Amy Palmiero-Winters at the Chicago Marathon.

The featured speaker at the Tuesday, March 18 meeting of the Greater Long Island Running Club will be amputee runner and Hicksville resident Amy Palmiero-Winters, who is seeking to become the first amputee athlete to qualify for the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials. The meeting will take place at the Plainview-Old Bethpage Public Library, 999 Old Country Road in Plainview, starting promptly at 8 p.m. Admission is free and the general public is invited to attend.

Palmiero-Winters is perhaps the top female below-knee amputee currently in training, and is aspiring to become among the elite female runners overall by qualifying for the 2008 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trial. She ran a personal best marathon of 3:16 prior to the April 1994 accident that ultimately cost her lower left leg, and has a post-accident personal best of 3:04 set in the Chicago Marathon, but she needs to meet the Olympic Qualifying standard of 2:47 at the Sarasota Marathon on March 2 in order to qualify for the Olympic Trials in Boston on April 20. No amputee has ever come close to qualifying for the Trials, but Palmiero-Winters's got all the determination she needs to make it!

Her recent credits include a 1:25 finish in the 2007 Philadephia Distance Run 1/2 marathon, a 19:16 5K finish in the Erie PA 5K, where she was the first female finisher overall, and a 41:20 in the Great Race 10K in Pittsburgh, where she also finished first among all the women in the race. She also has successfully completed triathlons at various distances, including a 5:36 finish in the Med Express West Virginia Ironman, and a 2:25:24 in the Nautica New York City Olympic Distance Triathlon. She was nominated for a 2007 ESPY award by ESPN, was named by Runner's World Magazine as one of the "heroes" of running, and was the subject of a feature article in Newsday by John Hanc on Jan. 6.

Palmiero-Winters was fitted with her prosthetic leg by A Step Ahead, and trains at that company's 14,000 square-foot facility on Newbridge Road in Hicksville, under the tutelage of physical therapists David Balsley and Phil Kreuter.

For more information, contact the Greater Long Island Running Club at 349-7646.