Amanda Duncan doesn’t run by the street any more. It isn’t that she’s fearful; she just doesn’t.

"I don’t know why God protected me from that emotion," Duncan said. "But fear was never something I felt. It just didn’t enter my mind."

It would have been excusable, even expected, if Duncan were paralyzed by fear in the aftermath of being hit by a car while running. In fact, the avid runner was told she may not ever walk again.

"On the outside, I wanted everyone to see I was happy I was alive and I was thankful, and that I did thank God," said Duncan, a Gainesville resident. "But at the same time I was angry that it happened."

It was on a Monday in October of 2003 that Duncan, while running down a familiar road in her hometown of Toccoa, was hit by a minivan and suffered injuries that required her to be airlifted to Greenville Memorial Hospital in South Carolina.

Gen. George S. Patton once said courage was fear holding on a minute longer.

For Duncan, the fear from that Monday morning held on long enough for her to gather the courage to not only walk again, but to run again — and bike and swim. Today, she’ll compete in her sixth triathlon since the accident, the Iron Girl Triathlon at Lake Lanier Islands.

"She is an inspiration," said Darcy Brito, senior publicist of corporate communications for Aflac Worldwide Headquarters. "I’m so thankful that her story is going to be told and that there’s a chance it will inspire someone else. She’s just amazing."

The birth of a runner

Duncan’s parents, Sandra and William Long, raised her in Stephens County, where she attended school.

"I grew up in a small town enjoying life," Duncan said. "We (she and sister Crystal) were always very active, climbing trees, playing outside and riding bikes, but I wasn’t very competitive by nature and didn’t participate in athletics at all."

It was while pursuing her undergraduate degree at North Georgia College & State University in Dahlonega, where she majored in biology and minored in psychology, that Duncan became a runner.

Coerced into serving as sidekick on a run by a friend trying to get in shape for her upcoming wedding, it only took that one time for Duncan to get hooked.

"I was a band geek," Duncan said. "I loved to read and that was what I did throughout school.

"But when I felt those endorphins kick in after the run, I just couldn’t get enough of it."

‘She didn’t see me’

On Oct. 20, 2003, Duncan was five months out of college, had been dating her future husband, Nathan, for three months and was about to start working for the Department of Family and Children Services.

The said band geek had also gotten to the point where she was running seven to eight miles, five to six times a week.

"I was going out for a run on a normal Monday morning," Duncan said. "I kissed my mom goodbye and that’s the last thing I actually remember, but I’ve been told what happened."

Running against traffic between the curb and the white line, Duncan was struck by a turning minivan driven by a mother taking her children to school.

The impact threw Duncan 20 feet into a field, and by all accounts crushed the right side of her body.

"It was just one of those crazy things that happens," Duncan said. "She didn’t see me."

Living in a small town and lying in a field just down the road from the house she grew up in, Duncan was just coherent enough to tell bystanders who she was and, therefore help them alert her family.

The three were able to arrive on scene before she was airlifted to Greenville.

"She looked really bad," Sandra Long said. "She’d broken so many bones and her face was bleeding.

"But I talked to her and she knew who I was. That gave me a little hope."

The severity sets in

She underwent eight hours of surgery upon arriving at Greenville Memorial Hospital, and that was just for her arms. Her right eye, right eye socket and right hip also required extensive work during her 3«-week stay.

It was the limb further down her body, however, that caused her doctors to not only question whether or not Duncan would walk again, but their own abilities.

The bones surrounding her right knee were crushed to the point of looking like sand in a hollow shell, and an inch had been taken from both her femur and tibia.

"The doctor said, ‘We don’t know what we’re going to do because usually people call us and we have nobody to call to ask what to do in this situation,’" Long said. "They said she may not walk again or she may not walk for a year. They just didn’t know."

The after surgery X-rays were just as shocking as the ones taken prior. According to Long, "it looked like wires.

"They had built it back from a cadaver bone and wired (her leg) back together," she said.

It was suggested upon her discharge that Duncan go to a rehab facility in South Carolina.

She cried at the very mention of it. So her mother, who had climbed in the helicopter with her and spent every waking minute by her side in the hospital simply said, "No thank you."

Duncan had external fixators in her hips and right leg, which also housed cadaver bones and steel rods. Her arms were in casts and being held together by metal.

