When Adam Popp explains what it’s like to run as an above-the-knee amputee, he points out, “I don’t have an anatomical knee, so going uphill I’m doing twice the work with one leg and then going downhill trying to brake or slow down it’s like I’m doing it with one leg as well.” The Western States 100 has about 18,000 feet of elevation gain and 23,00 feet of elevation loss, and Popp, who is lining up for the upcoming 2025 event, says he’s most intimidated by the sheer pounding that his one full leg will take, especially on the downhills.
But Popp, who lost his right leg while working in explosive ordnance disposal in Afghanistan in 2007, is doing everything he can to toe the line as prepared as possible, including working closely with fellow amputee and ultrarunning legend Dave Mackey, who will also be part of his crew and pacer. It’s an audacious goal, but if there’s one through-line to Popp’s life, it might just be that he faces uncomfortable situations head-on and comes out the other side a stronger person.
Adam Popp, running with a blade. All photos courtesy of Adam Popp, unless otherwise noted.
Losing his ability to run wasn’t high on Popp’s list of concerns when his leg was amputated. He never had a childhood love for running — it was a necessary evil for playing soccer in high school. When his friend convinced him to sign up for high-school track, it was only under the promise that they’d only compete in the high jump and long jump, not any of the actual running events. After high school, running in the military wasn’t much better, but it was required for being in top physical fitness for the job. Then, in 2007, a bomb exploded under Popp while he and his team were clearing an area of explosives. In a split second, he lost his leg, military career, and sense of self. For many years, Popp struggled.
Now, 18 years later, he’s finished five 100-mile races, won the 2024 Boston Marathon’s Para Elite division (T61/63), and has completed a full Ironman triathlon in 11:03:06. But Western States is an entirely different beast, with its combination of heat, elevation, and rocky trail. All of that said, Popp has never shied away from the unknown, and Western States is no exception.
[Editor’s Note: This article depicts a violent injury. Reader discretion is advised.]
An Early Dislike for Running
Popp grew up in the small town of Lanesville, Indiana, population 500. Like many kids in the area, he played all the ball sports: baseball, soccer, and even a bit of football. In high school, he focused on soccer, a running-heavy sport. But running was something that had to be done, not necessarily enjoyed, and in his words, “I hated it.” In his later years of high school, a friend convinced him that they should join the track team together, arguing that they could just do the long jump and high jump to minimize the actual running they’d have to do. It seemed like a good idea to Popp, and he says he was pretty decent at the two events.
Popp graduated from high school in 1997 and, knowing that he didn’t particularly enjoy school, decided to join the military after talking to several family members who’d also served in the armed forces. It was pre-September 11 terrorist attacks, the U.S. wasn’t actively involved in any major conflicts, and people he’d talked to about military service had pointed him toward the Air Force. When his recruiter gave him three options for fields to go into, he chose explosive ordnance disposal. It came with a signing bonus.
He says, “I had no idea about Improvised Explosive Devices. When they said terrorist weapons, like, what did that even mean? I took the paper home to my mom, and she’s reading it, and it says, ‘You’ll work with weapons of mass destruction and terrorists and chemical weapons.’” Like any mom would, she questioned the wisdom of the choice, but Popp thought it sounded better than any of the other options. One must keep in mind that before September of 2001, most Americans weren’t intimately acquainted with the idea of terrorists.
Adam Popp during his time in military service.
After finishing boot camp and training in 1998, Popp’s first assignment was Misawa, Japan. He was a kid from a town of 500 now out in the world, a little bit homesick, a little bit scared. He embraced the situation and says, “We really pushed ourselves hard in training, meaning not only physical preparation but also doing the job and being prepared for when something does happen.” He goes on to say, “We were running three to four times a week. And again, I hated running, but it was forced upon us.”
Military Service and Major Injury
Popp developed deep bonds with his team and was stationed in Turkey when 9/11 happened in 2001. While he had the option to leave the military shortly after, but he re-enlisted and was deployed to Baghdad, Iraq, in 2004. Of the time, he says, “I was 25 years old, leading a team, and responsible for younger kids in the middle of Baghdad disarming bombs.” While a difficult situation, he calls it “an incredible learning and growing experience.”
Popp clearing roadside bombs.
Near what would have been the natural end of his military career in 2007, Popp found himself in Little Rock, Arkansas, with a deployment to Afghanistan to continue to disarm bombs on the horizon. Popp still hated running but knew he had to be as physically fit as possible for his deployment, so he signed up for the Little Rock Half Marathon. It was the farthest he’d ever run, and he did so with very little training. Unsurprisingly, he hurt for three days afterward and told himself, “This is why I hate running.”
