She’s one tough mudder
Diana Codispoti makes up for small stature with big heart
Climbing a 40-foot muddy cliff or running through a field charged with volts of electricity isn’t for the faint of heart.
But it’s even more of a challenge if you’re Diana Codispoti, who has a form of dwarfism and stands 4 feet, 5 inches tall. She’ll be one of 1,500 participants in the World’s Toughest Mudder Race next month in Atlanta.
Codispoti, 35, a mar- keting director for a Houston architecture firm, is believed to be the first person with dwarfism to compete in the international endurance race, according to Tough Mudder officials. She has achondroplasia, a genetic mutation that causes short-limbed dwarfism. Her torso is average length, but her limbs are shorter. Her identical twin, Alexandra, who lives in Oklahoma, also has achondroplasia. Codispoti’s two other sisters and her parents are of average height.
“I want to show others that I can do this and that size, or whatever your challenge is, isn’t a determiner in your success,” Codispoti said outside of Memorial Park Fitness Center, where she works out with Houston Parks Department fitness director and trainer Shadston Pittman several times a week.
She started training with Pittman four years ago to help with her recovery after a second back surgery. Because of her stature, Codispoti suffered painful lumbar spinal stenosis, an abnormal narrowing of the spine. Pittman had trained Codispoti’s older sister to get fit after being diagnosed with celiac disease, an autoimmune reaction to eating gluten, a protein found in wheat, barley and rye.
“The first time I worked out with Shad, I was just happy because I thought I might finally get the relief I was looking for,” Codispoti said. “I was in pain. I couldn’t sit straight in my chair for long periods of time, and I needed to feel strong again. I felt like I was falling apart at 31. He gave me hope.”
Pittman’s workouts were slow and repetitive, at first. Even though he had never trained a person with dwarfism, he knew modifications were crucial.
“The goal is always to keep her safe,” Pittman said. “She didn’t think she was athletic when we started. I had to work on her core and spent the first six months measuring what we could do. We modified every-
thing and spent a lot of time in the beginning (training for Tough Mudder) working on her grip because her hands are smaller than most people.”
Codispoti said she lost 20 pounds in the process. But it was during her studies for her master’s degree in business at the University of Houston that she learned about Tough Mudder in a textbook. She went online to read more about the obstacle race. It looked like fun, and she would get to play in mud, she thought back then.
She recruited two friends to train and compete in the Tough Mudder race in Dallas in October 2016. The 15-foot climbing wall was her biggest challenge and took her five or six tries to get over. Since working out with Pittman, she said she’s learned how to compensate for her small grip by propelling her body forward. The motion helps in climbing and doing exercises like monkey bars.
“He doesn’t see size as something that stops me,” Codispoti said of Pittman. “I learned through him to embrace my size. We are not all the same, so I just have to figure out how to do the workouts that fit me.”
Growing up, Codispoti said her size was never really an issue. She played soccer and basketball in high school and found her strength was “stealing the ball.”
“My parents have always told us we could do anything,” she said.
As proof, Codispoti recalls a childhood memory in which cookies kept disappearing from the cookie jar placed far back on the family’s kitchen counter. Her mom blamed her dad. Then one day, her mom walked in and saw Codispoti and her twin sister using a drawer to hoist each other onto the counter for the cookies.
“That’s when my mom knew we’d be OK and that if we wanted something, we would get it. We would figure it out. Not much has changed,” Codispoti said.
For the World’s Toughest Mudder, the person or team that completes the most laps, including obstacles like scaling a 25-foot-tall wall or a mile-swim in mud, within a 24-hour period is crowned the Toughest Mudder on the Planet. The challenge is comparable to a 100-mile marathon, said Nolan Kombol, director of innovation for Tough Mudder.
“It’s a legitimate challenge,” Kombol said. “There’s a lot of additional equipment and preparation. It’s 24 hours and you have to fight the elements — the cold and the dark. Whether you are running 25 miles or 110 miles, everyone is there to compete for 24 hours, so you are constantly pushing yourself.”
About 1,500 people will participate in the race, including adaptive athletes, like Codispoti.
“We have a lot of adaptive athletes — blind athletes and athletes who are paralyzed from the waist down and run with teams that have ropes and pulleys to help get them over the obstacles. We want them to be safe and push them as hard as they can.”
Last year, Codispoti competed in a Tough Mudder in Chicago, and last month, she competed in two separate Toughest Mudder and Tougher Mudder races.
“The greatest thing is I’m not as fast because I’m short, but we’re doing this together,” she said. “That’s the mantra of Tough Mudder: tougher together. That’s what I love most is the community. Everyone is pulling for you.”
In Atlanta next month, when she’s well into the 24-hour race, Codispoti knows she’ll have a cheering section. Her pit crew includes Pittman, her sister, Alexandra, and father, Frank.
“That’s what it’s about,” said Codispoti, who plans to compete next year in the Spartan Race, which is a series of obstacle races of varying distance and difficulty ranging from 3 miles to marathon distances.
“A lot of time we get into our own heads when it comes to challenges. You should never stop yourself from accomplishing what you want to do, and don’t let anyone tell you you can’t,” she said.
To that end, Codispoti’s twin has started working out, and the two plan on compete together next year.