By Tom Jordan
When Helene Hines of Lido Beach crossed the finish line of the New York City Marathon last Sunday, she did so after overcoming much more than just the stiff wind blowing in her face. She overcame asthma, multiple sclerosis, cancer and a rare spell of self-doubt.
Although MS has left her with a debilitating numbness for most of her adult life, and finally forced her to compete for the first time in a wheelchair at last year's marathon, it would be wrong to surmise that Ms. Hines, 52, is confined in any way. She feels there isn't anything she can't do.
"Just because I'm disabled doesn't mean I'm not an athlete," she said. In addition to participating in 27 previous marathons - from Boston to Philadelphia to Los Angeles - she also teaches swimming, aerobics and disabled boxing at the Sunrise Center in Long Beach.
But her greatest accomplishment, she said, may have been taking second-place honors in the hand-cycle division of the marathon last weekend - seven weeks after having a kidney removed after cancer was detected.
"It has been so special, especially because this is the first time people have told me, 'Hey, you can't do this.' Every competition is special in its way, but this has been a lot of fun," Ms. Hines said.
The overall winner of the division, Joseph Dowling, is a man she has beaten before, but that doesn't matter at all, Ms. Hines said. "What matters is that I knew I was healthy, and I did what I set out to do."
She was training for yet another event - the MS Bike Tour - and taking boxing lessons when some routine tests showed a growth on one of her kidneys. Her husband, George, a doctor at Winthrop Hospital, scheduled her for a CAT scan. The growth was malignant and an entire kidney had to be removed, but the cancer had not spread.
"How much can one person take?" she recalls wondering, allowing herself a rare moment of self-pity. "As a kid I had asthma; as an adult it was MS; and then cancer. I just started to cry."
And for four weeks, she did nothing.
"You have to understand, I usually work out every day for three hours and I work out hard. It was very difficult to do nothing. I had to get out there and try. So I asked my doctor if I could do the marathon. He said, 'Sure, next year,'" she said with a laugh.
But Ms. Hines didn't mean next year. She got started right away, working out on a machine at the Sunrise Center that simulates the movements used on a hand-cycle wheelchair, even as her doctor cautioned her to take it slowly.
"I was a good girl," said Ms. Hines. "I went very easy at first, maybe 20 minutes the first day, then a half-hour the next."
Nothing was going to prevent Ms. Hines from competing in this year's marathon, not even a complication from her medicine that hindered her breathing. "I told the doctor: 'Do something! I'm running in this race.'"
Her medication was switched and she told a friend that she was ready to run the race. "He said he could tell by the look in my eyes that I was going to do it," she said.
At one point, she said, she called over to another competitor in a wheelchair and suggested they should cross the finish line together, arms in the air in celebration of overcoming the odds. "When he looked away as if he didn't hear me," she said, "I took it as a challenge. I shrugged it off and beat him."
The sense of accomplishment, she said, is incredible. Not only did Ms. Hines overcome several factors to simply run in the race this year, but she actually improved upon her time.
"I finished in two hours and fourteen minutes last year. This year, I improved to 1:57. That's not too bad. The wind was terrible, but the crowd was great. Once I was done, I felt like I could have turned around and gone in the other direction."
