While running the Rock ‘n’ Roll Arizona Half Marathon, 73-year-old John Wilkie tripped over a spectator’s stroller near the 13-mile mark and fell hard. So hard it broke his sunglasses and one of his contacts! But the injured runner was quickly helped up by two good samaritans, Nathaniel Dillard and Colin Jackson.
Dillard was also running the race and Jackson was there watching. The two men hooked their arms under Wilkie’s and walked with him across the finish line. And after being observed in the medical tent, he hit the emergency room for five stitches on the cut above his eye.
“I was pretty stunned when I hit the ground,” Wilkie says. “Fortunately, those two fellows were there in nothing flat to pick me up.” This great-grandfather feels like brushing himself off to finish the race is a metaphor for life. “Life isn’t perfect,” he says. “You get knocked down more than once in awhile. You’ve got to get back up and finish what you’re doing.”
Source: Competitor.com