Popp deployed to Afghanistan shortly after and started his work of disarming bombs, many of them on roadways, allowing military and locals to have safe routes to travel. On December 7, 2007, while clearing an area, Popp stepped on an explosive that they didn’t know about. It detonated and sent him flying. He says, “I was awake through the whole thing, and my Air Force explosive ordinance disposal teammate and the Army medics and security team that I was with were just scrambling to save my life.”
They stabilized him the best they could, and a helicopter flew him to a nearby military base, which then transferred him to a hospital in Germany. When he woke up, he was missing a leg in addition to having a broken arm and hip, and pain everywhere. He says there was “a lot of confusion and a lot of, What’s next for me? I go from literally peak fitness, able-bodied, leading a team in Afghanistan, to relying on others to take care of me and just stuck in a hospital bed.”
After arriving at the Walter Reed Medical Center in Maryland less than a week later, Popp underwent surgery every two to three days for the following month to repair 11 fractures throughout his body and care for his amputated leg. It took two months in the hospital before he could even start physical and occupational therapy.
Adam Popp just after the bomb explosion in which he lost his leg.
Rehabilitation
For the next year, Popp had to relearn how to do everything as an amputee and come to grips with the reality of his new life. He says there was “a lot of reflection, a lot of second-guessing yourself, which is a very dangerous place to be.”
As part of his rehab program, Popp had the opportunity to participate in several recreational rehab opportunities, including a ski trip to Vail, Colorado, while he was still in a wheelchair. He says of these trips, “I found [these trips the] most beneficial because you’re going to the airport and you’re leaving the confines of the hospital and the safety of the hospital and being put in uncomfortable but normal situations that you’re going to have to deal with eventually. You’re dealing with hotels and hotel showers and then doing this really cool event where you’re skiing, or cycling, or scuba diving.” The trips left a lasting impression.
But while Popp was recovering physically, he had emotional recovery to do as well, and in many ways, that was less straightforward. The military was his identity, and while his teammates, with whom he’d had such close bonds, continued their work, he was now on the outside. In an attempt to reclaim his past life, Popp took a job as a civilian defense contractor, but it wasn’t the same. He says, “I was just kind of working a job, and I wasn’t doing anything physically and just lived in Washington D.C.”
Popp in front of the Washington Monument in Washington D.C.
For several years, Popp was drinking and partying, going down a path that he didn’t like, so on January 3, 2015, he left alcohol behind. Five months later, in May, he found himself running the trail run leg of the Bellingham Ski to Sea relay event on a team of military veterans.
It was a major life pivot.
Discovery of Running
In the years prior, Popp had been working with a couple of non-profits and had put together teams for the Ski to Sea in 2013 and 2014 — an annual relay race that has skiing, running, canoeing, and cycling legs. In 2015, the team needed another runner, and Popp reluctantly volunteered. He had six weeks to figure out how to run with a prosthetic, starting with a harness with the rope attached to the ceiling and running around an indoor track at the hospital.
He says, “My cardio is crap, my balance, everything’s just a disaster.” He hadn’t run in seven years and says once he was set out on his own, “I just ran three days a week in a very remote private area so nobody could see me fall and just did that day in and day out for six weeks.”
Popp finished third-to-last in the muddy three-mile trail run and says, “I couldn’t care less. I was like, ‘This is incredible.’” He goes on to say, “I left there and came back and said, ‘What’s next?’”
Adam Popp at the 2017 Hat Run 50k.
He continued running and quickly transitioned into doing a triathlon later that summer, an experience he calls “kind of a disaster.” He says that he “just worked from this completely couch-potato sedentary lifestyle” to completing his first half marathon that year, which he ran faster as an amputee than he had in his fitness test run at the Little Rock Half Marathon before deploying to Afghanistan eight years earlier. He also says it didn’t hurt as much. The half marathon was a turning point for Popp, sending him on the trajectory of becoming an athlete.
In November that same year, he ran the Richmond Marathon and says, “There was just this seven-month period where I was like, ‘What else have I been missing out on for the past seven years?”
Trails and Ultrarunning
Popp had glimpses into the trail running world, but had no intention of running singletrack as an above-the-knee amputee, thinking that it sounded horrible. Then, while at an event for the Pat Tillman Foundation in July of 2016, someone he was working with mentioned that she was racing the Leadville 100 Mile. Popp says, “This world didn’t exist to me,” but he was immediately intrigued. On his way home, he says, “I was at the airport just searching training plans and races and what training for that looked like. And by the time I got back to D.C., I ordered “Hal Koerner’s [Field] Guide to Ultrarunning.”
