The crowd roared as the top men’s runners finished Grandma’s Marathon, but one of the loudest cheers was for a straggler from the earlier Garry Bjorklund Half-Marathon.
Anne Marie Seward of Maple Grove, Minn., finished in 3 hours, 26 minutes, 18 seconds, nothing extraordinary, except for the fact that she has only one leg.
Seward fractured her skull and crushed her left foot in a car accident in 1980 that sent her to the hospital for 77 days. Doctors tried to save her foot but had to amputate her leg just below the knee. She runs with a prosthesis.
“The heat just got to me, but I just wanted to finish, so that was great,” said Seward, a 56-year-old mother of three. “The crowd and the people I met along the way helped me get through it.”
Prosthetics have come a long way, meaning Seward can point to poor weather or inadequate training when she has a bad time, rather than blame discomfort or pain with her prosthesis. Still, she said her orthopedic surgeon said she has to exert 40 to 60 percent more energy than the average runner to achieve the same result.
“When I first started running after my accident, it literally felt like I was wearing a peg leg, but it is so much better now,” Seward said. “There are so many more amputees running and doing triathlons, and that’s great.”
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