Kolbe McKee
You could almost say that biking has been a real lifesaver for me. Actually, it was my successful open-heart surgery last December that was the real lifesaver.
But biking has offered me a way back from the weakened physical shape I found myself in after I was released from my long hospital stay. It took doctors several hours to repair a leaky valve in my heart. After four days in the hospital, I back at square one physically. I had to learn to walk all over again, and I even struggled to do basic things like eat and walk upstairs.
It was frustrating to see all of my physicality taken away after I had worked so hard prior to the surgery running and lifting weights. So eight weeks after I got home when I was declared ‘officially recovered,’ I decided to start training again.
And that’s when I took up biking, which has proved a great way of tracking my physical improvement post surgery. On a bike, I could safely push my body to the limit. Before long, I had an ambitious goal in mind: to bike the Registers Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa or RAGBRAI, better known to fans as “Rag-Bry.”
Keep in mind, though, that RAGBRAI is unlike any other ride in the country, mostly because it’s huge – between 15,000-20,000 bikers – and it’s been around forever – 37 years to be exact. RAGBRAI brings together bikers from around the country, to form an endless ribbon of riders streaming across the surprisingly hilly rural landscape of Iowa.
The race took me by surprise from day one, when we were to clock 50.2 miles – a distance that struck me as relatively easy. Instead, day one proved a real test mentally and physically. I did not feel I was riding my strongest and I felt discouraged by my apparent lack of improvement.
It was not until the third day that something clicked. I could feel my legs powering through the hills, and I could feel my whole cardio-vascular system working better than it ever had before.
I finally felt I had recovered, and that was an empowering emotion. I felt like a machine at times, when I would blast ahead of more experienced riders without becoming winded. It was then that the struggle of surgery finally felt worth it. I knew for sure how well I had done when I completed my first century — 100 miles in one day — and hardly felt tired that night at camp. And a few short months before I had been lying in a hospital… unbelievable.