The book had a training plan that the Popp decided to follow closely, deciding that if he was able to hit the prescribed miles for the first part of the plan, he’d race the Brazos Bend 100 Mile in December. Popp reached out to other amputee runners, including Amy Palmiero-Winters, who finished the Western States 100 in 2010, and Chris Moon, who completed the Marathon des Sables in 1997 as well as the Badwater Ultramarathon in Death Valley, California, in 2012. While both had different amputation levels, they responded to Popp’s questions and gave him tips for getting through the 100 miles.
Over the course of 18 weeks of training, Popp ran the miles of the training plan and finished the race in 26:35:04. While Popp says of his run, “It wasn’t great, but I finished,” he was now an ultrarunner.
Popp a few years on, running the 2021 CCC.
An Eye Toward Western States 100
Popp has completed five 100-mile races to date, and he was the first above-knee amputee to complete a 100-mile race in under 30 hours. He also holds 10 different Guinness World Records. His accomplishments span both running and triathlon, but he readily admits that Western States, his big goal for 2025, doesn’t play to his strengths with technical trail and a lot of elevation gain and loss.
But Popp has an advantage on his side: fellow amputee Dave Mackey — three-time top-10 finisher at Western States, the 2011 “UltraRunning Magazine” Ultrarunner of the Year, former fastest known time-holder for the Grand Canyon Rim-to-Rim-to-Rim route, and the prior holder of countless other ultra-distance course records. In 2015, while running on Bear Peak outside of his home in Boulder, Colorado, Mackey dislodged a giant boulder that crushed his leg as he and it fell. A year and a half after the accident, Mackey voluntarily had his leg amputated after multiple surgeries failed to restore his ability to walk normally, let alone run, without pain.
Mackey (right) returned to running not long after his amputation, and was a source of inspiration to Popp.
Popp and Mackey connected over having the same prosthetist and both living on the Front Range of Colorado. In fact, Popp gave Mackey some of his old prosthetics to use. The two became friends and started running together regularly in the hills outside of Boulder.
It was only natural for Mackey to become a mentor when it came to strategy and race execution at Western States. Mackey says, “Even before the lottery, I told him I’d love to help, just given that I’d been there a few times, or maybe six times.” Mackey goes on to say, “Amputees have all the same challenges as the regular two-legged runners do, and I knew that given my experience there and having a leg missing, I’d probably be able to help him with some subtleties of our challenges at Western States.”
Mackey had run Western States in 2019 as an amputee and had to drop at mile 93. He says of the drop so close to the finish, “I made some poor decisions before then as far as what I was wearing on my good leg. My prosthetic was giving me problems. I had screw heads in my leg pushing in. It basically wore me down.” Of all the issues regular two-legged runners face over the 100 miles on the race course from Olympic Valley to Auburn, California, most don’t put screw heads pushing into their legs on their bingo card.”
Popp is happy to have Mackey and his experience supporting him, saying, “Obviously, he’s got a ton of experience, so we’ll run two hours together and have conversations about everything, but a lot of it revolves around Western States. And then we’ll come back to his house and just have a coffee afterward, and we’ll pull out his computer and he’ll just walk me through the course.” Mackey’s offered advice on everything from nutrition to hydration to pacing.
Mackey isn’t worried about Popp’s ability to endure the pain inherently associated with running Western States. He says, “He’s tough as nails, and he’s experienced the ultras. He knows how to tough it out. He’s got the mindset, he can tolerate pain, he’s been through more physical and mental challenges, just given losing his leg in Afghanistan.”
Popp training on trails.
But Mackey is realistic that there are extra problems that amputees have to deal with, including skin issues. But he says that the heat will probably be Popp’s biggest challenge — the same thing that most people running the race fear the most. Mackey is quick to point out, “He’s going to have those same trials as others.” In a race of 100 miles, as in life, nothing is guaranteed, and the best anyone can do is show up prepared.
Whatever happens at the 2025 Western States 100, Popp is looking forward to the experience. “I think the most exciting thing is just to go out there to just prove to myself that all the work over the past 10 years has been worth it.”
Call for Comments
- Had you heard Adam Popp’s story?
- Do you know any other inspiring adaptive athletes running ultras?
Adam Popp’s grit and determination will stand him in good stead as he takes on the 2025 Western States 100.
