Pushing to the Finish Line Athletes come in all shapes and sizes.

David Slomkowski drove his gray Toyota pickup truck toward parking lot H at M&T Bank Stadium.

“You know,” Slomkowski asked his veteran racing buddy riding shotgun, “we gotta race against 18,000 people today?”

“That’s no problem,” 10-year-old James Banks shot back. Slomkowski smiled. The adolescent’s retort was hardly wild-eyed enthusiasm. The duo had completed the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, triathlon two months earlier and had even trekked 26.2 miles through Baltimore’s neighborhoods last year, so the 2008 Baltimore Marathon wasn’t anything new.

Still, anticipation for their latest adventure left both runners restless in the waking hours of Saturday, October 11. Once they parked, James cranked up the truck’s stereo, his slender index finger wheeling the black volume knob until the heated cabin vibrated, while Slomkowski untied the dark-blue carriage from the truck’s flatbed. The howling wind off the inner harbor didn’t affect some of the men and women wearing mesh tank tops and grazing on the blacktop pasture, but Bruce Springsteen pelting “Oh, Mary, don’t you weep no more!” from the Toyota’s speakers quickly drew their attention.

Forty-year-old Slomkowski seamlessly melted into the church choir refrain when he opened the passenger-side door. “Oh, James, don’t you weep no more,” he screamed, overpowering the stereo, while he slid his right arm underneath James’s knees and wrapped his left arm around the child’s back.

He placed his young frail companion in the carriage emblazoned with yellowlettered “ATHLETE” just above his head and applied the finishing touches: James’s red sunglasses, their racing bibs, and stickers denoting that they were running the full marathon. Before buckling him in completely, Slomkowski slid a gray

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“Athletes Serving Athletes” T-shirt over James’s brown collared shirt. The team was now in uniform.

Athletes Serving Athletes (ASA), the nonprofit organization that Slomkowski created and has operated since late 2006, strives to help physically handicapped children in Baltimore experience the thrill of the athletic experience. Beginning with the September 11, 2007, Run To Remember in downtown Baltimore, ASA has enabled over 50 disabled children to complete races that range from triathlons and marathons to shorter 5 and 10Ks.

“You’re doing something you love, but you’re doing it for someone else,” says Slomkowski, who has helped James race over 90 miles. “Just being a part of that team, I get so much back. He’s giving back to us way more than we are giving him.”

Eo * *

In his sleek black and green electronic wheelchair, James zips through the lockerlined hallways at the William S. Baer School for physically challenged children in West Baltimore the day before the marathon, exclaiming, “Look how fast I can go!”

Courtesy of Athletes Serving Athletes

A Diana Desierto (pink shirt), Nancy Doran (yellow shirt), and Lauren Altman (kneeling), all teachers at the William S. Baer School, help James Banks (front left) and Tyquon Ward (front