Personal Best: Renfrew man completes 80 miles in wheelchair
It may not be official, but Dave Convery, 62, of Renfrew, has the personal satisfaction of breaking the longest distance traveled in a wheelchair.
His wife, Mame, said her husband completed 80 miles in 10 hours and 27 minutes by doing the wheeling himself in 3.2-mile loops around a section of the Justus Trail in Franklin. He started at 7:26 a.m. and finished just before 6 p.m. Friday.
The old record was 75 miles in 12 hours.
“When he hit 80 miles, he was done. He was satisfied at getting to 80 miles,” Mame Convery said.
He was trying to make the Guinness Book of World Records, but his wife said the Guinness people had too many expensive stipulations — the course had to be measured by a professional surveyor for one — that he decided to make the attempt without worrying about an official record.
A support crew of his wife; his youngest daughter, Devin Doctor; his sister and her children and some friends kept Convery hydrated and fed by passing him drinks and energy bars on the fly.
“I'm a nurse and said I would take care of that stuff. He would come rolling up and say, 'I need this, I need that,'” Doctor said. “I would put lotion on his back.”
Convery has been using a wheelchair for the past few years.
He was an outdoor minister when he was stuck by lightning while on top of a mountain in North Carolina in 1983 at age 25.
“The lightning hit his head and traveled to his ankles,” Mame Convery said.
“He was left a quadraplegic. He learned to walk again and he walked a lot of years. But in 2014, he needed to go into a wheelchair,” she said.
He worked as a machinist at AK Steel before retiring in 2011.
Convery discovered that he could cover more distance in a wheelchair just by pushing his wheels.
His older daughter, Erin, is a runner and ran track and field for Butler Area High School.
Mame Convery said she convinced him to enter 5K races with her, racing in his wheelchair.
Doctor said, “He used to do extreme sports like mountain climbing before he was hit by lightning. This was something on that same level again.”
Since then, he's competed in the Pittsburgh and Cleveland marathons and numerous other races.
He trains three to five times a week, depending on the weather, often in big empty parking lots.
“This year with COVID with no marathons, he decided to try for the record,” Doctor said.
After finishing his 80 miles, the Converys stayed the night in Franklin, where Dave Convery slept for 10 hours.
After getting home to Renfrew on Saturday, he went back to bed.
“He makes a plan and goes with it,” Mame Convery said. ”He's an inspiration to people.”
Doctor said, “He was doing it for his own satisfaction. He's always been that way.”
