Doctor who broke neck on bike path bridge trains for half-marathon

Dr. Ron Stout stops on a bike path bridge in Spring Valley where one year ago he flipped his bike and broke his neck. Doctors told him he would probably never walk again. He's training for a half marathon in October. Staff photo by Jim Noelker

Jim Noelker/Staff Dr. Ron Stout stops on a bike path bridge in Spring Valley where one year ago he flipped his bike and broke his neck. Doctors told him he would probably never walk again. He's training for a half marathon in October. Staff photo by Jim Noelker

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By Ken McCall, Staff Writer 7:14 PM Sunday, September 6, 2009

One year ago on Labor Day, Dr. Ron Stout went out for a 20-mile bike ride on the Little Miami Trail and didn’t come home for a month.

Stout, the now 50-year-old medical director of Procter & Gamble, wiped out on one of the dangerously slick bridges on the trail — which, thanks to the advocacy and fund-raising of the Friends of the Little Miami State Park, have since been fixed. He flipped his Trek racing bike, landed on his back and blacked out. When he came to, he couldn’t move from his neck down.

Stout’s planned one-hour ride became a yearlong painful, frustrating and enlightening journey that has transformed his outlook on life, he said during a walk up the trail last week.

A former Air Force flight surgeon, Stout was used to living a physically active, fast-paced life.

Then, suddenly, everything came screeching to a stop.

“I’ve never been patient,” Stout said. “I’ve always hated lines and waiting.

“Then, the first six months, I had to wait for everything. There was nothing I could do for myself.”

The experience, he said, taught him what was truly important.

Long ago, he said, he told his wife, Pam, that if he ever got badly injured, he didn’t want to live.

“But when I was laying here on the trail,” he said, looking down at the spot on the now-paved bridge, “never for a moment did I want to die. I know it sounds Polyannish, but for everything I’ve lost physically, I’ve gained something else.”

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