridgeway currently has no plans to do longer distances, they will take a short break before training begins for the next race this summer, Rock ‘N’ Roll Salt Lake.
source: people.com
