ATLANTA -- Sometimes, the perception of limits pushes us to smash them. Cindy Martinez does CrossFit three days a week.
“It definitely kicks my butt," she said. "Not a little bit; a lot! Especially for me."
She has been without three limbs for three years.
“They had never worked with an adaptive athlete before," she said. “We’ve figured it out with different chains and straps, and things for my hand ."
Cindy tries on new blades to prepare for the AJC Peachtree Road Race.
“And I have no heel," she said. “It’s basically all toes."
This is new ground. Six miles will mark her longest run and a very emotional one when she passes the Shepherd Center.
At one point, she didn’t know if she would run again.
“I was pretty much going to die"
Memorial Day 2015, an intense pain in her shoulder sent Cindy to the hospital. The pain caused by flesh-eating bacteria that put her on a ventilator.
“I almost passed away and I wouldn’t have known it."
“I remember waking up," she said. " I had a tube down my throat. I couldn’t talk. I still had all my hands and my feet, but especially my right hand had gangrene already. It was black. "I don’t think anyone had to tell me that was getting amputated.”
Cindy lost her right arm and both legs. The source of the bacteria remains unknown.
“I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I knew I had to do something. I wasn’t just going to stay there and lay there like that.”
Four months later Cindy left the Shepherd Center standing. A year after she biked 25 miles and ran the final one at the Marine Corps Marathon. Her next milestone is the Peachtree.
“I feel like now, everything I do, I have to do at a whole new level.”
Her motivation is at home with husband David, son David, and daughter Bianca.
“My daughter was two and my son was five. They still see me cooking, cleaning, taking them to any events they have after school, so I’m still trying to keep up with them," she said.
“She tells me, ‘Oh I have a new personal record! I beat my deadlift," her husband said. "And I look at myself and say, ‘Man, it’s a week or two since I worked out.’”
Here is a woman who’s spent three years smashing limits and refuses to slow down.
"Figure it out, push forward " has been the motto since Memorial Day three years back. It's the same motto pushing Cindy to a race on Independence Day three years later.
“I’m not ordinary anymore. I’m trying to be extraordinary.”
