The Hawaii Iron Man Challenge is considered by many to be the most physically grueling and tortuous race ever assembled. Measuring a death-defying 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike ride, and 26.2 mile run, it is even enough to cause Lance Armstrong to cringe at.

A couple of years ago, I came across a video at a summer camp explaining the inspirational story of Dick Hoyt and his son Rick. Rick was born with cerebral palsy, and the doctors told Mr. and Mrs. Hoyt that since their son would be nothing but a vegetable all his life, they should put him in an institution. Like good parents, they did not give up. They realized that Rick could respond to stimuli by looking at his eyes, eventually he would even be able to communicate through a Stephen Hawking like typing machine. One day, when Rick was in high school, he heard about a five mile benefit run and told Dick he wanted to do it. What seemed like a daunting task finished with Dick pushing Rick across the finish line in a wheelchair. Rick told him, “When we were running, it felt like I wasn’t disabled anymore!”

After the fun run, Rick got it into his mind to participate in a triatholon. “Why not enter in the Hawaii Iron Man Challenge?” someone asked him. At that moment I can clearly remember myself mouthing the words in utter astonishment, “no way.” Before reading forward, consider this: completing this challenge is in and of itself an amazing accomplishment. Competing in the Iron Man Challenge with a one hundred ten pound weight tied to your back is nothing short of a miracle.

However, Dick did not just push his son all the way through that beast of a marathon. He pushed, pulled, and lifted his son through it. The first clip of the video showed Dick swimming 2.4 miles with a harness around him, so that he could pull his son across the water in a lifeboat. The next clip showed him lifting his son out of the boat and walking towards a bike with a seat in the front where Rick could sit. Dick straps him in, and then pedals the 112 miles required for the biking part of the race. Fast forward a little, and it is already nighttime in Hawaii. The race is now on its final leg. Here is where the champions are separated from the competitors, where athletic torture becomes exhaustion, where, pardon the cliché, the boys are separated from the men… and here is where Dick pushes his son, zooming at the speed of light, past the finish line. The bottles of wine shoot out and Rick’s arms are flailing wildly, with a smile on both of their faces. Lights, camera, action, right? It seems way too good to be true, but by some incredible determination and unconditional love, it is.

That heartwarming story brings me to this: would you complete the Hawaii Iron Man Challenge for your son, daughter, wife, husband, brother, sister, girlfriend, or boyfriend simply to give them inexplicable joy? I might consider it if their life was on the line, but definitely not just for their mere pleasure. What if everyone loved each other like that, what if everyone had a love like Dick Hoyt did for his son? Would wars end, peace flourish, and utopian societies follow? Dick Hoyt is superhuman, but only in the sense that his love goes beyond the human norm. In fact, he often described himself as being somewhat of a “porker.” What drove Dick Hoyt was love and love alone, not glory or riches. Consider now, for a moment, a world where people love strangers and friends with an equal intensity. If everyone in the world loved even complete strangers enough to run a marathon with that stranger on his back, how much would the world change?

Imagine this in a society where a woman is raped and killed out in the courtyard of an apartment complex in New York, and the police find forty witnesses who can clearly state how things happened, but none bothered to help her or even call the police because they did not want to get involved. Events like this happen all across the world because people care, but just not enough.

The tandem of Dick and Rick, called Team Hoyt, has a simple motto “CAN.” Fittingly, I CAN only imagine what it would be like if everyone loved each other like Dick and Rick do. With Team Hoyt, the world CAN glimpse at what that love CAN do.

Note: If You Want to See a Video of Team Hoyt and its story, search “Team Hoyt” on www.youtube.com

Charles Wu, columnist