Jul 22, 2008 6:14 pm US/Pacific
Man With No Arms, Legs Takes Part In Triathlon
PITTSBURGH (CBS) ―
In last Sunday's Pittsburgh Triathlon, there were a lot of individual competitors and teams with competitors for each event.
One team, however, stood out.
That team contained three friends: Jim on the Bike, Ned doing the running, and Craig Dietz doing the swimming.
However, Dietz was born with no arms or legs.
"It felt great when I first decided to do it," said Dietz. "I was a little unsure and even leading up to it I was a little unsure. You can swim 100 miles in the pool and it's not going to prepare you for swimming in that river."
This is hardly his first athletic endeavor, Dietz enjoys bowling and has played volleyball too.
He skis in the winter and, with the help of an inventive father, he's been fishing and hunting since he was a kid.
"Anytime I wanted to do anything, he figured out a way for me to do it," said Dietz.
Dietz loves athletics and to him not even the Allegheny River is intimidating.
"All of my weight is centered, I am extremely buoyant. I can't dive. I wish that I could. I'd like to dive under the water," said Dietz.
In the end, he finished 275th out of 308 participants.
"To think that I was ahead of 35 people just blew my mind," said Dietz. "I would have been happy with 307th, beating one. Not being the last person out of the water would have been a good day for me."
Dietz also doesn't think of himself as an inspiration.
"I didn't do the race for that, my reason for the race were quite selfish -- to challenge myself," said Dietz. "I was there on Sunday for the same reason as all the other persons… to challenge myself and to prove something to my self. I never set out to prove anything to anybody else and I think people do what they have to do to survive in life. You overcome whatever you're faced with and that's all I think that I've done."
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