After 11 Hours, Another Winner

With two wooden canes and a will of steel, David McKay walked Bloomsday.

Exhausted, his body aching from his shoulders down, he pulled himself across the finish line at the Spokane County Courthouse 10 hours and 58 minutes after he had begun Sunday.

McKay, 40, of Spokane, has muscular dystrophy. He subjects his body to the grueling 7.46-mile race for two reasons: to prove to himself he can do it and to show others they should give their dreams a chance.

“I want people to get off their duffs and try,” McKay said during a break at Mission and Lindeke, near mile 6. “Don’t say, `I can’t do it.’ Just try.

“You don’t win all the time, but you win in your heart because you know you’ve tried.”

McKay first walked Bloomsday in 1997. He’d thought about it for years but was shy about asking for help because he knew it would take him so long to finish the course. Finally, he mentioned his goal to a friend.

“I told him I’d love to do Bloomsday before I end up in a wheelchair,” McKay said, tears streaming down his face at the memory. “He said, `If you want to do it, I’ll walk it with you.”’ McKay told race officials that year he’d finish the race if he had to “sleep under a bush and finish the next morning.”

He did finish, taking just three short breaks along the way. His fastest time in four years was 7 hours and 19 minutes. His slowest was this year’s.

But when he recalls Bloomsday 2000, it won’t be his record-slow pace or the pain he feels for days afterward. Instead, he’ll remember how happy he was to walk part of the race with his 7-year-old daughter, Tashina, who suffered burns over nearly 60 percent of her body in an accident in September.

Tashina had to finish the race in a wheelchair because she couldn’t stay out in the bright sunshine, McKay said. “She’s doing great,” he said with a broad smile.

McKay may not walk Bloomsday next year. The recovery time gets longer each year, and his mother keeps begging him to stop, he said.

“For now, it’s a challenge, and I love it,” he said. “I finished, and I got my T-shirt honestly.”

At the finish line, McKay was greeted by his wife and well-wishers inspired by his determination. One family he’d met as he inched up Doomsday Hill gave him a card.

The handwritten inscription:“We think you’re the real winner this year.”