- Our next segment takes us to Belmont, located just north of Grand Rapids.

Persevering through the challenges life brings with cerebral palsy West Michigan's own Johnny Agar remains dedicated to his love of physical activity and pushing himself to new heights.

Meet Johnny and his father Jeff.

Members of Team Agar, who deliver a powerful moving message of family, faith and extraordinary courage.

- Born with cerebral palsy and facing physical limitations.

Johnny Agar is challenged daily, but adversity doesn't stand a chance as Johnny who refuses to fail chases his dream of becoming an athlete.

Who is Johnny Agar?

- I was born at three pounds, seven ounces.

The doctor's said that I wouldn't be able to sit, stand, or walk or do a lot of things that sometimes people tend to take for granted.

I had always loved sports and wheelchair sports wasn't really an option for me.

I had gotten involved with Terrence at my team Triumph.

- Johnny was one of our first captains.

And the captain is the person with a disability that rides along in a event, whether it's a triathlon or a road race.

And Johnny was helped by a team of angels or athletes that took him through that event.

- One race, Dad wanted to try to do a race with me and Team Agar as we know it was born.

- I made the mistake of saying, well, I wonder how hard a 5K could be if I did it with him.

and it was horrible 'cause I didn't train.

I trained on Tuesday for the Friday 5K, but we did that race together and he just absolutely loved it.

And we've been doing endurance races ever since.

- A lot of people with physical disabilities wouldn't have an opportunity to do something like this.

And dad, you know, he likes to say that he is my arms and legs to be able to do what I want to do.

It's a tremendous amount of sacrifice that Dad puts in to allow me to do this.

It's really special.

- [Shelley] Johnny's drive to keep pushing his limits led him to a seemingly impossible idea to walk a mile by himself.

- He has always wanted to be an athlete.

He's always looked up to his dad.

And I think that's what drove him to decide to walk the mile.

He wanted to know what it felt like to be dad.

He wanted to know what it felt like to be an athlete.

And he just came up with that idea one day.

And to us, you know, he had only ever walked 23 steps.

We immediately thought, how many steps are in a mile?

That's impossible, right?

But we never wanted to give him that attitude.

We always tried to stay positive with him and let him know that if he tried, that was all we wanted him to do.

And he just kept training and training and he finally did it.

He walked across the finish line.

People had finished the race.

He was the last one to cross the finish line.

And hundreds of people got behind him and followed him along to encourage him.

And the amount of love and encouragement and motivation that was behind him in order to enable him to cross that finish line was just an amazing thing to see.

I'm just very proud of him.

He sets his mind on something and he goes after it.

- After completing their hardest challenge yet Team Agar had no plans of slowing down as they gear up to take on another impossible challenge, an IRONMAN triathlon.

- [Johnny] My dad pulls me in a boat and then I am behind him on a bike.

We have a customized bike that is a tandem, and I sit right behind dad and then dad pushing me in a jogging stroller.

- We get invited by IRONMAN to do the IRONMAN World Championship in Kona, Hawaii.

It's called the most brutal one day endurance event on the planet.

And it is, it's really hilly, it's really windy, and it's really hot.

- This is our second time back.

We were there in 2016 and we didn't finish the race.

So it's really given us an opportunity to say, "what can we do better?

And how can we put our best foot forward?"

Sometimes we win, sometimes you learn.

- We had told Johnny his whole life, you gotta try things.

You gotta, you know, give it your best shot and you gotta be willing to fail and prepared to fail.

So we took the same attitude with the IRONMAN World Championship.

The first time we got halfway through the bike and missed the bike cutoff timing.

So we've been basically obsessed for the last six years to try to get invited back.

We keep doing other IRONMANs.

We've had wild things happen or weird things happen in different IRONMANs.

We had a flat tire for 40 miles.

We had a torrential downpour in one race.

We had 100 degree heat in another, but it all came together in IRONMAN Maryland in 2022, where we actually got through the race.

We had four minutes to spare.

Johnny walked the finish.

It was just a fantastic finish.

The crowd went crazy and that spurred IRONMAN to then invite us back to the IRONMAN World Championship this year in Kona, Hawaii.

- Hopefully we can accomplish our goal of me walking across the finish line in my walker.

- I think the biggest challenge they have is the idea of pulling that amount of weight and load and having the strength to do that.

- I'm pulling 400 pounds of weight.

A typical athlete is gonna be going 13 or 14 miles an hour up these big hills.

I'll go three to four miles an hour.

So I'm pulling double the weight of a normal person.

So it's just, it's almost insurmountable sometimes.

So you gotta have some people that really understand what it takes to pull that much weight.

- Building Jeff's body to be strong, not just to have the endurance is critical to this kind of performance.

So Johnny has to stay in a piece of equipment for almost 17 hours and it is not easy doing that.

- With me having a physical disability, it's very, very important that I'm doing something every day.

I am very, very conscious of...

I have to do my part for dad.

- Johnny's gonna work on, you know, both managing tone, improving some of his strength, because if his strength is good, then we're able to transfer him a little easier as well.

Just be able to tolerate the positions in the boat.

He's lying flat down, in the strollers, he's sitting up at a very, you know, heavy angle.

So all of those pressure points, it can impact his body very differently.

So we've gotta work on just making sure that his tone is good throughout those 17 hours.

I always tell my patients and clients that 60% of you improving, of you getting better is first the mindset.

If your mind isn't right in the right place, you are really not gonna get very far.

These guys have that nailed.

And so now it's for us to layer on the other bits and pieces to bring it all together.

- [Jeff] It's such a huge thing to look at Johnny, the stuff he's done, you never would've imagined and you'd never dreamed he'd be on the biggest sports network in the world, being an athlete and the commercials he's been in with Michael Phelps and The Rock.

Just crazy things like that.

You never would've dreamed that - Failure shouldn't be something that hinders you.

You should look at it as a challenge and not as something to be afraid of 'cause that's gonna hold you back.

And if you never try, you'll never know.

- We should not just be sitting back and accepting what society has pushed on us to either for someone like Johnny to stay in his lane, so to speak and stay in his chair, and racing is not for him.

Says who?

We can change that.

- Endurance sports, it really challenges you to just look around and say, "what am I capable of doing?

You know, I'm capable of doing so much more."

And so, even if people don't tell you, you are challenged just by what's around you.

And so I think it's beneficial for 'em to just give it a try.

- So what do I say in closing?

Go get 'em, break a leg?

Stay above the water?

- We'll take all of it.

- Okay - Shelley, we'll take all of it.

- Good luck and keep doing what you're doing.

- Thank you.

Thank you.