The 6.2-mile course isn’t flat. The hills can be hellish, the weather brutal.
But for John Pulliam, one wrong step, either too far or too short, can lead to falling onto asphalt that will be more than warm to the touch.
Pulliam, missing his right leg from mid-thigh down, will run on a blade. Barely a foot long and as thin as a cellphone, the blade is a small thing. Though made of superhero ingredients of carbon fiber, titanium and steel, it hardly looks like something that can propel a 185-pound man, step after hesitant step, through the heat of a Georgia summer.
This year will be Pulliam’s first time running in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Peachtree Road Race. It will be his first time running a race of that distance while using a blade.
His finish time is of little importance. Falling down, and risking injury to hands, arm, elbows and knees, is nothing. Whatever happens July 4, this is a race he said he already has won because not only did he lose his leg in a motorcycle accident, but the accident resulted in him losing his business and home.
Pulliam, 48 years old with brownish-blond hair and a barrel chest, explains why the loss was the beginning of finding new ways to succeed, even though he acknowledges it would have been easy for him to make a couch a home for hatred and let the anger and frustration take away what was left of his body and mind.
“My challenge is very visible,” he said. “Most people you can’t see what they are dealing with.”
‘Please don’t let me die on this highway’
Lying in the middle of the road, shock numbing what would be excruciating pain, Pulliam was seething.
All he wanted was a little alone time on his motorcycle. No ear buds from an iPod. No radio. All he wanted to hear was the guttural sound of the bike — “motor-sickle” in his Texas twang — and get lost on a few miles on some lonesome west Georgia country roads.
It was Jan. 26, 2013.
Just as Pulliam reached fifth gear, a truck travelling three lanes away and coming from the opposite direction did a hard left across four lanes. There was no blinker, no indication of the driver’s intent.
Pulliam T-boned the truck. His right leg took the brunt of the impact before momentum pulled it, and the rest of him, into a cycle of somersaults across the highway.
He never lost consciousness, but oh, was he mad at the driver of that truck.
He looked at his right leg and saw it lying oddly across his left leg. He tried to get up to get off the highway. He didn’t want to get run over.
As he lifted his right leg, blood that formed a puddle inside his chaps and boots came pouring out, like tea out of a pitcher.
“I got over being mad really quick,” he said.
Pulliam, a religious person, said he knew if he died, he was going to heaven.
But he didn’t want to die.
He had a new wife, Cary Liner, who was working at a convenience store just up the highway on that warm winter day. He had a family. He had a business. He had a life to live and adventures to accomplish.
“I prayed, ‘please don’t let me die on this highway,’” he said.
The driver of the truck didn’t stop and never was identified.
Lost leg, but not sense of adventure
Luckily for Pulliam, three people did stop.
One of them took off a belt and wrapped it around Pulliam’s leg to hold the pressure.
A helicopter arrived.
After arriving at Atlanta Medical Center, Pulliam remembers the door opening. He remembers people running to pick him up.
The doctors tried to save his right leg, but they couldn’t get enough of a pulse in his foot.
Liner struggled for three days with the decision of whether to allow doctors to amputate. She and John had been married only four years. She couldn’t bear the thought of him waking and being mad at her. Pulliam was an adrenaline junkie. He loved adventures. Losing his leg could take those away.
His ankle was shattered. His shin bone was broken in eight places. His knee was pulverized. His femur was broken.
The longer the leg remained, the longer the doctors struggled to keep his vital signs stable.
Doctors took the leg, and Pulliam’s vital signs stabilized.
He woke up eight days after the accident.
His prayer had been answered. He was still on the right side of the dirt, as he said.
“You made the right choice,” he said, grabbing his wife’s tan hand and giving her a kiss as she seemed to fight back tears talking about that moment.
Finding hope amid devastation
Pulliam’s determination turned what was supposed to be three months of rehab into 11 days.
But then reality began to sit in.
How could he keep his sheet-metal business going? He was a hands-on owner, who took pride in building things.
Without the income from the business, how could he support his family?
“It was a serious kick in the pants,” he said.
Their savings quickly evaporated with the growing medical bills. His business was gone in all but its name.
A nurse at AMC, also an amputee, put Pulliam in touch with a prosthetic company, which gave him a discount on a new artificial limb. It still cost more than $20,000, a small part of the more than $600,000 in medical bills the Pulliams would eventually resolve.
The Pulliams were forced to move from their home into a smaller rental home in Bowdon, near Carrollton.
But then things began to happen that gave Pulliam hope.
During his trips to get fitted for his prosthesis, Pulliam began to take notice of the posters lining the office walls of amputees competing in various sports events. He vividly remembers a poster of famed competitor and author Scott Rigsby, the first double-amputee athlete to complete the Ironman Triathlon.
“I thought, ‘You’ve got no excuse to not find a way to become profitable again,’” Pulliam said.
On April 15, the bombings occurred at the Boston Marathon. Pulliam was watching the news at home.
He said he felt a connection to those watching and competing who lost limbs because of the tragedy.
He became more determined not only to figure out solutions to his problems, but to succeed.
He brought the fitted prosthesis home a week later, April 22.
With no money left to spend on rehab, Pulliam turned to YouTube to learn how to walk on his new leg.
In June, he signed up for a local triathlon camp with the goal of competing in a sprint-distance triathlon at John Tanner State Park two months later.
“They showed me I could still ride a bike. Running was out of possibility at that time,” he said. “I didn’t have to swim in a circle like a one-legged duck. That was pretty exhilarating.”
A friend, Mike Lenhart of the Getting2Tri Foundation, found a racing wheelchair that Pulliam could use to race.
In July, he was offered a job with West Georgia Roofing, working inside the office. He said learning to walk again was easier than learning how to use a computer. But the job provided stability and a means to pay for entry fees in races.
He threw himself into the job and the training, once again using YouTube as his guide.
He finished that first triathlon — a 600-meter swim, 13.8-mile bike ride and 3.1-mile walk with a cane — in 3 hours, 1 minute, 31.6 seconds.
“He beat the sweeper van,” Liner said smiling.
Enthusiasm a weapon to overcome obstacles
Pulliam didn’t stop, but found more races.
A year after his accident, he strapped on the blade and did a 5K. The Peachtree will be his first 10K, but it won’t be his last race.
He has a goal to compete in Boston so that he can physically reconnect to the place that inspired him spiritually.
Pulliam is going only forward in his life, in his races, in his adventures.
He doesn’t dwell on how much easier his life was when he had both legs. He doesn’t obsess over the driver of that truck that started this adventure. He said he gave up that baggage a long time ago.
“No matter your struggle, the challenge, you can overcome it,” he said. “we all have challenges. My hope would be that people would be able to look at me and what I deal with and how I approach it with enthusiasm and be able to take a little bit of that enthusiasm into their own lives with whatever difficulty they are faced with.”
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