How very awesome.

Finding Inner Strength - New York Times:

"Melanie Roach is a former gymnast who owns a gymnastics facility. Her husband is a state legislator. At 33, she is the mother of three young children, including 5-year-old Drew, who is autistic. And she can lift 238 pounds over her head.

All of which makes her one of America’s most unlikely Olympic hopefuls.



For a start, Roach, who is 5 feet 1 inch and 117 pounds, looks nothing like a weight lifter. She was a gymnast until 10 years ago, when she left behind a middling career, took up weight lifting and in 1998 set an unofficial world record by lifting twice her body weight, a first for an American woman.

But she hyperextended her right elbow four months before the world championships in 1999 and had a herniated disk in her back eight weeks before the Olympic trials in 2000. She attempted to compete despite the injury, only to end up crying in the stands.

The back injury bothered her for seven years — through three pregnancies and three times as many comeback attempts.

“She rose to greatness so quickly, and then all of a sudden it was over,” said Roach’s training partner Alexis Reed. “You almost asked yourself, a year or two later, ‘Did that really happen?’ ”

...The first comeback, in 2003, lasted seven months before the back pain returned. She describes it as “way past 10,” worse than childbirth, and she notes she had her three kids naturally, at home.

“The best way to put it is as volatile as you can imagine,” said Greg Summers, Roach’s chiropractor. “I see four to five herniated disks a week, and hers is the worst I have ever seen.”

...At the world championships in October 2006, Roach finally told the team doctor about the herniated disk and three fragments imbedded in the nerve. The doctor recommended a surgeon in Los Angeles.

Five days after surgery, Roach was lifting weights without bending her back. Seven months later, she won her seventh national championship.

She later won a bronze medal at the Pan American Games and regained her No. 1 ranking among United States lifters.

“Amazing,” Dan Roach said. “We literally went from the world championships to the operating table and back in less than a year.”"