Even blind, Barb Oswald knows a good cause when she finds one.
Ditto John Upthegrove.
Upthegrove, a 70-year-old Burien resident, and the 54-year-old Oswald who is from Seattle, share a common bond: Both are blind. Both are triathletes.
Both took part in Seafair Sunday's Benaroya Research Institute Triathlon.
The event, held at Seattle's Seward Park, drew 2,000 participants. The youngest was 4-year-old Cooper Thompson. The oldest was Upthegrove, a retired Northwest Airlines pilot who marked his seventh year of participation in the sprint marathon, an event that included a 3.1-mile run, a half-mile swim and a 12-mile bike ride.
"It's just fun if you like to exercise," he said last week.
Two years ago, he suddenly lost sight in one eye. A year later he lost most of his sight in the other.
A brother stepped up to guide him through the marathon. This year, his brother's in the process of moving and can't participate. Enter Upthegrove's 37-year-old son, Dave, who filled in.
"I'm fortunate," the senior Upthegrove said last week just a few days before the event. "There are varying stages of being legally blind. I can see a little bit out of one eye. As we get out of the water, for example, my son is ahead of me and I can run after him to the bikes and find my own shoes. I don't have to feel for them."
As for the swim, he does it on his back with his companion swimming alongside to give instructions. Not, he said with a laugh, that he always manages a straight course.
"I think I probably add an extra quarter-mile," he said, laughing.
The bike portion, ridden tandem, "isn't the most difficult but it's the most frustrating because you can't do it by yourself," he said.
His most vivid memory is of the first triathlon he did after losing his sight. He was running behind his brother when his brother cut between two bollards. Upthegrove missed the move.
"I ran smack into one of them and did a somersault," he said. "I took skin off my body. When we got to the end, there was a cute nurse at the first aid tent that I couldn't see."
Upthegrove originally planned to do the triathlon until he was 70. "I feel good. If I feel as good next year as I do this year, why not?" he said.
For Oswald, who has been blind since birth, participation is about personal challenge -- and a personal cause.
Her closest friend, Denise Karuth, has battled multiple sclerosis for three decades.
"She's my hero," says Oswald, a longtime advocate for people with disabilities who is director of the Center for Disability Services at Centralia College.
Like Oswald, Karuth is blind.
"She swims 365 miles a year. Basically she gets out of her hospital bed and into her motorized wheelchair and with her guide dog motors down to the pool," Oswald said.
"She's so amazing. She probably does more than you and I together even though she works on a computer from her hospital bed. She's an ordained minister, part of Amnesty International, and gathers wheelchairs to send to Third World countries." She also is a grant writer for independent living centers.
Oswald's story offers its own inspiration.
After being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2006, she joined Team Survivor Northwest, a group dedicated to providing fitness training for women in all stages of treatment. Last year, she participated in the Danskin Triathlon, joking that her goal was to survive the open swim.
Because of her friendship with Karuth, the Benaroya triathlon had special appeal, she said.
"It's very personal," she said. "I would jump out of an airplane with a parachute if it would help MS research and my friend Denise."
Upthegrove and Oswald, who'd never met, chatted briefly after Sunday's event.
"Everything went well, even the swim," she said.
Upthegrove echoed her comments.
"We're tired, of course," he said. "But everything went fine."
Since 2001, the triathlon has raised $125,000 for autoimmune disease research. This year's event raised $20,000, according to Alisha Mark of the Virginia Mason Medical Center.
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