One man ran a marathon without setting foot on the course

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This may not look like one person’s relaxing day off or another’s lifeline, but that’s what it is. Karl Stoerzinger at Freewheel Bikes writes on the blog, The Golden Wrench, about a wheelchair athlete from Spain in one of Saturday’s Twin Cities marathon events. The airline damaged the wheel “gizmo” that turns a wheelchair into a hand-crank racing vehicle.

He had only a few hours to try to solve the problem. So he designed and created a new piece by hand. On his day off.

“I did the concept and design work in my head, made a few simple sketches, and pretty much went from one logical step to the next until I had a working part,” he writes. “If I goofed up anywhere along the way, I certainly wouldn’t have time to start over again. Fortunately, everything went perfectly.”

At 8 Friday night, he says, he ran the part to a hotel in Saint Paul and assembled the entire contraption in the lobby.

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The next morning at 7:30, she was racing in the 10K event.

(h/t: Phil Kaasa )