GREENFIELD — Dominic Brown peeled his sweat-coated shirt off his back, bracing for the one-mile Spartan Obstacle race ahead of him. As the 5-year-old Greenfield boy prepared to overcome the walls, ropes and jungle gyms before him, his father Devon gave “Dom” a puzzled look.
He asked his son: Are you too hot or something?
The boy answered by tracing a finger across the faint scar running down the center of his chest, a memory from his open heart surgery one year ago. I want the other kids in the race to see this, Dom said. Because then when they see me do the obstacles, they can be brave.
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When a 5-year-old says something like that, a parent has to take a pause, Brown said.
The father-son duo logged another successful race in a Spartan competition at Perfect North Slopes last month. Brown — who runs a personal training business called Change Fitness — has competed in elite-level obstacle courses in five different countries, having run every style of race from a three-mile sprint to a full-marathon course.
Now his son, recovering from a heart condition they discovered at his birth, is following in his dad’s footsteps through the Spartan Race world.
Muddy engine that could
Dominic has competed in small-scale obstacle courses through Spartan Race Inc. — a global athletic organization — since he was 3 years old, he said.
The race for 4- to 6-year-old competitors is usually a half-mile course, but Dominic has built up enough endurance over the years to run the two-mile gambit, which is available for racers in the 11 to 14 age group, Brown said. Because he’s not physically tall enough to reach some of the obstacles the teenagers can, Dominic opted to run the one-mile course, typically reserved for 7- to 10-year-olds, twice.
Dominic keeps up with the other competitors who are significantly older than he is. His favorite part about racing is sliding into the mud pit obstacle, he said.
For one station in the one-mile loop, Dom was required to carry a 25-pound sand bag across an area of several meters, do five burpees and then bring it back. That event took every bit of strength that the 50-pound boy had in his body, Brown said.
But he went after it, like he does everything else.
“I want to be a big guy, so I want to do the hard races,” Dominic said.
“But daddy’s race was five miles,” he added, wonder in his voice.
Heart of a hero
Dominic was born with a small hole in his heart.
It was a condition he lived with until he was 4 years old, after which his family began exploring treatment options. After extensive deliberation on their son’s future, the family made the decision to move forward with open heart surgery in February of 2017, Brown said.
On the day of the operation in which they would break Dom’s sternum and repair his heart, Brown said goodbye to his son before they transferred him out to surgery.
“You don’t think about this stuff, but when they’re wheeling your kid away you realize this may be the last time you talk to them,” Brown said. “And that hit me like a freaking ton of bricks. I don’t think I had thought enough about it.”
Throughout Dom’s time in the hospital, Brown leaned into his obstacle racing team, and the group began sharing Dom’s story on social media. The family posted updates on his condition, and hosted “Dom’s Healthy Heart Challenge,” where groups around the obstacle course community completed a race while bearing a backpack weighing as much as Dominic did at the time.
In a way, these people carried Dominic in a time when he couldn’t carry himself, Brown said.
Throughout Dominic’s surgery prep, operation and recovery, the family received letters, post cards, gifts and even a complimentary backpack sent by Jason McCarthy, the founder of GoRuck, anther worldwide athletic challenge organization, Brown said.
The world of Spartan Races is a hugely supportive group, Brown said. Many competitors are broken people who are looking for a place to heal, Brown said.
So just as they helped lift Dominic up, maybe his story can help others not be ashamed of their own scars, he said.
Dominic said he recovered from his surgery feeling much better. During one of his final days in the hospital, the boy’s blood flow was monitored through an impedance cardiograph. Seeing the red and blue lines on the screen monitoring his pulse, Dominic’s mouth dropped.
“He’d said, ‘Hey look, now I have a superhero heart,’” Brown laughed.
He doesn’t realize how right he was, Brown said.
Remembering to explore
Every day is a training opportunity for Dom, every day a chance to work out in a new way. Parents often worry that their children lifting weights and exercising too young might disrupt their growth plates, but most of the time, what Dom is doing looks like playing, Brown said.
At home, when he’s not watching the Netflix show “Ultimate Beastmaster,” Dominic is constantly climbing, running, exploring, playing, Brown said. He’ll jump off the swing set and climb on the bars and gymnast rings in their garage’s personal gym.
Watching his father work with clients, Dom sets challenges for himself and chases after them. That’s what’s made him so strong in the first place, Brown said.
“He self-guides, so it’s easy for him to model fitness after what I do,” Brown said. “As long as he’s being respectful and isn’t causing real problems to other people’s property, we let him explore. We’ll get dirty looks from parents, thinking that our kid is too chaotic, but they’ve forgotten about that play element.”
“He’ll be the kid at the playground that parents gasp at because he’s on top of the monkey bars,” Brown said with a chuckle. “But he’s just figuring out what he wants.”
Brown recalls one day when Dominic came running downstairs to inform him of his fitness progression.
Daddy, I can tell I’ve been working out, Dom had said. He pointed to the blue veins running up his biceps.
Look, I’ve got lines on my arms like Batman, he’d said.
Dominic said he’s eager to try lots of different sports when he’s older and gets to go to school. He has no problem showing other racers the scars on his chest, that way they don’t have to be scared, he said.
“I had heart surgery because I had a hole in my heart,” Dominic said. “Now look, I have a superhero heart.”
