Hardcopy Reaction - Alex finally gets his hands on an iRun Magazine

Thanks to my sister who lives in a city with a Running Room and was good enough to drop in and
grab some copies of the January iRun magazine and send them to us,
Alex was finally able to see himself recognized as an iRun Award winner in print today.

As I expected, his reaction was "bigger" seeing himself in a magazine than it had been to seeing it on a webpage. (After all, his story began being told on web pages, by me, 14 years ago). It was even bigger than his reaction to seeing it covered on CBC's Compass News (but again, it's not the first time he's been on Compass)

First I had to interrupt his Olympic Relay Run (Wii) ..... He quickly flipped through the magazine to find himself and read the article aloud to me.... (if you want to read along, I've repeated the text below)

iRun for Autism Awareness, Acceptance and Inclusion.

At the age of 20, PEI native Alex Bain's unwavering dedication to running already sets him apart from most of his peers. Bain races almost every weekend. He has broken the 20-minute mark in the 5k and is very close to breaking 40 minutes in the 10k. He just completed his first full marathon in an impressive time of 3:29:29.

But his age isn't the only thing that’s special about Bain; he was diagnosed as autistic at the age of three. Today, a huge part of Alex’s motivation each time he laces up his shoes is to promote awareness about autism – and the fact that he, and many others like him, wish for acceptance, not a cure. “Autism makes me different from my friends,” says Bain. “That’s OK.” As his trademark yellow race t-shirt spells out, Bain is “Running For Autism, Not Against It.”

In July 2006, Alex (accompanied by his mother, Janet Norman-Bain, who played both support crew and videographer) embarked on a run from tip-to-tip of PEI to raise money for autism awareness and risk and safety management. But even this challenge – he averaged between 20-25k per day – didn’t quite prepare him for what the last stretch of his marathon would feel like: Bain admits he hit the wall with 10k to go, “the first time I’ve done three hours of running.” Still, he exceeded his projected time goal by more than five minutes.

Bain is no stranger to awards; he has also been crowned PEI RoadRunners Rookie of the Year, Junior RoadRunner of the Year and Inspirational Runner of the Year.

How Alex reacted to learning he'd won the iRun Award

I knew ahead of time that Alex had won the iRun award (though I still don't know who nominated him...). When I saw it had hit the www.iRun.ca Website, I loaded the web page announcing the winners on my PC, set up the video camera, and invited Alex in to check it out. Here's his reaction......

Runman's First Marathon - The Video

This is the movie I made about the my first Marathon. My mom took pictures and my dad took the video. My song about the waves like the first 10km.

Alex YouTubed! - Alex's Life & Times (in over 70 video clips)

I've mentioned before that this blog's regular readers come mostly from 2 different communities - the running community and the autism/autistic community. Some in the running community have known Alex since 2004 and know him pretty well, seeing him on a weekly basis, if not more often. Some in the autism community, though they've never met Alex in person, have known of him since my online presence started about 14 years ago, when he was 6 years old. A few other readers here have known Alex his whole life.

Recently we've been able to do something I've been wanting to do, thanks to the acquisition of some technology, namely a DVD recorder and (finally!!) high speed Internet. My eldest son's technical advice, as always, was invaluable as well. I spent the last few weeks copying old VHS tapes onto DVD and, in the process, reliving my children's early childhood. I had a box of "home movies" I had wanted to copy as well as a box of "Alex & Autism" videos that contained footage of Alex at home and at school as well as autism related TV shows & movies. It sure brought back memories!!

So, after a couple of weeks of copying, I turned to taking some of the more classic Alex clips and converting them to upload to YouTube (those under 10 minutes) and Vimeo (those over 10 minutes). These clips cover Alex's life from when he was 1 year old up to his High School graduation (and join the more recent videos that were there from his Tip-to-Tip Run). There is video from home, from school and from the community (like a birthday party at the bowling alley and another at McDonalds). There is a video made for CBC on Inclusion in PEI schools that features Alex's class when he was in grade 8 and the 3 "special needs" kids in that class. There are a number of videos that illustrate his early literacy skills and love for word books. Others show his early typing, both independently and with various amounts of assistance, both in the classroom and at home doing homework. There are videos that I think many parents of autistic kids will recognize their own child's behaviour in - toe walking, spinning, covering his ears, not responding to his name, echolalia, rewinding the VCR over & over...There are 4 school Christmas concerts, and highlights from The Great Island Kids contest gala when he got his "Against The Odds" runner up award as well as highlights from his High School graduation; his receiving his diploma and awards for highest marks in a couple of courses and an Application prize in another. There is one showing how he learned to talk when he was 6 - a reenactment of the actual event about 2 weeks after it happened (It's on YouTube in 2 parts).

I do have a couple of favourites; one is of Alex, totally in his element, watching The RoadRunner show when he was 6 (is it any wonder he grew up to be a RoadRunner?!). The other is from Christmas day when Alex was 5 and although his spoken vocabulary at the time was only 3 words ("no", "oh-no" and "bye") he decided, on a couple of occasions, to go out and "sing" Christmas Carols on our doorstep.

Currently there are 67 videos on YouTube, from a few seconds to about 10 minutes long and 5 longer ones on Vimeo. Likely there will be more. They do not tell the whole story, there's a lot that's not there. For instance I have remarkably few temper tantrums on video and little if any SIB - these are not the kinds of things I would have wanted to record for posterity, it's not the case that they didn't happen (but if you watch them all you will see a tantrum or two and you'll hear plenty of screaming). It is my hope that these videos will help illustrate a few things about the realities of autism. Things like -

• Autism is not a static condition: autism at 2 looks a lot different than autism at 7 and at 13 and at 18.
• A child with a 3 word spoken vocabulary at 6 can know an awful lot more than he is able to tell you.
• Communication is far more than speech
• Given a chance, the same chance his peers are given, with accommodations to his needs, an autistic child can grow and learn and succeed.
• Inclusion *can* work and work well.
• An austistic who did not receive ABA or IBI (or any other intensive or behaviour based intervention) can graduate, (with honours, prizes), and with great self esteem, from high school.
• Acceptance, and assuming competence, can take an autistic child a very long way.
• "Acceptance" does not mean "doing nothing"
• etc.

enjoy....

CBC TV Interview - Aired on CBC News Compass June 14th, 2007

This follow up interview to a number of interviews we did surrounding Alex's Tip-to-Tip Run and Dennis Debbaudt's Seminars was done for Charlottetown's CBC 6pm News Compass on June 13th and aired June 14th. It runs 2:33.