Stephanie Harris pants into a microphone as 27 undergraduate women from the University of Oregon watch her intently from behind their stationary bikes at the Student Rec Center. She instructs the class to dial up the resistance and to stand on the bikes.

“You are an empowered woman,” she says. “You can do this.”

A black sweatband keeps her curly white-blonde hair out of her face. The outline her muscular physique shows through a pink dry-fit jersey and mid-thigh black spandex.

 “Thirty seconds,” Harris says while breathing heavily. “Try not to give in. Keep going.”

Harris cycles along with her students at the UO.

Harris, 62, is pushing her students go the extra mile. She is pushing her students to do no less than what she expects from herself.

Just two years after a total knee replacement, Harris, a fitness instructor, is back for good on the bike teaching 20-something students to intensify their pace. 

Since 2009, Harris has been teaching group cycling at the University of Oregon.  For many years she has taught group strength training and group cycling at In Shape Athletic Club, the Springfield branch of the Courtsports Athletic Club and the Downtown Athletic Club. But she’s not your average fitness instructor.  She works part-time as a neurologist.

Born in Los Angeles, Harris got her bachelors in biology at UC San Diego. She moved to Oregon in 1972 and went to medical school at the Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU).  She studied internal medicine and neurology at Yale, returned to Oregon for a fellowship at OHSU and then joined an active neurology practice in Eugene.

Harris caught the fitness bug in 1986 shortly after giving birth to her daughter. Group fitness was a way to get back into shape, she explains. 

“After several years as a student I thought ‘you know…I think I could teach these classes myself,’” she recalls.

Harris became a certified fitness instructor in 1990 but kept her job as a full-time neurologist. Her husband was practicing oncology full-time. They were living as on-call practitioners while simultaneously raising two small children. 

Lifestyle change

In 1994, she had an epiphany.

“I decided that our lives were awful they way they were” Harris recalls.

Harris left her practice to join the fitness profession full-time. However, her osteoarthritis, chronic knee pain and severe compression on her spinal cord put limits on her physical activity.

“As my arthritis got worse I had to stop teaching pretty much everything except cycling and strength training,” Harris explains. 

Degenerative arthritis led to pain in her back, neck and knee leading up to her surgeries. The compression in her spinal cord led to a lumbar spinal fusion surgery in 2008. Three years later, Harris’s knee was wearing to the point of discomfort in daily activities. 

“It was inhibiting my life,” Harris says. “You [get surgery] when you finally can’t live with it anymore.”

In 2011, Harris had a total knee replacement surgery. She was back on the bike a mere three months (and extensive physical therapy) later.

“Did I ever want to give up?” recalls Harris on her period of rehabilitation. “No.”

One doctor instructed Harris to swim an hour for every hour of exercise she did on land. She dismissed his suggestion as unrealistic, but took on swimming as a way to regain strength and keep her fitness as the arthritis progressed.

“When I first got in the pool I went 25 yards and thought I was going to die!” she says with a chuckle. 

She doesn’t consider herself a swimmer. But she worked with a personal trainer to learn techniques to slowly improve her aerobic abilities.

“There are bad days where you’re uncomfortable and tired,” she explains. “I just persevered.” 

She took another term off from instructing to get a cervical fusion just last year. Swimming was the key to rehabilitation, she explains. 

On her active life

Harris’s husband passed away in 2008. Her son is at medical school at OHSU while her daughter is at UC Davis for a master’s degree in pharmacology. With an empty house, Harris tries more than ever to keep busy.

Harris now works one day a week as a neurologist after nearly 35 years in the medical field. After teaching morning fitness classes, she sees patients at the Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend in the multispecialty clinic building, often not returning home until 8 or 9pm. She swims and hikes regularly throughout the week. 

“We are never too old to be exercising,” Harris says. 

Harris continues to experience arthritis in her hands, elbows, shoulders, ankles, back, and her other knee. Without regular exercise she would be a mess, Harris explains.

Harris chats privately with a student after class.

On a recent Wednesday, the song “Be mine” by Robyn, bounced throughout the UO fitness room. Harris dismounted her bike and strode over to a student who had been struggling with hip pain. She placed her hand over the microphone and leaned in to chat privately with the student.

Ellie Dellard, a loyal volunteer in the Harris’s group cycling class, says, “She makes you feel like your strong and confident enough to do the work

Dellard, a UO graduate student, became a certified group cycling instructor after several years of participating in Harris’s classes. Harris has urged many of her students to become certified to teach fitness courses.

“She’s the reason why I’m doing it” Dellard says firmly. ”She’s the one who inspired me. 

Harris is on her stationary bike pumping hard. She asks her class to close their eyes and imagine a happy place like the beach or the mountains. The whizzing of the bikes is barely audible over the energetic music.

“Keep on going,” she instructs through the microphone. “Push through the fatigue!”

By Cari Johnson