Friday, March 22, 2013

Jason Fowler lost one set of wheels and picked up another ... severe accident never slowed him down.


You could try to keep up with Jason Fowler for a day, but you’re in for a wild ride.
Racing — from the Boston Marathon to triathlons — is in his blood.
“You can’t stop, there’s just no stopping,” he said of his love of the road.
When Fowler was a kid, growing up in Kingston, he had his heart set on becoming a professional motocross racer. And he was nationally ranked by age 10, and winning tournaments all over by age 17.
“That was going to be my first professional year,” Fowler said. “The year of my accident, and so yeah, that got stopped short.”
A severed spine in a motorcycle accident March 13, 1991, left him paralyzed from his chest down. The wheels stopped spinning on one track, but new wheels were just gaining speed.
“I started wheelchair racing about five months after my accident and at first it was really scary and then I welcomed the speed. It was really fun,” Fowler said while getting into his race chair.

Twenty-two years later, the 39-year-old Belmont resident is at the top of his game with a World Championship Ironman title under his belt. That’s a 2.4 mile swim, a 112 mile bike ride and a 26.2 mile run. He does the swim with only his arms, and has a special chair for the bike and one for the run.
That may be the reason Fowler said his upcoming Boston Marathon is “just for fun.”
“It’s a little bit crazy to think that it usually takes me 16 to 18 miles to warm up,” he added.
While he’s breaking stereotypes every day, Fowler is just a normal guy. He’s dating on Match.com, still looking for the right woman.
“Usually when people find out I’m in a chair, they’re a little bit fearful,” he said about going on dates. “That definitely reduces the dating pool for me.”
Fowler doesn’t have too much time to date anyway. With the Ironman trials coming up in Berlin in June, he’s got his mind set on another World Championship, adding: “It’s in my blood, for sure.”


No comments:

Post a Comment