Spartan stamina
Severe injuries can’t stop man’s athletic spirit
Inside the Pump Institute on Church Street, Dave Ganas sits on a rowing machine. He secures his feet in the machine’s footholds and then, from a hunched starting position, he forcefully pushes himself extending his back and elbows to a sitting position. The machine whirs as he repeats this movement.
Ten years ago, Ganas was involved in a motorcycle accident that led to his right leg being amputated below the knee.
At the time of the accident, he was working for Toyota as a robotics maintenance mechanic. While riding his motorcycle home — northbound on Highway 99 between Armstrong Road and Eight Mile Road — he remembers being hit from behind.
A driver exceeding speeds over 100 miles per hour rammed into the back of his motorcycle. He later learned the driver was a 25year-old woman who had a blood-alcohol level of .34 — over four times the legal limit — and that the vehicle she was driving was not registered or insured and that her license had been revoked for prior speeding tickets.
The impact of the crash caused the welds on the motorcycle’s rear wheel to break off and cut through his leg, severing most of the leg from the bone.
Somehow, Ganas managed to pick up his leg and start administering first aid on himself. He remembers hopping an estimated 30 feet to a call box, where he called for an ambulance.
“I sat down and called my wife and told her I did not think I was going to make it, and I thanked her for making my life so wonderful, and I told her she was the love of my life,” Ganas recalls.
Minutes after his call an ambulance arrived on scene and rushed Ganas to Lodi Memorial Hospital. From there, he was airlifted to UC Davis Medical Center.
It was there that doctors attempted to save his leg, removing muscle from his upper body to graft onto his injured leg. However, the transplant was unsuccessful.
“I remember talking to the surgeon and I was like, ‘don’t be a hero, don’t try to save my leg. Just do the best amputation that you can,’ ” Ganas recalls.
A depressed Ganas told his wife that if she wanted to leave him, he would understand.
“She told me to shut up and that she did not marry me for my leg, she married me for my spirit,” he said. “After that, I promised her I would be in the best shape of my life, which was a big deal because if I had not made that promise to her there are many times I old have just given up.”
Three weeks after the surgery, Ganas was back home in Lodi and struggling to make sense of his life.
He was on several pain medications that made him feel detached. In a vegetated state, Ganas threw out all of his pills and decided to take on the pain and reclaim control of his life.
Without resources or support groups, he fell back into depression and retreated from the world. As he sank deeper into his depression he began developing suicidal thoughts.
“I felt very alone for the first four years after being amputated. Not being a veteran, there were no support groups, no counseling groups, nothing,” he said.
For two years he visited various physical therapists, only to end up frustrated and unmotivated. He said he did not feel like the physical therapists cared about him, his progress, and how he was doing.
He was ready to give up on physical therapy altogether when his wife convinced him to meet Lauri Merrill at Lodi Physical Therapy.
“She was more attentive and concerned, I could tell things would be different. They (Lauri and her husband Monty) want to get people back to their everyday life,” he said.
After making substantial progress and rebuilding his strength, a trainer suggested Ganas sign up for a Spartan Race, a series of obstacle races of varying distance and difficulty ranging from three miles to marathon distances.
Ganas said he was open to the idea of watching one, only to learn his wife had secretly signed him up for the race. The pair competed in the summer of 2015 at the AT&T Park Sprint in San Francisco.
“I was so miserable. I blamed my wife for everything. I felt like I was useless, but when I finished it and got my medal it made me realize there are things that I can do despite my adversity, and I told my wife I wanted to do more,” he said.
Ganas was determined to use his experience to motivate other amputees to get involved in physical fitness and endurance competitions.
“I told my wife I want to be that inspiration to other people,” he said.
Feeling renewed and with a fresh sense of optimism, he became more involved in Spartan races, which became a cathartic method of combating depression and pain.
According to Wikipedia, a Spartan Race is a series of obstacle races of varying distance and difficulty ranging from 3 miles to marathon distances. They are held in the United States and have been franchised to 30 countries including Canada, South Korea, Australia and several European countries.
Soon after his first race, he competed at the Spartan Tahoe Beast, where he met Spartan founder Joe De Sena.
The two talked and he convinced De Sena to create a Spartan league for amputees. De Sena was reluctant at first, but eventually relented.
Amputees compete on a team, and each team has to have a person in a wheelchair, Ganas said, so he began searching his gym for athletes to make up his team.
“Everyone underestimated us, but we hold several records and championship titles and we won the championship for the paraelites,” Ganas said of the team he assembled.
Ganas still competes in individual races, which is how he received the nickname The One-Legged Spartan. According to Ganas, he was at a race when he felt two men trying to keep up with him. Losing them in the track, one of the men found him after the race to tell him how impressed he was with his athleticism despite him having one leg.
“Then he told me that his brother (the second man) was annoyed he couldn’t keep up with me,” Ganas said. “He called me the One-Legged Spartan, and I liked the name and it stuck.”
Emboldened and enlightened by the experience, Ganas feels he has a point to prove every time he competes in a race — no one should underestimate his skill or capability.
A motivated Ganas is now focusing on track events as he sets his sights on the 2024 Paralympics in Hamburg, Germany.
He’s missing a leg, but he’s found his purpose.