Скачать или смотреть Paralysis Marks New Chapter for Triathlon Coach

(21 Jul 2017) When Beth Sanden crashed her bike after speeding over a wet, broken patch of asphalt 15 years ago, the elite endurance athlete was left paralyzed. She figured her competition days were over, along with her career as a personal trainer and triathlon coach.
Actually, they were just beginning.
Paralyzed from the ribcage down and told she'd never walk again, she was swimming a year later. Soon after, she was walking with a walker, then a cane. Then she was back to competing in triathlons, albeit not the way she did before.
Sanden mostly walks these days by swinging her braced, completely paralyzed left leg like a pendulum while leaning on her cane, then moving her still-weakened right leg ahead of her body.
And she coaches people who have suffered severe injuries but, like her, have no interest in settling for a life of watching others do what they once did.
After they spend a couple of hours in the pool, Sanden will take most of them on a bike ride up and down San Clemente's picturesque but punishingly steep hills.
At the pool, Edwin Figueroa is one of the first to jump in, after securing his legs at the ankles with zip ties. A bystander caught in a drive-by shooting in Los Angeles nearly 30 years ago, he has been paralyzed from the waist down since age 17.
That didn't stop him from propelling a wheelchair to the finish line in dozens of marathons over the years, including one last month along the shores of Minnesota's Lake Superior. Still, it always bugged him that he couldn't do a triathlon _ a long-distance race consisting of swimming, bicycling and running _ because he couldn't swim.
After Beth taught him how to swim, he did four triathlons.
"I mean thank God we have people like her. She doesn't charge money at all and she spends all her time with us and look at where I'm at," said Figueroa.
A legendary figure in endurance competitions, Sanden has completed more than 70 marathons and a similar number of triathlons throughout her career. The latter include several Ironmans, which to the uninitiated are super-sized triathlons.
Having completed a marathon on every continent and the North Pole, she will enter the South African Challenge at the end of this month, competing in seven marathons in seven African countries on seven days.

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