If running or cycling used to be a passion of yours,
or if you've always wanted to run a race
but haven't done it yet, those plans don't have
to change after vision loss.
In this episode, Hadley member Keith Hodder
and Connecticut chapter director Erin Spaulding join us
to discuss how Achilles International can help you achieve
your athletic goals.
I'm Ricky Enger, and this is Hadley Presents.
Welcome to the show, Keith, Erin.
Good morning, Ricky. Good
morning. Thanks for having me.
I am delighted to have you both.
We get so many calls from people who are in that stage
of feeling a little bit like, "I'm tired of being
inside my house and surrounded by these four walls.
I would love to get out, love to do some exercise,
and I just don't know how to do that
or if I can do it safely." You know, so many questions
that people have, particularly after a vision loss
and kind of adjusting to what that means.
And I think Achilles does a phenomenal job
of putting people just back in touch with
that athletic side,
or maybe in some cases, getting people in touch with that.
You know, it could have been on your bucket list like,
"Yeah, someday I'm going to do a 5K
or whatever." And you never had the chance
and now you're thinking, "Well, I guess I can't now,"
but thankfully that is not true.
So I guess that's a good place to start actually is Erin,
for people who don't know what Achilles is
and what you all do, can you just give us a, a description
of kind of how it works and who it serves?
Yeah, I'm happy to.
So Achilles International, we, by name,
we literally are international.
We have 62 chapters around the world,
including in many states here in the US.
And bottom line, kind of like you were leading up to,
we are a community of support
and our mission is really to transform the 26%
of Americans who live with a disability.
No matter where you are in the United States, we want you
to get active with us through our athletic programs.
But in a nutshell, just
because you have a disability doesn't mean you can't go
for a walk, go for a run, hand cycle.
However, we really say
however you move, come join our, our community.
It's supporting you, whether it's
through using a trained guide, a tether,
however it is you move, we also want you to come
and meet others if that's
that social connection piece too of our mission.
Yeah. And that's so important.
It can feel very isolating if you don't know anyone who is
like you and having those same challenges.
It can be such a relief to meet others kind of going
through the same thing and also to discover, "Hey, if I want
to move, there's a way for me to do that.
I don't have to sit
and be inside these same four walls every
day." So I love that.
Exactly. Even just be relegated to the treadmill
or I hear this a lot.
I can only go on my elliptical
because that's the only way that I'm safe
and I can move my body.
There's limitations. And that's what Achilles does.
We break those barriers.
We get people active, connected no matter
what it is for that person.
That's amazing. I love that.
So Keith, you've actually been at this for a little while,
and I suspect that you have come a long way from
where you started.
And that's always really cool to hear about as well is
where someone started and kind of where they are now.
So can you just take us back to the beginning
of when you first got involved with Achilles
and just tell that story.
How did you become involved?
What was it like initially and where are you now?
Well, prior to me joining Achilles, I was
an avid walker, basically around my neighborhood
with my cane, doing three mile walks
three to five days a week.
I go to a low vision support group
and one of the guest speakers happened to have been Erin.
And when she was speaking about Achilles,
I said to myself, "Wow, this is something I can do."
And within three months, I had joined Achilles.
My vision is basically hand movement,
but I do see some things out there.
So Achilles actually train
the athletes how to participate, whether they walk,
run, roll.
My goal at the beginning was to basically fast walk.
And I started training for fast walking
and I was with a guide
and my chosen piece to use for
safety measures was a tether.
So my guide would have one end of this 18-inch tether
and I would have the other end.
And we would go fast walking wherever we would do a workout.
I then decided to join a couple 5K races.
That was really exciting.
I did a lot of fast walking in my first race
and ended up being a competition between myself
and another member.
And I ended up running.
But the experience of doing it, that was just,
it was incredible to be part
of something I thought I would never be part of.
The next year I challenged myself to do a 10K
and I continued to work out and improve my cardio
and my running skills and everything.
And my vision over the years has pretty much been the same.
So when I started doing my walks a number of years ago,
my vision is still the same as it is today.
This year, I have upped my ante this year to
participate in my first half marathon.
So that is my goal.
And I've been working hard at that training for it.
And I'll go into full training mode
in about a week in August.
And I look forward to doing that.
Wow. That is such a cool story to go from, "Hey,
I walk every day, but I'm not competing in anything.
And I get my exercise in,
but that's where I am," to now you're training
for a half marathon in a pretty short amount of time,
all things considered.
So it sounds like being matched
with Achilles just allowed you to
not only meet your initial goal,
but to say, "Hey, I'm not stopping here.
I'm going to keep going."
Exactly.
It was a group I didn't know a lot about.
