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Hand cycles can be used for recreation, shopping, commuting, cross-country and competition.
It's a great way to get your aerobic exercise.
The benefits of hand cycling to overall health, physical conditioning and quality of life
are substantial.
With a hand cycle you can attain the freedom of cycling independently, or join your
cycling friends and family members in outdoor exercise.
Hand cycling is very popular for recreation and is also quickly growing into a competitive sport
for disabled athletes.
Hand cycling has already been integrated into many Human Powered Vehicle organizations
that hold championships around the world, where both able and disabled cyclists compete
together.
Adam Rose is an athlete who started racing at the age of twelve.
Encouraged by his athletic father, Adam has quickly excelled in this sport.
He is enthusiastic and talked what a hand cycle is and why he loves this sport.
Hand cycling is basically cycling except with your arms and you're on a hand cycle which
is a little different than a bike.
It's a machine with three wheels one in front and two in back.
I like the speed, the compositeness, just the camaraderie against the people
you're racing against and just being outdoors and having fun.
Hand cycling is my favorite thing to do.
It's just nice to be able to get outside and have fun.
Adam has competed in many races nationally and was recently honored with the Rising Star
Award by The Athletes with Disabilities Hall of Fame.
I've been all over the state and all over the country too.
Recently I was down in Georgia and South Carolina for a couple of races and the competition
there was tough.
It was a national championship race in Georgia and South Carolina.
So the competition is always good but it's always fun to be outdoor racing against them.
I was right in the middle six out of eleventh and fifth out of eleventh.
So it's pretty good for how young I am and the competition that was there.
Originally and he was running it that year.
And he took me down and showed me what they were doing and then they said you could be doing
this next year or the year after that.
So you know he got me a hand cycle and I started doing a little bit of riding and the
next year I was doing it.
And then my love racing just took off from there.
Having mentors is important for teenagers.
Having a successful role model with a similar life experience gives perspective.
Glenn Ashlock is a fellow hand cyclist and he also plays wheelchair basketball.
And he works with the Disability Network of Michigan.
He's been one of my biggest mentors slash competitor rivals and recently I beat him at the
Detroit Free Press Marathon.
So it was a big accomplishment for me.
But I look up to him every year since I started racing and he's just been there for me and
helped me out.
Adam's workout requires dedication and discipline.
Training for competition is intense but something he enjoys.
Well training I try to get out five days a week, usually I'm looking to anywhere from twenty
to thirty miles, hills, flats, depends on what I want to do that day but you just have to
work at different areas and get proficient at an area then focus on another area.
Marathons are mostly an endurance thing so I'll do longer rides to prepare for a
marathon.
Most marathons have hills, like the Detroit Free Press has the Ambassador Bridge and the
Detroit Tunnel.
So I'll focus on hills before that race.
I do a lot of marathons but I also do regular cycling events, which are time trials where you
go out and back.
It's usually a shorter race ten miles or so and then you do road races, which can be really long
with a whole bunch of guys.
There can be thirty or forty guys in a road race.
Then there's these races called criterions.
Where you go around a course that's a half-mile to a mile course and just do as many laps
as you can for thirty, thirty-five, forty minutes and whoever does the most laps wins.
And those are really fun races.
They're really fast, really exciting.
We race under the organization of US Hand Cycling.
Which is the country's hand cycling division and they bring racers and they have their own
team and they come from all over the country and even all over the world too.
So they've come from South Africa, Germany, Switzerland, and all over the United States
too.
I've raced against people from California, Florida, Texas.
The medical community recognizes the value of exercise.
Most rehabilitation hospitals help organize and sponsor these races.
There's a bunch of different organizations.
A lot of hospitals in the local area will put on these races and help sponsor them.
But then there's individual teams all over the country that will help sponsor racers to help
come and race for them.
Then there's the US Paralympics Team, which has their own three or four guys that will come to
the races and they'll just dominate but they're really cool to watch and really cool to be
around.
Adam's talent was recognized early in his racing career.
Fusion Medical is a medical supply company ran by people with disabilities.
They understand the importance of exercise not only for health but for the social benefits as
well.
They have supported Adam in helping him acquire bikes and getting to his races.
Fusion Medical is owned b Nick Long.
He also plays wheelchair rugby and they are a medical supply company in the State of
Michigan.
They help out with races and certain equipment that I'll need.
I can call them up and say I need this part.
Because a normal hand cycle can run from four thousand dollars to eight thousand dollars.
And the wheels can cost another thousand, three thousand.
And then you have entrance fees for races, which can be fifty, a hundred dollars.
So they'll help out with entrance fees and certain equipment that I'll need.
But they're a great help.
Don Rose is Adam's father.
He is a dedicated parent and works hard to help Adam achieve his potential.
He is also very physically active.
He worked on developing activities that the family could do together and has been pleased
with the results.
Watching Adam grow and improve in his racing has been one of his great joys as a parent.
We got Adam involved with racing when he was twelve years old and I didn't know how he was going
to take to it.
If he'd like it or hate.
We thought it would be one or the other and he fortunately loved it.
And he started racing at the age of twelve and he just kept at it and improved every single race
and it's just been amazing to watch.
Well Adam's very first race I thought he would average about ten to twelve minutes a mile and
I was timing my walk from the start to the finish to coincide with that kind of time and he
was under ten minutes a mile and I almost missed his first finish because he was so fast and
there's been several races since then that he's improved so much from year to year that I've
almost missed him finishing because he got there way ahead of the time I was predicting him
to finish.
Well he just needed a sport that he could get outside with and get exercise and meet people and
hand cycling as great because I was hoping at some point he would b able to ride his bike
along with me while I run, or ride my bike and it worked out far better than I ever expected.
I've been a runner for thirty-one years now.
I play tennis.
I love biking.
We do all that together and we ride together all the time.
It's a great time.
We've got hundreds maybe thousands of hours of time riding together, running
together.
We do a four-day bike ride in August every year that's two hundred forty miles long and
that's a lot of fun to be together for that whole time riding.
It's great.
Don understands the concerns of being a parent of a child with a disability.
He encourages parents to look into hand cycling as a way to help their children be more
physically active and participate in life.
Parents with disabled children should definitely look into this kind of sport.
It's fantastic and there are organizations out there that can help you get a bike.
Adam's first bike didn't cost us anything because we found an organization that provided it
for children and it was great.
We got the bike within three weeks of applying for it.
So there's opportunities out there to get this equipment for the kids.
And just work with them.
Get them out riding and get them exercising it has a great impact on the children.
The sport is great for the crossover effect - the confidence and especially with
being with older people that are out there doing these things.
It can motivate a child to excel and exercise and get them an opportunity to see that these
people are enjoying a great life.
Being disabled doesn't mean they should have to sit in the house all long and withdraw from
society.
These people are out there competing and excelling and they're showing that to kids