Despite Setbacks, Highland Park Man Determined To Complete Triathlon

HIGHLAND PARK, IL — David Wainwright has been aiming to participate in his first triathlon since 2015, but the 61-year-old was twice postponed by tragedy. Nonetheless, he's determined to make the third time a charm at Sunday's Chicago Triathlon.

Wainwright told Patch that his son first completed the Chicago Triathlon in 2014, the year after his wife of nearly three decades, who was a lifelong Highland Park resident, was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. He hoped to participate with his son and his son's fiancé in 2015, as his wife was battling cancer.

"My training schedule was crafted around her surgeries, radiation and chemo schedule," Wainwright said. Things were going well until late July, when his wife's health took a sudden turn for the worse. She spent more than a week in hospital before moving to home hospice for several weeks. She passed on Friday, Aug. 28, 2015, just two days before that year's Chicago Triathlon, he said.

"Needless to say we did not make it," Wainwright said.

The next year, 2016, Wainwright, his son and his future daughter-in-law decided to try again. But during training, his mother's health deteriorated. She had been battling ovarian cancer since a couple months after his wife was diagnosed with a brain tumor from epitheliod angisarcoma, he said. (Get Patch real-time email alerts for the latest news for Highland Park — or your community. And iPhone users: Check out Patch's new app.)

So Wainwright, a 30-year Highland Park resident, traveled back to the New Orleans area, where his mother was from, to help take care of her. He continued his training, putting his bike in the car and driving a half-hour to a bike trail. When his mother would ask why he went through all that trouble, Wainwright remembers answering, "Because I live in fear of getting hit by a car."

His mother passed away on July 20, and after a couple weeks helping his siblings deal with her affairs, he came back to Highland Park to keep training for the 2016 Chicago Triathlon.

"On the very first bike ride I was hit by a car," Wainwright said. "I refused medical treatment at the scene. I thought I was just battered and bruised." But his son, then a medical student at the University of Illinois at Chicago, insisted he get a doctor to examine the injury.

Wainwright remembers going in for X-rays on Aug. 9, the same day he had been planning to do open-water swim training with his son.

"Shortly before I was going into the water the doctor called and said I had three cracked ribs, a torn hip muscle and probably a partially collapsed lung," Wainwright said. "That was the end of my hopes for the 2016 Tri."

He's since been riding at least 20 miles several times a week on the west trail from Highland Park to Lake Bluff. He said training can be a challenge because he's often travelling for work, but he said now that he is no longer anyone's primary caregiver, "I hope my Tri try will be successful."

_{Top photo via Patch archives}