Sports

ST. PAUL (WCCO) ― By their very nature, triathletes are astounding -- particularly the Ironmen as they swim, bike and then run a marathon distance.

Now imagine accomplishing all that mere months after enduring a terrible motorcycle accident.

Jeremy Sartain, 35, is an elite triathlete who is back pounding the pavement in training for another triathlon season. He is considered one of the top amateur triathletes in Minnesota.

But to say the 35-year-old had a trying time last year would be an understatement. Sartain was injured in a very serious crash on April 23, 2008.

He had had just finished teaching a night class at St. Paul College and was driving home when tragedy struck. The motorcycle he was driving was hit by a car that had swerved across four lanes of traffic on Interstate 94.

"On impact, I shattered my left tibia. Then my leg was pinned between the motorbike and the car. The hip was pushed through the back side of the pelvis ... it shattered that into a bunch of pieces," he said. "I remember pulling my leg up and feeling the crumbling of the bone in my leg."

Dr. Peter Cole, an orthopedic trauma surgeon at Regions Hospital in St. Paul, is Jeremy's physician. He showed X-ray images of Sartain's extensively fractured bones, how his hip was smashed into pieces big and small.

"Generally speaking, I tell adults you can't break a hip socket or any joint into four, six, eight pieces and have it be exactly like it was beforehand," Cole said. "And then he had a tib-fib fracture. Tib-fib fractures are notorious for being breaks that heal very slowly."

During rehabilitation, Sartain was focused on getting back to competition. Just three months after the accident, he competed in the Lifetime Triathlon ... with a little help.

"That was really to prove a point, because I had a follow-up visit on that Monday after the Lifetime Fitness Triathlon," said Sartain. "I was still on crutches, and I wanted to prove to my physician -- Dr. Cole at Regions -- that I was capable of walking. I used the crutches for the running leg, so it was rather slow. It was the slowest 10K I've ever run in my life."

Sartain showed Cole a photo taken during the triathlon. In it, Sartain is shown wrapping up the swimming portion, encased in a wet suit and walking on crutches.

"I was appalled, because I thought I knew what it was," said Cole. "His so-called bad leg certainly had to help him through this thing. And I knew at that point we were going to have to create a different treatment plan for him."

Sartain's speedy recovery was helped in part by Dr. Cole's out-of-the-box approach. He sequentially removed screws from the plate connecting his broken tibia and fibula, forcing a load-bearing transfer from the plate to the bones.

Sartain's workout partners and fellow triathletes were amazed by his ability to come back so quickly from such devastating injuries.

"I train people, and so I see a lot of injured people. And I've never seen anybody progress as fast as he has," said Jonny J. "I think 90 percent of that was just his attitude. He didn't really go through a depression stage or an 'I can't do this' or 'Poor me.' It was, 'Let's get to work now."

Jennie Sartain saw her husband's perseverance and determination to get back, and deemed it "phenomenal, but at the same point that's just the kind of person that he is."

The two biggest accomplishments for Sartain were competing in a children's charity race with his 7-year-old friend Shane, who suffers from spina bifida, and competing in the Hawaii Ironman in October. He accomplished both less than six months after his motorcycle accident.

Jeremy's wants to make a return trip to the Hawaii Ironman. He's hoping to qualify by competing in the Wisconsin Ironman later this year in September. He finished 9th in his first triathlon of the season last weekend in Buffalo.

"I didn't do this on my own. I did this with so many other people, and so that made it not so much of a chore or a challenge. Last year was just an amazing year in so many ways, as difficult as it was," he said. "You get two choices. You can be sorry for yourself or you can step it up and move forward. And I chose the latter."

(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)