TA S T E BE WELL S A V A N N A H
Up and Running An athlete’s will and a surgeon’s skill come together to beat the odds Written by ANDREA GOTO
THE BRAIN OFTEN ENCODES a moment of profound trauma, burning the experience into memory with vivid detail. Such was the case on Labor Day 2014 when an oncoming car impatiently swerved around a turning vehicle and plowed nearly head-on into cyclist Jim Everett, who was just three miles away from his home in Springfield, Georgia. “It was a late-‘80s model Chevrolet Caprice classic,” Everett says. “I even remember the look on the young man’s face when
he hit me.” His left leg took the brunt of the impact. “I went up in the air and came back down onto the street pretty hard,” Everett recalls. “And I thought, Wow, this isn’t good.” Everett sat up slowly, trying to gather his wits. When he looked at his leg, he saw his shin bone had punctured his skin and was sticking out. Most likely in shock, Everett doesn’t recall feeling pain. He called his wife from his cell phone, calmly saying he’d been in an accident and he thought his leg “might” be injured. Then he called for an ambulance.
Everett, 47 at the time, was a lifelong runner chasing down a Boston Marathon qualifying time. He had become hooked on triathlons at age 40 and competed in just under a dozen each season, consistently medaling in his age group. When the accident happened, Everett was just a couple of months away from competing in Ironman Florida — his first Ironman, which is one of the most grueling single-day racing events in the world, opening with a 2.4-mile open-water swim followed by a 112-mile bicycle ride
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