{"id":15160,"date":"2016-05-12T09:15:17","date_gmt":"2016-05-12T14:15:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hcstx.org\/?p=15160"},"modified":"2016-05-12T09:15:17","modified_gmt":"2016-05-12T14:15:17","slug":"profiles-in-courage-veteran-who-lost-a-leg-to-an-ied-has-completed-26-marathons-to-date","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/2016\/05\/12\/profiles-in-courage-veteran-who-lost-a-leg-to-an-ied-has-completed-26-marathons-to-date\/","title":{"rendered":"Profiles in Courage: Veteran Who Lost a Leg to an IED has Completed 26 Marathons to Date"},"content":{"rendered":"

Next time you get the urge to bitch and moan about your life being hard, unfair or difficult…Come back and Read this article. This Modern Spartan personifies and epitomizes the phrase “Never Give Up!”-SF<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"courage\"<\/p>\n

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Losing his leg to an IED hasn\u2019t kept Freddie De Los Santos from finishing 26 competitive races.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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When the Twin Towers fell on Sept.11, 2001, Freddie De Los Santos fulfilled a childhood goal of joining the Army.<\/p>\n

But on Oct. 20, 2008, while working in Afghanistan with U.S. Special Operations Command as a Humvee gunner, an improvised explosive device tore through his right leg. He smashed \u00a0headfirst into the ground and lost his teeth in the blast that immediately followed. To make matters worse, De Los Santos was also shot twice, The New York Times reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But he\u2019s come a long way since then.<\/p>\n

De Los Santos woke up weeks after the explosion at Walter Reed National Medical Center.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had suicidal thoughts. I just wanted to end my life because I was not the same. It used to break my heart every time my kids used to see me,\u201dhe told Katie Couric in an interview for Yahoo News<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Though De Los Santos suffered months of psychological trauma, he found solace by competing in marathons. After getting involved with Achilles International<\/a>, a group of injured veterans that performs in mainstream races, De Los Santos has gone from an amputee to competitive athlete.<\/p>\n

In fact, De Los Santos has completed 26 marathons \u2014 nearly 682 miles \u2014 with just one leg through the use of handcycles.<\/p>\n

Now, he is training to make the Paralympic team in Rio.<\/p>\n

De Los Santos added, \u201cI will be so excited to go to Rio, not just because it\u2019s Rio, but also because I will be able to look back and say, \u2018Wow, this is how far I have come since the day I got injured.\u2019 That will be the greatest achievement ever.\u201d<\/p>\n

See De Los Santos\u2019 incredible journey here.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.yahoo.com\/news\/army-veteran-completes-26-marathons-133017905.html?format=embed<\/a><\/p>\n

Read the Original Article at Task and Purpose<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Next time you get the urge to bitch and moan about your life being hard, unfair or difficult…Come back and Read this article. This Modern Spartan personifies and epitomizes the phrase “Never Give Up!”-SF Losing his leg to an IED hasn\u2019t kept Freddie De Los Santos from finishing 26 competitive races. When the Twin Towers…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[74,2086,1247,1860,4547,6159,1911],"tags":[11578,1582,11579,1424],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15160"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15160\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}