Local Veteran to Cycle in UnitedHealthcare Ride 2 Recovery California Challenge

Blair Reels, Jr. (Army Veteran, served from 2003 – 2007) will join more than 200 injured veterans and their supporters on Sunday, Oct. 18, on the UnitedHealthcare Ride 2 Recovery California Challenge, a seven-day, 516-mile bicycle ride along the scenic California coast from the San Francisco Bay Area to Los Angeles. Ride 2 Recovery (R2R) provides physical and psychological rehabilitation programs for injured veterans, featuring cycling as its core activity.

This is the sixth year UnitedHealthcare is serving as R2R’s title sponsor, providing financial, in-kind and volunteer support to help America’s injured veterans. For more information, visit www.ride2recovery.com.

In June of 2005, Reels was hit by a car bomb in Baghdad and sustained a traumatic brain injury and a T-6 incomplete spinal cord injury. Reels was in a wheelchair and told he would not walk again. He suffers from PTSD. In April 2013, Reels began cycling with Ride 2 Recovery at the VA Palo Alto. Through therapies, and riding the recumbent, he slowly started to regain use of his legs. Reels is currently able to walk, but does not have a lot of feeling in his legs. He completed last year’s UnitedHealthcare Ride 2 Recovery California Challenge in a recumbent, and is currently the leader of the Project HERO group at the Palo Alto VA. For the upcoming Challenge, Reels has graduated to an upright bike.

"The sense of accomplishment and the camaraderie in these veterans was absolutely amazing; it was what I loved about the Army and I missed that more than I think I let myself realize. I also wanted to push myself now that I saw the determination I had on the bike. I started going back to PT to train on an upright. Ride 2 Recovery has given me back more than just my strength: it's given me a reason to wake up every day and feel proud of who I am.”