From skiing down the slopes in Vancouver at the 2010 Olympic Games, to running down your own road, you don't have to be an all-star athlete to feel the effects of a hard workout. Often knees take the biggest beating, and "potholes form."

But now, a new type of transplant is getting people back to their workouts faster than ever before.

"When I would try running on it, I would get a sharp needle-like pain," said Kevin Kaspzyk, a knee patient and experienced marathon runner.

That pain was felt with Kaspzyk's every step, and it's a lot of steps. He runs 80 miles a week.

"A lot of people are like, I can't imagine driving that long, let alone running it," Kaspzyk said.

But the wear and tear took its toll.

"He said you have this big huge piece of missing cartilage," Kaspzyk said.

"Think of a pothole in your cartilage as a pothole in a road. If you keep driving over the pothole, or using your knee, the pothole will get bigger bigger, bigger, bigger, and that means the pothole has progressed onto osteoarthritis," said Dr. Joseph Guettler, an orthopedic surgeon at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Mich.

Guettler used transplanted cartilage to repair Kaspzyk's knee. Cartilage cells are harvested from an area on the knee that's not hurt and sent to a lab where they are grown for six weeks.

"Believe it or not, they can grow something that's pretty darn close to real hyaline, articular cartilage," Guettler said.

The cells are then injected back into the knee under a patch that covers the "pothole."

"We're taking cartilage cells, and instead of sending them off to a lab, we're simply mincing them at the time of the procedure. They're sprinkled on a biological scaffold and implanted into the knee, all in one setting," Guettler said.

The surgery is quick, but full recovery can take a year. Kaspzyk has his running shoes back on and is planning his 40th marathon.

"I'll be running Boston next year, and whether I get under three hours or not, I'm still able to do it," Kaspzyk said.

And he'll do it without any pain.

The success rate at Beaumont Hospital in Michigan is as high as 90 percent. Cartilage transplantation is only good for people who have not yet developed arthritis and could prevent them from getting it years later.

BACKGROUND: When cartilage deteriorates in joints and causes bones to rub against each other, osteoarthritis often develops. When the condition takes place in the knee, bone and cartilage develop cracks and fissures that worsen over time, especially with high-impact activities that involve twisting, jumping and pivoting.

A recent study found even weekend warriors are prone to arthritis. Injuries that occurred in middle-aged people who showed no symptoms and had a healthy weight were more common and more severe in those who exercised more. Activities linked to a higher incidence or arthritis included sports, exercise, yard work and housework. Lower-impact exercise like swimming and cycling were found to have a protective effect against arthritis.

TREATMENT: Surgery is a last resort for treatment of osteoarthritis. Non-surgical treatments include lifestyle modifications to avoid further impact to the affected area, exercise and medications like anti-inflammatories and corticosteroid injections. Surgeries to treat arthritis of the knee include cleaning debris and repairing tears through arthroscopy; osteotomy to cut the shinbone or thighbone to improve alignment of the knee; total replacement of the knee joint; or cartilage grafting for patients with limited cartilage loss.

A new surgical option still in research is cartilage transplantation. Dr. Joseph Guettler, an orthopaedic surgeon at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Mich., harvests cartilage cells from an uninjured area of a patient's knee and sends the cells to a lab where they are grown and multiplied for six weeks. The cells are then injected back into the knee under a patch that covers the depleted area. Full recovery can take a year, and Guettler said the transplantation procedure is for patients who have not yet developed arthritis, but are at risk. "We are filling their pothole and thus decreasing the chance of them progressing to degenerative arthritis as they age," Guettler said.