2 New Knees on a 1,100+ mile Bicycle Adventure

Can a person with 2 knee replacements ride over 1,000 miles in 4 weeks with a bike that weighs 75+pounds?

Place your bets now... That's what we will find out this summer!

My husband, Doug, and I are getting ready for Leg #3 of our "corner to corner" bike trip across the country.  Every summer we ride our bicycles for 3-4 weeks as we make our way from Bellingham, WA to Key West, FL.  

A little background...

Leg #1: Summer 2017 (no knee replacements) 
Bellingham to Great Falls, Montana.  Total Miles = 1,043 miles 
(picture starting at Bellingham Bay - yes, it was raining)

Leg #2: Summer 2019 (with Left Knee replaced 11/17) 
Jackson, Wyoming to Rapid City, South Dakota.  Total miles = 672
(picture with Crazy Horse monument in the background, Black Hills South Dakota)

Upcoming Leg #3: Summer 2021 (with Right Knee replaced 11/19) 
Sioux City, Iowa to Nashville, Tennessee.  Total miles = 1,100

Now, you might look at that history and notice that I had each of my knees replaced after we had ridden the 1st 2 legs of the journey. Pure coincidence!  I assure you, that the bike riding was not the cause of the replacements - I was actually born with a rare congenital condition and had already had 10 knee surgeries (7 left, 4 right) before my knee replacements.  

I worked long and hard NOT to have my knees replaced.  I'm partial to my own bones and knew that a replacement was a one way street.  Once replaced, it cannot be undone.  And that always frightened me a lot so I used cycling and strength training so that my legs were very strong going in to any knee surgery.  That always helps with recovery - to be strong going in so that you are starting at a better place for recovery. 

However, eventually my osteoarthritis got the better of my knees and replacements became the final option.  Glad I did it and glad I did all of the strength and cycling to support my knees along the way.

But I digress...

So now, I have SUPER KNEES!  Both knees replaced and no pain (thanks #conformis for my custom knees - can you see how they are different in the x-ray?) and I'm ready to put them to the test with our bicycle adventure.

Training includes riding 4-5X per week.  I lead an indoor cycling program called "Cycle Moles" for performance training and do those rides 2 times per week.  The other 2 days I'm outside and racking up the miles.  In this next couple of weeks before we leave on 6/25 I will log over 250 miles in training. 

This training is key for...

• Leg strength - our bikes weigh 75-95 lbs when fully loaded and we hope to ride an average of 65 miles per day
• Knee readiness (not sore) - more preparation means my knees will be ready
• Duration of Butt in the saddle - a painful butt can be the worst part of a multi-day bicycle tour.

If you would like to follow along in our 1,100 mile journey, sign up for notices of posts with pictures and stories on this blog.  This sign up is ONLY for news of our ride - you will not get other emails, I promise!

We've had many people tell us how much they enjoy reading about our journey.  You can look at past posts by typing "C2C" in the search bar at the top of this page.

Wish us luck!  We look forward to sharing this adventure with you and reporting about my knees along the way.

If you have knee pain and want to do something about it (to avoid, prepare for, or recover from knee surgery), then check out the Healthy Knees Formula program.  It will open again for enrollment in the fall.

To your Healthy & Happy Knees,

~Coach Robin

Robin Robertson