Knee 2.0

My knee first started to complain over 20 years ago while we were living in New Zealand. We did a 4 day backpacking trip and when we finished up, I could barely bend my knee to get on the bus for the lift home. After some rest, I regained my normal range of motion. From that point on, I had no problems cycling, but did have to use poles when hiking, and usually had some swelling, ROM issues and pain after multi-day hikes. I saw a PT there who pointed out that I couldn't fully straighten my leg. He gave me some exercises to try to get the leg straight, but despite working hard I could never get it fully straight. Fortunately, the straightening issue wasn't noticeable to casual observers or causing me problems. However, I did have occasional give-way and pain issues with the right knee. When we returned to the US, I saw a few doctors before finally finding one who diagnosed loose bodies in the joint. Basically there were pieces of cartilage that had broken off that were moving around and randomly pinching something. I had arthroscopic surgery to remove the loose bits and cleanup some more that was about to break off. I then went years with no pain. 

But then a couple of years ago, I started having severe pain again. A local sports medicine doctor gave me steroid injections, which really helped. I was able to get these every three months. But every time I went in, he said a joint replacement was in my future.  This worked well for three years. Then about a year ago, a short time after my latest shot, the pain came back much earlier than after other injections. So I finally went to see a knee replacement surgeon in January, 2025. 

X-rays showed almost all the cartilage behind the knee cap was gone and I had bone rubbing on bone. He cautioned that if this continued, the knee cap might be worn too thin for the standard replacement with a plastic button the back of the kneecap. He also suggested doing it while I was strong since the recovery should be better if I went into it strong. 

We scheduled surgery for March 11. I started pre-hab with a physical therapist to improve strength where I could. I continued my winter activities, with a bit of fat biking and lots of snowshoeing. I had signed up for the snowshoe race on Mt. Washington, so I did lots of long snowshoe hikes all winter. I joined several group hikes where we tried to pack down and groom trails for fat biking. When fat biking, I started to notice a little pain when pushing off after a stop. I'd not had any significant pain before with cycling, so this almost reassured me that it was time. Do it before it impacts my main activity.  Up until then, it was primarily weight bearing activities that resulted in pain. Despite that, I still did 8-10 mile snowshoe hikes all winter, with some cycling when conditions allowed.

For the Mt. Washington event, there were 3 different races: nordic ski, fat bike and snowshoe. John was doing the fat bike race. I chose the snowshoe event. The race starts with 4km on the flatter Great Glen trails, before heading 6km up the auto road, finishing at treeline. The fat bikers and skiers get an easy ride/ski back down the hill. Snowshoers stay much warmer tromping back down hill, since it's a bit more effort than coasting or skiing down. Between my warmup and the descent, I ended up with close to 20km for the day. 

This was two days before my surgery! My anesthesiologist friend said, "Leave nothing on the table." 

Camprodon to Mas Pelegri

 

Pyrenees

September 20, 2024 

Camprodon to Mas Pelegri

I've been watching the weather forecast the entire time. Every day, it has shown rain a few days out, and every day, we've had spectacular bluebird skies. All good things must come to an end. We had a few sprinkles, but not the deluge I had feared we might face descending back to Serinya. We stopped in Beget and Besalú for coffee and lunch and finished our tour on gravel roads back from Besalú. 

We had a marvelous time. Scenery was amazing. Climbs were brutal. Descents were breathtaking. The weather held out. We had some hot days, mostly temperate days, cool nights, good for sleeping, and no mechanical problems.

I do have plans to have my frame modified to accommodate larger tires for next time. My original chainring is worn out, so when I replace it, I will go slightly smaller to give me the lower gear I wished for many times. I was very happy with the clothing I brought. I did not need the extra water bladder in my frame bag, so will go back to the smaller frame bag in the future. 

We already have plans to come back. John signed up for the Traka, next spring!

