The Powerhouse: Amy Palmiero-Winters
Text by Susan Rinkunas

Amy Palmiero-Winters's 3:04 in the 2006 LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon meant far more than shaving 12 minutes off her personal best. It proved that anything she ever did on two legs she could do on one--and faster. By breaking the 3:16 she had run 13 years earlier, before losing her left leg in a motorcycle accident, Palmiero-Winters demonstrated the power of an unbreakable spirit. "'Disabled' means something you can't do," says the single mother of two and welder by trade. "I don't know of anything that I can't do." Readers found the 35-year-old so inspiring after reading about her in our pages that they selected her as our first-ever Reader's Choice Hero. In 1994, Palmiero-Winters was riding her Harley when a car broadsided her. After surgeries to repair her mangled foot were unsuccessful, Palmiero-Winters opted to have her left leg amputated below the knee. Running on a prosthesis designed for walking, she won the 2005 Ossur National Leg Amputee Half-Marathon (1:57). Still, Palmiero-Winters knew she could do better. So in 2006, she contacted A Step Ahead Prosthetics & Orthotics, a company that serves the needs of active amputees, and was fitted for a true running leg. Three months later, she smashed the world record for female amputees by 27 minutes. Five months after that 3:26 performance, she set her 3:04 PR, breaking her own world record. Her wish list is ambitious: run a sub-three-hour marathon and a 100-mile ultra, qualify for the Olympic Marathon Trials and the Hawaii World Ironman Championships. But Palmiero-Winters wouldn't have it any other way. "If you could give me my leg back today," she says, "I wouldn't take it."