Take all those politically correct modifiers and put them in a box. Round up all those for-someone-with qualifiers and take them out back. Grab each and every one of those darn hyphens and stick them in a zip-lock for someone who really needs them.

By every definition that matters — his own and that of anyone who has ever lined up against him — Jason Lester is an athlete, period.

The Big Island resident will prove that yet again this weekend as he tackles the Ironman World Championships in Kona, the fifth of six major endurance events he's competing in this year.

Lester started the year with the grueling 31-mile Hilo to Volcano Ultramarathon then followed up with Ironman Arizona, the International Triathlon Union World Championships in Vancouver, and the Pacific Crest Endurance Duathlon in Oregon.

Just six weeks ago, Lester entered the three-day Ultraman Canada as part of a relay team. When one of his teammates dropped out, Lester took on the load, completing a 6.2-mile swim and a 52.4-mile run on separate days.

And late next month, Lester will take a stab at his ultimate goal, completing the Ultraman Hawai'i.

Not bad, even Lester will admit, for a guy with one functional arm.

"Any other triathlete might look at this and say I'm nuts," Lester said. "But this is my calling. When I see the expressions on people's faces, how what I do can inspire them, I'm even more determined. I've seen it among my own family and friends: 'If Jason can do it, what's my excuse?'"

The Arizona native could easily have taken what happened on Halloween night 1986 — when a driver ran a red light at 80 miles per hour and sent him flying 120 feet down the road — and punched a guilt-free pass on a lifetime of missed opportunities and unrealized dreams.

But, even at age 12, Lester already had been through too much, already had absorbed too many of his old man's lessons in sport and life, to give in.

Lester's parents divorced when he was still a toddler. Lester's mother retained custody of Lester and his older half brother, but the household was in constant turmoil. When Lester was 3, his mother left, abandoning the boys to a trailer with no food or electricity.

Social workers stepped in and the boys were eventually reunited with biological fathers.

Lester flourished under his father's firm but loving care. Charles Lester, a former collegiate football player, nurtured his son's natural athletic abilities and instilled in him a stubborn refusal to give anything but maximum effort and focus.

"He always wanted me to be an athlete and, in a way, he lived through me," Lester said. "He did not push me to excel, necessarily, but he didn't expect anything less than my best."

By age 12, Lester was a six-time Little League all-star and a standout football player.

It was a week before the state football championships, a game in which the speedy Lester figured to play a major role, when Lester and a friend set out on their bikes for an evening of trick-or-treating.

The boys were waiting at an intersection when the light turned green. Lester was the first to enter the crosswalk.

Lester doesn't remember what happened next. He can't recall if he saw the young woman speeding through the intersection in her car. He has no recollection of flying through the air and crashing down on his shoulder, severing the nerve fibers that gave him arm motion.

Lester suffered a collapsed lung and 21 broken bones. But the real pain was yet to come.

While Lester was still recuperating from his injuries, Charles Lester — his "father, coach, best friend and only support system" — suffered a massive heart attack and died.

"I remember thinking, 'I'm not going to let this determine my life.' I knew I had to behave like a man and fend for myself."

Lester moved in with his grandmother, Ida Lester, and worked to reclaim his life.

Stung by a wrestling coach's refusal to let him join the team, Lester nonetheless reclaimed his spots on the school baseball and football teams. At his football coach's suggestion, he also tried out for the cross-country and track teams, which in turn sparked a passion for marathons and duathlons.

At a football banquet at the end of his freshman year, Lester received a prophetic recognition: the Ironman Award.

After a short stint in Arizona State, where he ran track as a walk-on, Lester landed a job at a sports agency in California.

"I felt that if I couldn't be a professional athlete myself, I could still help athletes," he said.

But Lester's athletic inclinations couldn't be quashed. And as his life grew richer with a budding career in art and a new love, Renee Visaya, whom he would later marry, Lester found himself increasingly engrossed with the sport of triathlon.

It was during a visit to the Big Island shortly after the birth of his and Renee's daughter, Katana, that Lester witnessed his first Kona Ironman. The experience reduced him to tears.

"I don't know what happened, but I was overcome," he said.

He called his best friend Harold Chapple in Arizona and posited a crazy idea: What if I did this?

"Harold told me, 'Jason, you are the Ironman. You always have been,' " Lester recalls.

Lester set his sights on the 2007 Ironman Arizona and hired renown swimmer and coach Karlyn Pipes-Nielsen to help him prepare.

"She nearly dropped when I told her about my arm," he said. "But when I met her at the pool the next day, we just focused on having a game plan for getting it done. She didn't approach it as a question of if I could do it, but how I would get it done."

Through trial and error, Lester has found it best to swim with his paralyzed arm strapped to his side, cycle with the arm lashed to the handlebars of his bike, and run with his hand secured in his shorts.

Lester finished the race in 12 hours, 38 minutes and 53 seconds, placing No. 513 of more than 2,200 athletes. And he was hooked.

At this year's Ironman Arizona, Lester got some unexpected news before the race even began: He had won one of 150 lottery spots for Kona.

"Every triathlete in the world wants to compete in Kona," Lester said. "This is why we give up Friday nights. This is why we train so hard. It's a dream come true."

To Lester, triathloning is a calling, one for which he has had to sacrifice his marriage (though he and Renee remain close), friends and precious time with his grandma Ida. But it's a calling that cannot be ignored, he said.

"Everybody has a passion, and my message is to follow that passion and don't let anybody get in your way," Lester said. "This is my calling, to inspire people with my testimony."