Camprodon to Coll de Burgarès

Pyrenees

September 19, 2024 

Camprodon to Coll de Burgarès

We came back into town for lunch and John suggested we hadn't done enough climbing! I looked at strava routes and found a shortish loop nearby, so we headed back out. Halfway through,  after descending a bit from the coll, we discovered that I should have looked closer as the route turned up a chunky rocky trail. We looked at options and decided to just do out and back. I later mapped something out that would work better next time. 

   

 

Camprodon to Valter 2000

 

Pyrenees

September 19, 2024 

Camprodon to Valter 2000

It's hard to believe we are getting close to the end! While looking at various options for the return route, I came up with the idea of spending two nights in Camprodon so we could do some climbing without all our gear. The village is so quaint and it is worthwhile spending extra time here. There are several good climbs nearby, including Vallter 2000, which ascends to a ski area above 2000 meters. The climb featured in this year's Colta a Catalunya, with a certain Tadej Pogačar taking the KOM. It was funny when my FB memories popped up to show we had ridden Isola 2000 precisely one year ago, so this seemed like the perfect ride for the day. The strava segment start and finish have banners painted on the road. John waved goodbye as he passed over the start. I still had leg warmers on and should have removed them before the start, but my segment time was not going to mean anything. I stopped a km or so into the climb for a clothing change. Surprisingly! John did NOT take any photos going up!  

The ski area was closed, so no coffee at the top. We ate snacks we had hauled up, and then headed down, stopping for photos and cow jams.

 

 

 

Camprodon

 

Pyrenees

September 19, 2024 

Camprodon 

We rode up to Camprodon in the spring and decided it was well worth another longer visit. We stayed here two nights, doing a couple of unladen rides and wandering about time, sampling treats from various cafes. We will definitely come back. 

All the Spanish villages are so charming, with ancient stone buildings. I can't imagine riding into a village in the US and filling a camera card with photos. But here every village is photo worthy!

Saint Quirze de Basora to Camprodon

 

Pyrenees

September 18, 2024 

Saint Quirze de Basora to Camprodon

Over the years, I have managed to map out amazing routes, using ridewithgps with OSMCycleMaps. I am able to avoid busy roads, and it does a good job of showing paved versus unpaved. John has a subscription to Gaia and we used it lots this time to look at some of the dirt options. It's tricky here because the gravel can be so rough, but Gaia helped us distinguish between gravel roads and hiking trails! However, today, I forgot to look closely at the route profile. Luckily the super steep stuff was on a downhill, but I have to admit that downhill got my heart rate up. Collfred left an impression! 

Saint Llorenç de Morunys to Saint Quirze de Basora

 

Pyrenees

September 17, 2024 

Saint Llorenç de Morunys to Saint Quirze de Basora

Our next goal was Saint Quirze de Besora. When checking for existence of hotels, we found one that looked good, but only had a few rooms left so decided we would just book it in advance. 

La Seu d'Urgell to Saint Llorenç de Morunys

 

Pyrenees

September 16, 2024 

La Seu d'Urgell to Saint Llorenç de Morunys

I must have so  enjoyed the big climb out of Tuixent which we did a few days back, that I routed us back through Tuixent and up that climb again. But this time, we wouldn't turn around at the col and go back down to find our turn. We'd press on south pass a few ski areas and head down to Saint Llorenc

Our hotel in La Seu d'Urgell was pretty cool. It made us feel as if we were staying in Hotel Portofino!

At some point on our first climb, we encountered a few free range horses, one of which insisted John give him treats. The cliff blocks were well received!

I called this the amazing clouds day on my strava title. And you can see why!

la Poblà de Segur to La Seu d'Urgell

 

Pyrenees

September 15, 2024 

la Poblà de Segur to La Seu d'Urgell

Now to head east. The heat has returned. Back into my lightweight jersey. 

more cattle-jams here in cattle-onia

Lunch of champions!

