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On June 26, Palmiero-Winters became the first amputee to complete the Western States Endurance Run, commonly listed as one of the five toughest races in the United States. Photographs courtesy of Amy Palmiero-Winters. |
On a racetrack in France, people are sobbing and throwing up. Bloody footprints dot the course, and in trashcans under wads of gauze and bandages lay fugitive human toenails. The runners still slogging along in the grisly 18th hour of the World 24-Hour Championship, Brive, look, for the most part, a little…absent. Glassy-eyed, sick, and staring into the middle distance. There are a few exceptions; Scott Jurek, the U.S. 24-hour champion, downs a cup of vegan rice noodles as he flies by at an eight-minute-mile clip. A Japanese man named Shingo Inoue laps him, already at mile 131. And slowly, gaining doggedly on the field, is a one-legged woman with quiet, steady eyes.
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