Iron woman

Candace Gantt bends over her Trek handlebars, her back racer-flat. She's concentrating on the stretch of pavement ahead as she negotiates the gentle hills and valleys of the narrow, two-lane road in Willistown Township.

Biking is one of her fondest joys. Two weeks earlier, this tall and tanned 48-year-old, with a resting heart rate of 48, had completed her first Half Ironman at Lake Placid, N.Y.

On this clear day, July 21, 2005, while daughters Carter, 11, and Morgan, 4, are at camp, Gantt and her training buddy Mary Wood are four miles into a new 15-mile route.

Biking 100 yards behind, Wood loses sight as Gantt crests the brow of a hill on Goshen Road. Catching up a few seconds later, she is stunned.

Her friend is splayed on the pavement.

Hit by a truck and thrown from her bike, Gantt banged into a telephone pole and ricocheted into a split-rail fence. She suffered a severe traumatic brain injury, known as TBI - not unlike what happened to former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords of Arizona, who was shot in the head.

Each year, 1.7 million people go to the ER for a TBI, according to the Brain Injury Association of America. Of those, 52,000 die and 275,000 are hospitalized, many facing lifelong deficits.

By most odds, Gantt should have died. At best, one of her doctors predicted, she was going to need help with daily tasks, such as showering or balancing the checkbook. But the odds didn't account for Gantt, a woman of determination and deep faith. Nor for a series of events that together bolstered her chance of survival and then recovery.

On Saturday, seven years and three months after her accident, Gantt, 55, will compete in the Beach2Battleship Ironman in Wilmington, N.C. - her first full Ironman, and the most grueling competition (2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike ride, 26.2-mile run) she has ever done.

Her doctors call her recovery remarkable, even miraculous.

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Iron woman