It wasn’t just that she would need the proper care to learn to walk again; she would need it just to sit up for more than a few minutes, eat, bathe and dress. A wrong move could result in more surgeries and a greater likelihood that walking wasn’t in the cards.

"My mother told the doctors to teach her how to take care of me," Duncan said. "She took the Family (and Medical) Leave Act and stayed with me.

"It was like she had to take care of a baby again."

A mother’s love

Most days, Long and Duncan would laugh to keep from crying, which according to Duncan made the days better than they should have been.

The duo also had a philosophy: "We said that we’d take it a day at a time," Duncan said. "And if that was too hard, we’d take it a second at a time."

Over the course of year, under her mother’s care, Duncan went from sitting in a wheelchair for 30 minutes a day, lifted in and out of it with the use of a gate belt, to walking on crutches within three months, and with a cane shortly afterward. She went from all encompassing pain at simply attempting to bend her leg, to going for walks around the neighborhood alone.

"She’s a very determined girl," Long said. "Together, we weathered the storm, and while we cried a lot, we prayed a lot, too, and that gave us both a peace about it.

"I just knew she was going to be OK."

"Rehab was very difficult and incredibly painful," Duncan said. "I was so well-supported and encouraged through all of this by my family and friends.

"But I’ll tell you the truth, it took a lot of prayer."

While the physical changes were obvious, Duncan’s mentality changed, too.

It goes without saying that she grew happier with every new endeavor, such as sitting up for a longer period of time or walking, But there was more.

"At the beginning it was such a hodgepodge," Duncan said. "I was caught between being so thankful I was alive and the horror of why it happened at all.

"I was angry, but supposed to be happy and it was such a conflict," she said. "(At the start of rehab) I didn’t know what to do with this. Every person that ran by made me angry, and I didn’t think it was quite fair."

After talking with family and friends daily, it wasn’t long before Duncan realized what to do with herself and her anger.

"God has a purpose for my life and there was a reason this happened," Duncan said. "I didn’t just have to take the doctor’s word for what was going to happen to me and what I could and couldn’t do.

"I was in control of this and I could make this better and if I just lay there and complain about it, it wasn’t going to get better."

Wheeled down the aisle

It was thanks to a friend that Duncan started running in the first place, so the very notion that triathlons were possible came via the same means.

First, however, she had to get ready for her best friend’s wedding as maid of honor. The external fixators on both her hips and right leg were hindrances, but Duncan was determined to have them off in time for the wedding, scheduled two months after her accident.

"I told the doctors I wanted to be free of metal before (Suni Cawfon’s) wedding so that I could wear that dress," Duncan said. "So I was. Nathan wheeled me down the aisle."

With the fixators off and life getting back to normal, two more things needed to happen for Duncan to really feel like herself again: work and exercise. She returned to work on a part-time basis the February after her accident and went back full time in April.

She walked with a noticeable limp, even more so while jogging, so swimming became her new sport.

"I had resolved that I was going to work out and be healthy," Duncan said, "but I wasn’t really going to get to run or do anything I really enjoyed."

In January 2008, three years and three months after her accident, Duncan heard of a friend’s experience doing her first triathlon. From that, she thought it was time to start training for one.

She bought a bike and, much like the first time she ran, was hooked immediately on the charge of training for something.

"I talked my husband into getting me a better bike and I started training more and more," she said. "The pool was so great for my body and the bike worked well for me, too."

The girl who loved to run now walks more, but doesn’t mind.

"I’ve found so much enjoyment in the other parts of the race that I don’t care if I have to walk, even if it’s across the finish line," she said. "It’s the most amazing feeling to know that I was told I’d not be able to ever really do much of anything, maybe have a desk job and maybe walk, much less do any type of endurance activity."

Yet here she is, competing in her sixth triathlon, the Aflac Iron Girl triathlon today at Lake Lanier Islands. Duncan still has a metal plate that serves as her right eye socket. She has a metal rod holding the tibia and fibula together in her right leg and metal rods in her arms.

Yet here she is.

"We call her ‘our little miracle girl,’" Long said. "It amazes me that she can do what she does, that she can go through what she went through and still come out smiling."

"I will keep doing these because I want to get better and see what all I can do," Duncan said. "And maybe inspire someone else."