My first blog for BikeIowa is about a good friend that many of us in the central Iowa bike racing community know and admire - Stan Boyer.

Stan was once an obese "bike racer”...he weighed over 300 pounds. A couple years ago he had the gastric sleeve procedure, literally trained his butt off, and after about a year his weight was below 200 pounds.

The Fall of 2011 (by my recollection) was Stan's "rebirth". He was no longer obese, and he wanted to train, and ride his bike fast. He and his wife, Roz, started doing more brevets in addition to training with the DMOS Race Team. Together Stan and Roz would ride their tandem 200K, 300K, 400K on the weekend, then Stan would be at team practice on Tuesday night.

Earlier this year Stan was ready to go. He trained both indoors and outdoors with the team, and when roller race season started in January (a quirky kind of indoor racing done by some of us in the winter), Stan was in the mix. He was setting personal bests race after race. Stan was now confident and competitive.

In January and February of this year, with the crazy warm weather, many of us did a lot of night gravel training (Yes...we were sufficiently lit with high intensity lights on front and blinkies on back). Stan was of course with us. It was all going well....until...Stan hit a patch of ice, crashed and severely broke his collar bone.

To Stan this was just a "speed bump." Surgery, and then in less than a month, Stan is back outside on the bike riding the trails and road until his collar bone fully healed. No big deal to Stan.

The summer went great. Stan and Roz rode brevets, and they both trained with us. We were amazed by Stan.

Then...a couple months ago Stan called and said he was sick. Probably no big deal I thought...a lot of us who race bikes often get sick for a few days at a time...our immune systems are often on the edge. He went to a chiropractor, then a family practice doc, and he was not getting well. He said he was starting to lose sensation in the top of one his hips, and having difficulty walking. After a few days he was in a Des Moines hospital, and could not move his legs.

Later that week on a Friday night my son Kyle and I were coming out of the Jordan Creek movie theater, it was just after midnight. My cell phone rang, and in my life, it is usually not good when the cell phone rings after midnight. It was Stan's daughter Kristen...she said they were taking her Dad to Iowa City that night...the ambulance would be at the hospital around 1 a.m. Because he was at Methodist West, Kyle and I stopped by to hang out until the ambulance arrived. They could not take care of Stan in Des Moines.

Stan had a cavernoma inside his spinal column. That is a "clump" of abnormal blood vessels that kind of resembles a raspberry. They needed to cut it out, and that's what they did on Saturday at University of Iowa Hospital. They were pretty confident Stan would have some permanent paralysis after the surgery...just not sure how much, or exactly where it would start.

The surgery went well. They removed the cavernoma, and Stan made a good recovery from the surgery. He was paralyzed from the waist down, so now came rehab.

Stan worked like an athlete in rehab. His hard work motivated his rehab team at Younker Rehab to also work hard. Soon he could wiggle his toes, but it was apparent that he would never walk well enough to really be mobile. For practical purposes, he was a paraplegic.

Of course there was a stream of his family, friends, and race team buddies visiting throughout this ordeal. We let him know that we expected him to be riding again soon, not an up-right bike, but certainly a hand-crank bike. And Stan knew he would ride again soon..,and he did.

Stan's first ride after surgery was on September 17th at the Save the Trails Ride. He rode from Waukee to Dallas Center and back. He probably rode further that day than he expected to ride, but when he got the hand-crank bike rolling, I'm sure it did his heart and soul a world of good (like it did ours). A couple times his speed was just shy of 20mph.

So, Stan is back on the bike. He'll be the guy at Elkhart time trial next year on the hand-crank bike wearing the DMOS jersey. Just another racer who does it a different way.