DEL.ICIO.USTHE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION PEACHTREE ROAD RACE
Former pro cyclist trains for his first Peachtree on wheelchair
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Ryan Barnett doesn’t remember much about May 3, 2008.
One minute he was on his road bike on Buford Highway, training for an upcoming race. The next minute, the light turned green — and things went black. He learned what happened next through eyewitness accounts:
Johnny Crawford/jcrawford@ajc.com
Ryan Barnett trains about three times a week. ‘I’m not the type to sit around on the couch and watch TV,’ the former professional cyclist says.
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A man driving a pickup truck and towing a trailer “plowed through and hit me.”
The bike was smashed. Barnett was taken to the Gwinnett Medical Center with severe injuries, including three broken ribs, a cracked pelvis and smashed vertebrae. A few days later he woke up at the Shepherd Center on Peachtree Road.
Today, Barnett, 39, of Duluth is training again — this time for his first Atlanta Journal-Constitution Peachtree Road Race on July 4. He will compete against 79 other athletes in the wheelchair division. To qualify, an athlete must be able to go the course in less than 45 minutes. The men’s wheelchair record holder did it in 18 minutes and 38 seconds.
As a professional cyclist, Barnett was used to training five, six, seven days a week. But because his injury is still considered new, the process is slower — perhaps three days a week. “I have to be mindful, I just had 12 screws and two titanium rods put in my spine.”
He goes to the Shepherd Center, where he was briefly an inpatient, and lifts weights. Outside, he trains using a hand cycle and his push wheelchair. Both help develop arm strength.
“I’m OK where I am in the sport,” he said. But he still misses the “speed and the thrill of 100-plus guys, elbow-to-elbow” nudging for the top spot in a bike race. “It’s a totally different world.”
Barnett isn’t that different from a lot of men and women, who led active lives until something — a car accident or a fall — altered their mobility and their lives.
“If you enjoy that kind of stuff, it’s not going to leave you” after an injury, said Matt Edens, the sports team coordinator for the hospital’s therapeutic recreation program.
“Our guys just have physical disabilities. It’s really about finding your niche and finding which sport will work for you,” Edens said.
The hospital has 12 sports teams. Barnett is a member of the Shepherd Spinners, the racing team. There also are rugby, water skiing, basketball and fencing teams.
Before his accident, Barnett was a professional cyclist who competed in races throughout the United States and in Cuba, Brazil, the Dominican Republic and Guatemala. He’s logged tens of thousands of miles in more than two decades of cycling.
It took a while for the full extent of his injuries to set in.
“First, you’re in a lot of pain, drugged up and in a hospital bed,” he said. “But I’ve always been able to keep a positive attitude. It could always be worse. Plus, I have a pretty good family and hundreds and hundreds of friends stopped by.”
Once out of the hospital, he had time to think about his life. He had been on the road so much as a competitive cyclist that for a while after his injury, he was content to stay home and spend time with his family.
But “I knew I would stay active,” said Barnett, who is paralyzed from the chest down. “I’m not the type to sit around on the couch and watch TV.”
And he couldn’t get cycling out of his blood.
“I just missed it because it’s such a beautiful sport,” said Barnett, who worked as the marketing director for a bicycle design and manufacturing firm until he was laid off this year.
It was his wife, Maricela, who first suggested returning to racing. The family had just watched the Peachtree Road Race.
“I wanted to try to motivate him to do something other than just be in [a] wheelchair,” she said. Her husband had always gone non-stop. “I was worried about him getting depressed,” she said. “He was always racing. It was like a complete change for him.”
The race will be good for him, she thinks.
“He’s always been a strong person and always positive about everything,” she said.
That attitude may work for others who have suffered like Barnett. Shepherd’s Edens said just watching the teams practice can serve as an inspiration for other patients.
“You come down here and realize that you can still live an active lifestyle,” he said.
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