On a cloudy morning at the veterans hospital in Menlo Park, a cozy bedroom community of workaholic Silicon Valley, Raymond Ortiz wheels out a red racing machine. Wearing blue-and-white cycling tights, he parks the bicycle in the patio of the ward for vets suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and glances over at mine.

“That’s a nice-looking old bike,” the veteran of the first Persian Gulf War says politely.

To be exact, my outdated steel job is about 25 years older than his aluminum rocket, and I’m feeling an even greater age difference as the rest of his fit cycling team shows up. Over the years, about 170 veterans here have joined the hospital’s cycling-therapy program. Almost all of them had suffered a combat injury, from loss of limbs to shell shock, and then found civilian life to be a living hell.

Gil Ramirez, a readjustment counselor, arrives with an ultralight, carbon-fiber racer. More than most endurance sports, he explains, cycling is a group activity, a sport that can pry emotionally and mentally wounded veterans out of their shells and bring them back to the peloton of friendship and life in general. There’s nothing like a long, challenging ride through pretty country to burn off built-up anger and push those ugly memories of battle to where they belong.

“You can blow off a lot of steam, get past your physical pain,” says Ortiz, who has a bad back and lingering numbness in his right foot.

Ortiz, Ramirez and four other members of the PTSD team bolt out of the hospital’s spread-out campus and onto the commuter-jammed streets for a 15-mile spin.

And soon I see, these boys are fast!

Struggling with PTSD

During the Battle of Marathon 2,500 years ago, the Greek historian Herodotus described an Athenian soldier who was not injured but became permanently blind after witnessing the death of a fellow soldier. The modern understanding of PTSD dates from the 1970s and the Vietnam War. We might say the search for a cure began only yesterday.

PTSD is an acute anxiety that anyone, child or adult, can get after suffering violence or traumatic injury, or just seeing something horrible happen to someone else. In April 2008, the Rand Corp. think tank reported that almost 20 percent of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan reported PTSD or depression. In vets, Ramirez says, the common results can range from emotional isolation and chronic unemployment to divorce and homelessness.

“We haven’t done any long-term studies yet,” the readjustment counselor says as he pedals hard to keep up with Ortiz and his other patients. “Anecdotally, we have a lot of these guys who’ll tell you that cycling has helped them as much as their therapy sessions.”

Running, swimming, skiing and other endurance sports aren’t new in the treatment of physically, emotionally or mentally wounded soldiers. But as a sustained therapy for PTSD, cycling appears to work wonders.

“Of all the sports we’ve tried,” says recreational counselor Melissa Puckett, “cycling is the one that’s been the most effective.”

Gift of real bikes

Looking for an exercise program to complement therapy sessions about four years ago, Ramirez and other therapists decided to give cycling a try. The problem was, the Veterans Administration didn’t have a bike budget. It still doesn’t. So they scrounged up some heavy mountain bikes and other clunkers.

Hearing about this, the Specialized bike company, headquartered in Morgan Hill, donated some spiffy new Allez road bikes. On real bikes, the group’s mileage, speed and endurance improved and, the veterans will tell you, so did their mental health.

“I was skeptical at first,” says Jose Reyes, who served with the Army in Iraq in 2007 and 2008. After riding 500 miles to Los Angeles last month, he says, “I had never felt so good in my life. We look forward to riding now. I just clears our minds.”

When I ask, they’re reluctant to talk about their injuries. That’s because they’re in the middle of serious talk therapy, which is designed to get them to stop dwelling on combat and move on to fixing themselves and their relationships.

Ramirez says most of them are still learning how to handle blood-and-guts questions from strangers and even loved ones. Until they do, they can remain emotionally isolated and incapable of “holding their babies, sharing good times with their wives, taking the kids to Disneyland, just living normal lives.”

Or, as Ortiz put it, “You just go into shutdown mode.”‘

I asked him, What’s the therapeutic secret of cycling? “It brings back the feeling of being on a team,” he says, “of looking out for each other.”

Another veteran on the team said the long-distance rides have given him back something crucial: “A sense of accomplishment I didn’t have for years.”

Veterans with PTSD typically stay here for 60 to 90 days. After that, they go home. The donated bikes stay. A lot of them, like Ortiz, don’t have their own bikes but will come back occasionally to ride with the group. However, that’s another day.

As they break for breakfast, they decide to ride again that afternoon. Fifteen miles wasn’t enough.

Do you have a story for Eastside/Westside? Contact Joe Rodriguez at 408-920-5767 or jrodriguez@mercurynews.com.