So it was like an eye-opener exercise,
getting out there, improving my exercise,
doing it with someone.
And now I even have a team of guides
that I basically work with whenever time comes to do it.
So it is amazing how much this group
and Achilles has helped me basically, like you said,
a few minutes ago, Ricky, from sitting in the chair
to getting out and doing something.
And that had worked out really, really well.
Absolutely. So Aaron, when someone first connects
with Achilles, what happens after that?
How do you go from, "Hey, I'm an athlete.
I want to do something," to then matching that person
and having them proceed with their goals?
Yeah. There's something Keith said I just want
to quickly comment on.
He used the term athlete, and that is part of our community.
It's part of our culture that we call everyone an athlete.
And I get looked sometimes if I'm at a group, like
a support group where I first met Keith, I get questions.
Well, I've never done anything athletic to, "Hey, I was a
high school athlete, college athlete, weekend warrior,"
whatever it is for that person.
But there's something that's prideful.
You come into Achilles, you come into our community,
you're part of our team, you become like an extended family.
And we say this all the time, you're an athlete
because everyone moves their body.
Using Keith's example, he just would go out in his
neighborhood with his cane and he would move his body.
And so that's athletic.
So I sometimes go around
and I debunk these myths that if you're an Achilles,
you have to run a road race.
You have to do. I get this all the time too.
Oh my goodness, Achilles is about running marathons.
Well, for some people, yes, but not for everyone.
It is truly customized to the person with what they want
to accomplish, whether it's just going around the block,
getting off that treadmill or getting off that elliptical
and going out with a trained guide.
And Achilles provides that training that it's not just,
"Hey, here's a tether," which Keith was describing.
The guide holds one end in the hand,
the athlete holds the other.
Well, that takes practice.
We're training the guide long
before they even meet the athlete.
And then they get paired together
based on a lot of factors.
We're never going to put somebody together who's faster
or slower, get matched with, are they walkers?
Are they runners? Again, it's all customizable.
And then it takes time.
And some days I'm going to just go, I want
to walk around the block.
And it takes time to build that trust.
And when you do see that happen over time, it is absolutely,
in some respects, hard to describe.
And when you help somebody, as a volunteer does, enable
that person to be exercising independently
however they move, however far they want to go,
however fast they want to go.
There's never any pressure.
It's that athlete saying, "This is my goal, this is
what I want to do." And that volunteer in
that community of support.
That's excellent. It's meeting people where they are
and giving them the freedom to decide, "Hey, here's
what I want to do today.
And that may be different than what I did last week." And
allowing them to, I guess, literally go at their own pace.
Keith, when you were matched with
your first guide, can you talk about the process of that
and anything that may have changed
or stayed the same since then?
What was it like training with another person?
That is a very good question.
When I joined Achilles, they had
what they called engagement coordinators.
And this group of people would bring
athletes to board
and help them in the beginning get through the process
of joining Achilles.
And my first guide was an engagement coordinator.
So him and I hit it off really well in the beginning.
He actually lived about 35 minutes from me
and he'll drive down to my house
and say, "Hey, let's go for a run.
Let's go for a walk." And he basically took me under his
wing in the beginning.
He ran my first race with me
and he continued to train with me.
Over the last two years,
we have built a tremendous relationship.
And to me, it was heartwarming.
It was very rewarding
that someone would take time out of their day to work
with me, help me, help me get to where I want to be.
And he continues to this day being one of my guides.
And we've also developed a very good friendship.
This gentleman has really been there for me.
This is what Aaron said about the community
and the people in the community coming out to help.
It's tremendous. And now that I've been a part of Achilles
for two years, I decided to give back to the community
itself by becoming an engagement coordinator myself this
year, trying to give back
and help other athletes get set up with guides
so they can go out and do training.
So it's a full circle effect of
what I experienced from the beginning to
where I am right now.
That is so cool. And community is such a powerful thing.
It's not just about going and doing what you set out to do,
although that is part of it.
It is actually connecting with someone on a number
of levels.
Absolutely. Yep.
Erin, if someone is listening to this
and thinking, "Hey, I kind of want to be a part
of this." I know that as I'm learning more about it,
and especially given what you said about how
everyone is an athlete, if you're moving your body,
it doesn't have to be something that feels unattainable from
where you are right now.
So if someone is looking to connect
with an Achilles chapter, what's the process?
And of course, if there, for some reason, isn't
one available in someone's area, do you know
of other resources that they might look to?
Yes. So of the 62 chapters worldwide,
30 are here in the United States.
And so on our website, which is
www.achillesinternational.org,
and that's spelled
A-C-H-I-L-L-E-S,
and then followed by international, you can drop down
to find a chapter.