Found some more gravel

Organya to la Poblà de Segur

 

Pyrenees

September 14, 2024 

Organya to la Poblà de Segur

We had a lovely stay in the bungalow at the campground in Organya. After our experience on the remote section yesterday, and heeding advice from other cyclists about traffic in and around Andorra, we decided to change plans for the remainder of the tour. Between OSM cycle maps and Gaia maps, we knew we could find quiet roads. We planned to continue west to Pantá de Sant Antoni reservoir and up to Senterada before completely diverting from the original route. I mapped out a long route, which would give us the option to find accommodation along the way, versus booking ahead with a set destination. This allows us to stop when we see something enticing or simply to change plans because some road looks interesting. I did not bring my iPad this time, but have been able to do all the mapping on my phone. If we change plans midday, I do have to stop the recording on the Garmin, download the new route and restart recording, but otherwise it's been easy enough to change plans. We do find having a gps route essential for John to be able to stop and take photos, or ride ahead and take photos, without fear of getting hopelessly separated. 

We left town on a busier road, but soon got onto a quiet climb. Our change of plans from gravel to quiet pavement did not have any effect on views. They continued to be spectacular. The climbs were still long and hard. Through out the trip,  20km long climbs were not uncommon. We rarely saw much in the way of cars. It is truly hard to go wrong in this area. 

We saw selfie stands at several of the roadside parks on cols!

Tuixent to Organya

 

Pyrenees

September 13, 2024 

Tuixent to Organya

The planned route

 

After our shortish day into Tuixent, I suggested we could try a blue/remote section. It would be at the beginning of the day, so we should have plenty of time and wouldn't be racing against the dark monster to get to a hotel at the end of the day. It had certainly worked out well for us on the previous day to not have a fixed destination. I like being able to pick a nice looking village or hotel, but there is always the chance that everything could be booked, so sometimes we plan ahead, and other times we do things on the fly. For this day, we decided to throw caution to the wind in multiple ways. 

September is considered off-season, so despite Tuixent being a charming village, there was nothing open aside from the bar/auberge where we stayed. Roger, our host, made egg sandwiches for us to carry for lunch. Our friends from the evening before had mentioned an herb shop in Ossera, where we could get a hot or cold drink. But there wouldn't be much else in the way of food or drink on our proposed route. 

It was another absolutely gorgeous day. We started with a big paved climb, and somehow managed to miss the turn onto gravel, so we climbed all the way up to the col and then backtracked back down a kilometer or so to our turn!

Today was the test for me to determine whether we should keep on the original plan. The second half of the route had lots of  the so-called remote sections, with very few alternatives. Up to this point, we'd had plenty of options. But once on the northern leg into Andorra, we'd be committed or face backtracking. This was John's vacation too, and I know he loves this stuff and would have thoroughly enjoyed the whole route. But as much as he loves stopping for photos, he was going to have lots more time to take photos than even he would like if I found myself on foot. So here we go...

We started to wonder if we'd misread the name of the region and it was actually CATTLE-lonia. We have a friend in Massachusetts who obsessively takes photos of cows on all her rides, so we thought of her often on this trip. How many memory cards would she fill if riding here?

Oops, we discovered our missed turn and got to backtrack. It was an easy turn to miss, a tiny gravel road that went straight up! We arrived at the next col pretty quickly and I foolishly took it as a good sign!

Of course I should have learned by this point that there is always plenty of climbing after the cols here. It was also a bit rugged, with lots of big and small loose rocks. Having run out of things to photograph while waiting for me to inch my way up, John ran back down and pushed my bike up one of the rougher bits. It alternated between sections I was comfortable riding and others that I crawled along at a snails pace due to steepness or gnarliness, both up and down! To my credit, I did ride most of it, but if this was typical conditions of the so-called remote sections, I feared we might not finish the route before our flight home! There was no way I could do 100km a day in conditions like this. I really wished for fatter tires, but even if I had them, we'd need a lot more daylight to ride that kind of distance every day.

John theorized some of the gravel was fresh due to some amount of maintenance on the roads and it might not all be like this. We did see large piles that suggested as much. Some of the bigger rocks had likely fallen from above. But given what we'd seen up to this point, I decided if we made it out of this section, we'd have to go to plan B.

It was gorgeous here! But so were the places we could get to on quiet paved roads. And there was still plenty of climbing to be done.