“I’m Disabled, but I Don’t Live a Disabled Life”
“David, go! David, go!”
As David Fraser was slowly approaching the finish line of his 12th New York City Marathon, a crowd in Central Park was chanting and wielding glow sticks. It was 9:19 p.m. on November 3, more than 12 hours since he started the race at Fort Wadsworth, Staten Island.
He was wearing his black Yankees hat backward, easily recognizable as usual. Slightly leaning forward in his wheelchair, he looked determined with his eyes fixed on the finish line as he wheeled himself toward it.
At 9:21 p.m., Fraser, who was born with cerebral palsy, finished the 26.2-mile-journey in his wheelchair for the 12th time, at a little more than 12 hours and 29 minutes. His wife, to whom he has been married for 26 years, walked up to him, cupped his face in her hands, and kissed him, twice. Fraser looked her in the eyes, smiling.
Meanwhile, Rikki Alvarez kept close track of Fraser, her personal fitness trainer, on the race’s official app. She knows him as a marathon racer, but more than that, as her personal trainer, and an unusual one — a man in a wheelchair who works with the abled. They usually work once weekly, but had missed two sessions because Fraser had to prepare for the marathon.
They first got in touch with each other about a year and a half ago, when Alvarez was looking for an affordable personal trainer. Fraser reached out to her on Thumbtack Pro, a platform that matches professionals with clients. Even though Fraser informed Alvarez that he used a wheel chair, she didn’t expect him to have cerebral palsy and was a bit shocked when they met each other.
“I was of course wondering if I would be able to see results with someone who cannot show me or physically work with me,” Alvarez said, “But I figured he deserved a chance. Someone in his condition can choose much easier professions so to me it showed he really had a passion for the human body and training.” After a consultation at her apartment, she decided to hire him.
Alvarez was the heaviest she’d ever been when she first started training with Fraser. “So when I met David I was completely, completely, completely out of shape,” the 31-year-old freelance video editor said. “I didn’t know how to even do a workout in a gym.”
Four days after the marathon, they met as usual at Planet Fitness, a gym on Wall Street where Fraser trains his clients, since he doesn’t have his own gym yet. He was wearing his Yankees hat backward as always, matched with an all-red outfit, blue sneakers and a light green backpack. Carefully taking off his signature hat and putting on his glasses, he smiled at Alvarez and said, “There you are!” They both laughed and headed to the warmup area, which was just two stairs down. Instead of using the accessible facilities, he turned around and slid down the stairs in his wheelchair, dexterously, with his arms raised in the air to keep balance.
Born in Trinidad in 1967, Fraser never felt he was any different from other people when he was a kid despite his disease. He moved to New York when he was 6, and has lived in Brooklyn ever since. He became “the biggest Yankees fan,” he said, went to college and met his wife, with whom he had three children.
Because of cerebral palsy, Fraser always has to use a wheelchair. His speech is hard to understand for those unaccustomed to it, and his movements are halting. But he doesn’t think much about his disability, nor does he let it get in his way.
He finished his first New York City Marathon back in 2007, when he had little idea what a marathon was. He remembered exploring the five boroughs and having a lot of fun that day. But it wasn’t until 2008 when he started to take it seriously — that year, his wife had been diagnosed with stomach cancer and he started to participate in the marathon for her. Eleven years later, even though she’s healthy and cancer-free, she is still his biggest motivation — and still the woman who waits for him at the finish line every year.
Fraser was training himself in a park for his first marathon when he met Mike Oliva, who would become his coach and good friend. He practiced in his wheelchair for hours without eating and drinking, which caught Oliva’s attention. Later, they happened to be paired together by Achilles International, a nonprofit organization that pairs abled athletes with disabled ones. Oliva trained Fraser and has run through every marathon with him during the past 12 years.
Besides his marathon career, Fraser works as an accountant in lower Manhattan from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. every weekday. But he has another passion, apart from doing what used to be his childhood dream job.
Five years ago, he decided that he wanted to “help people” as well as escape from the daily job routine, and he attended the American Academy of Personal Training program to obtain his certification as a personal trainer. He began to work as a personal trainer in his off-hours after the accounting job, and launched a website to help promote his private training business called Nightwarriors Fitness. Usually, he only keeps three to four clients so that he can distribute a fair amount of time to each of them.
“I always loved fitness. You know what, me being disabled, and yet being able to be fit,” he said, “I always think, why is it possible that I can do it, but people that are not disabled are on the way to get out of shape?”
Fraser’s disability never swayed Alvarez’s decision to work with him. “I just knew that there would be a bit more effort needed on my part to really understand and make sure I utilized all that David has to offer as a personal trainer.”
“One, two, three, four, ding!” Fraser looked at his timer and counted as Alvarez was doing weightlifting. Although he wasn’t always able to do demonstrations like other abled personal trainers, he had his own methods of instruction. After the warm-up exercise, Fraser took out a pack of training handouts, read them together with Alvarez and gave her oral instructions. He also prepared his own fitness tool like a jump rope that allowed Alvarez to do complementary exercise.
While being encouraging, Fraser always knew where the limit of his client was, so he tried to keep the atmosphere relaxing and didn’t push too hard, which made it easy and comfortable for Alvarez to work out. At one point, she was even bargaining with him over how many sets of weightlifting she would do. At the end of the 50-minute session, they gave each other a high-five.
Alvarez described Fraser’s personal training as his “passion project” and a big motivation for her to persist in working out even when she felt down sometimes. “He’s taking time out of his day to do this,” she would sometimes say to herself. “You should get started. You should get out there and get to the gym with him.”
After one and a half years training with Fraser, Alvarez feels she has become more confident and positive. “I go to the beach in my bikini and I feel great and I feel healthy,” she said, “And that’s the best thing you can ask for.”
When we were crossing the street together after this training session, Fraser stopped and waved at a driver to let the car pass first. When there was a little slope, I offered to push him up to the sidewalk but he gently refused, managing to wheel himself up at last.
“I’m disabled, but I don’t live a disabled life,” he said.