And all of the United States chapters are linked there,
those 30 locations.
We are all following the same model,
whether you're in New York City, Connecticut, Boston,
Austin, Texas, Chicago, just to name a few other chapters.
We have group workouts, races
that we do locally in our states
and around the country as well.
So we bring this community no matter where we are,
whatever state, whatever chapter.
And so if you happen to live
in a location in the country where there is not
yet an established chapter,
because we are growing, we are expanding chapters,
looking at where do hubs of people
who want to be active live?
We are also a great resource.
At the end of May, we began operating United in Stride,
which some people may have heard of,
which is a one-to-one digital matching program
that connects people who are blind
or low vision with both running
and walking guides in their community.
So that expanded our community, expanded our network
and our ability to connect people.
So us operating United Stride is a huge kind of,
it just opens up the possibilities.
Yeah, for sure. So as we kind
of wrap things up, I always like
to ask people this question
because I know as the person doing this podcast,
I feel this way a lot,
and I know that listeners do too, where
something comes along and it sounds really exciting
and really cool, but there's reservations.
It feels intimidating or you're just not sure.
I don't know if I'm ready to do this thing.
What would you say to someone who is in
that position
and just not sure about taking that first step?
So Keith, we'll start with you.
I think the best way for me to try to persuade someone to
take a crack at something like this, especially
visually impaired, the one thing that helped me
really get involved with Achilles
and why I am still here is I would tell people the
community in which we are a part of, the people
are incredibly wonderful.
They're there to help you. They're there to guide you.
They're also part of what I considered
and was looking for with an additional social network.
For me personally, my suggestion to people
who might be on the fence would be, "Hey, you know what?
You're getting like a handful of things out of this.
You're getting exercise. You're getting community.
You're getting social interaction.
And I have made a great ton of friends here
and I enjoy every one of them.
And I have not had a bad experience since I've been
with Achilles." So those are the lines that I would use
to persuade someone to try to become active.
Give us the shot in the group of Achilles International
because it is a very rewarding experience.
And in two years, it has changed my life.
So I hope I can persuade someone to do the same.
Really well put. Thank you.
Erin, what would you add to that?
I don't know if I can follow that, Ricky.
I know, right? I don't think I can.
I think that from my perspective, right,
I'm at the workouts, I'm at the races.
I'm witnessing what Keith just described. Come try it.
That's all we can say. And I meet people who
are hesitant, they're nervous.
And Keith brought up earlier, we have an engagement team.
They're talking to you on the phone.
They're connecting with you as humans
before you even come to your first workout.
We send out expectations. We explain them to you.
What do you expect? Sometimes that fear of the unknown,
we try to reduce that.
Then they come, we pair them
with a guide if they need a guide.
They go for a walk. They make that plan.
And then at the end, you're going
to know you gave it a shot.
And we've had some people, honestly, it isn't for them.
But that's okay because they tried.
And to speak to Keith's social events, we do a number
of different things throughout the year.
We are the basketball capital of the world.
We go to games.
That's not part of walking or running, but it is or rolling.
It is part of our community.
Let's go have fun at a Yukon basketball game.
So we do things for team building
and that trust, that camaraderie and fun.
We just have fun together. Come try it.
Challenge yourself differently.
We just had on last Thursday a kind
of hybrid social event workout
with another adaptive sports
organization here in Connecticut.
And they brought some of their adaptive equipment.
We also have tandem bicycles that is part of kind
of under the umbrella of Achilles.
If you want to try to hop on a tandem bike,
maybe you are a cyclist.
Maybe you wanted to ride a bike, but
because of vision loss, that's a barrier.
Well, come try a tandem.
And that's what we did last Thursday.
And I had somebody, I literally had a conversation.
I didn't think I was going to like this.
I can't wait for the next one.
And that's what I would advise.
And that's when you know you're doing it right, is people,
"Hey, I want to come back." Wow, I love this so much.
Thank you both for sharing the stories, of course,
and really just the enthusiasm for both of you.
As you talk about this, it's clear just
how much you're getting from this.
And that may not have been when either of you started.
You may have thought, "Well, this is just a thing to do,
a thing to try." And suddenly it's grown to be
an important part of your lives,
and I love hearing about that.
For those of you who are listening, we will, of course,
have the Achilles International link in our show notes.
And I hope that if you're listening
and you've been considering something like this,
if this didn't persuade you to jump off the couch
and try something, I'm not sure
because I'm about
to look at the brand new Charlotte chapter.
So thank you both again for sharing with us.
Thank you so much, Ricky.
Thank you for having us, Ricky.
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