Zach Friedley, who grew up in the decidedly flat terrain of Kansas farm country, remembers the first time his family drove west on Interstate 70 to Colorado’s Rocky Mountains. “One of my earliest memories was going through the [Eisenhower] Tunnel, popping out, and [having] a feeling of just, like, wow. But I was experiencing it from a car,” he says, recalling that his family would only get out for short breaks at scenic overlooks. It would be years before the mountains would finally reel him back.

Born in the mid-’80s, Friedley’s childhood was fairly typical in a lot of ways, despite having been born without a right leg. A country kid, he recalls riding 4-wheelers, exploring the creek near his house, and playing T-ball with friends. Thanks to a program at Shriner’s Hhospital in St. Louis, he received a free prosthetic until he was 18. “It looked like a normal leg,” he recalls. But by today’s standards, the wooden limb with its door-hinge knee component was rudimentary, to say the least. Between growth spurts and rough-and-tumble boy life, Zach made a lot of trips to St. Louis to have it repaired or swapped out.

In his 20s, no longer eligible for the Shriner’s program, Zach found himself navigating private care and prosthetic services, which he describes as a frustrating uphill battle in which providers were less than forthcoming about the latest technology. Terrified that basic prosthetics would quash his ability to remain active as he got older, Zach’s research led him to a company that produced running blades. Around since the 1970s, blades didn’t enter the mainstream until the mid-2010s.

Zach emailed the company, which invited him to their headquarters in Oklahoma City. When the prosthetist saw how fit Zach was, he offered to let him try a blade, explaining it would likely take weeks to master. Zach put it on and was running within five minutes.

“He’s like, ‘I’ve never seen anybody pick this up as quickly as you,’” Zach recalls. He left that day with the blade and an invitation to train with a USA track and field coach for the Paralympic trials in Beijing, four months down the road.

Ultimately, the Games and a track career didn’t pan out, but the running seed—like the big-mountain exploration seed—had been planted. About five years later, living in Mendocino, California, Zach started running short distances on the beaches and trails. In 2019, he found himself at a Born to Run trail event, distributing coffee to the racers on behalf of a local nonprofit. Something about the event, the setting, and the community watered those seeds.

On a whim, having never run more than five kilometers, Zach signed up to run the 10K. He hadn’t trained. He didn’t have a coach or support team. But he did have his blade. He was the only adaptive runner on course that day. “I did it. I ran it. Crossing that finish line, my body had chills. I was almost crying. It was like some sort of spiritual experience. That’s the moment my life changed.”

Yes, it’s about running for Zach. And the trails. And the mountains. But it’s also about expanding the tent and welcoming more athletes, especially adaptive athletes, into a sport that hasn’t always opened its arms or its doors.

“Nobody invited me to trail running,” he says. “I had friends at the time that were hiking the PCT. They were going all across these trails that you couldn’t get to from a car, you had to get to by your feet, and I remember having thoughts even before that [10K] run of, like, how do I get my body in shape enough to be able to go see a sunset on top of some mountains or get to a view that you can’t drive to.” After that 10K, he knew how to do it. And his next question: “How can I share this with other people?”

It wasn’t long before Zach was inviting people to experience trails in the best way for them. “There’s no right way to do it, but running is the door. I have friends who run on crutches. Maybe a blade slows them down or maybe they don’t have a blade.”

Zach acknowledges that you have to be pretty privileged to even get a blade these days. There are a lot of barriers for getting started; equipment is one. Knowhow, inclusion, and reputation are others.

“Still to this day, as a sponsored athlete that some people recognize as one of the best in the world, I still have to beg for solutions.” And for every sponsored, competitive athlete, there are countless people who simply want to move their bodies and get outside but don’t want to race or compete. A lot of the nonprofits who make equipment available to amputees make competition a condition of receiving a blade, he explains. He recently met an athlete who was training to run a half marathon on a walking prosthetic setup as part of the application to prove she was qualified for a blade.

“Can you imagine walking into a running shop to get shoes and the salesperson is like, ‘hey, I’m not going to sell you these shoes until you go run a marathon, then come back and show me your marathon certificate and then I’ll give you these shoes’?” Zach is indignant.

“Maybe someone wants to be part of a Wednesday night group run, and that’s as far as they’re ever going to take it,” he says. That has to be enough.

That’s why Zach created Born to Adapt, a program designed to create community and opportunities for people with disabilities around the globe to experience trails and trail running. The nonprofit provides grassroots events where anyone and everyone is invited to come try running. For some, he says, those events become onramps to competitive races.

“We’ve got to change the tone and the language we use. Are we putting value on competition or are we putting the value on community? I’m trying to push community because I still think if you do invest in community and you invest in these people to come out and try it, you’ll probably end up having more competitive runners. Instead of looking for the next Paralympic world champion or whatever, let’s just get people to the Wednesday night group.”

Story by Deborah Williams, TPL’s editorial director.