So, I know I’ve been slacking on my updates on my site. But, all I can say is that I am sorry and it’s been a busy summer for me. At any rate. For now, I thought I would give a little update on how my camp at Colorado Springs went, what I am up to and what I have on the horizon.

So, I have to tell a little story about the day before I left. As Brett and my dad both like to remind me, “Your a mess”. I hear that much more then most people would believe. Anyhow, so Jason (aka Chuckles) asked me to go do the Celo Circle R ride with him. So I meet up with him and off we go with the celo crew. About 20 miles into the ride I take out a pack of cliff shot blocks and bite into one. Well it seemed a little hard and tasted kind of funny. So I spit it out. Right as I spit it out, I realized something was a miss. So I turn around and pick it up off the ground. At which point everyone started giving me crap that I was taking the 5 second rule way too far. Well, just my luck. I ripped a crown out and it was stuck in the shot block. Awesome. I am leaving in the morning for a week long camp and just ripped a $2,000 tooth apart. I managed to get a hold of my dentist on the phone and he agreed to come in and fix it for me later that day. Well, all I had were shot blocks and I wasn’t taking any chances with the rest of them. So it turned into a 80 mile ride with no food. I wouldn’t recommend that. Well, I got the tooth fixed and started packing up the car that afternoon.

I left San Diego Sunday the 21 to drive out to Colorado Springs OTC (Olympic Training Center). I drove to some little down called Green River, Utah that night grabbed a room and got up early the next morning. I drove about another hour from Green River to Arches National park just outside of Moab. There is about a 36 mile loop through the park. I parked and unloaded the road bike and geared up for a ride through the park. After about 15 miles or so, I called it a day and turned around. Well, that only lasted for about 2 miles. Somehow I didn’t see a pretty big seem in the road going down hill around 35. Well next thing I knew my foot came out of the pedal and got caught in the back wheel. I was sliding across the road before I knew it and some how managed to stay upright. But just one problem now, my back wheel is trashed. Of course it had to be my power tap zipp wheel. Awesome! So, I managed to get a ride back from a nice older couple. Turns out the guy that picked me up had raced a few IM’s. Small world we live in? Nothing really to uneventful on the rest of the drive to the OTC. Oh yea, my car got hit in the windshield with a rock and now I have a crack that continues to grow daily (I still need to get that one fixed).

Tuesday was a rather long boring day for me. I slept in, ate breakfast and waited for everyone to get in and build up their bikes. I arrived at the OTC on Monday night, while most of the other athlete’s got in Tuesday around lunchtime. So I just kind of hung out till there were enough people ready to go for a ride. As the day went I learned something funny. Our mechanic for the week was Good Looking Johnny G formally of B&L (the shop I race for). We had a few laughs and stories about the guys at the shop. He offered to fix my wheel for me, so I ventured off to find spokes from the local shop. I found some and well, story of my life. I brought them back and turns out they were the wrong length. Oh well, good things I had a few sets of wheels with me.

Wednesday and the rest of the week till Saturday was all rather similar. Up around 7 am for breakfast, ride at “9” (which was really around 9:30), back at 12, lunch, nap, ride at 2, back at 5, dinner, meeting at 7, bed. Not a bad schedule if you ask me. I think I ate more food during that week then the month before. I have to say if there’s one thing I love about being at camp, it’s the food. Pretty much anything you can think of they have there, and if you don’t see it, they will most likely be able to make it for you.

By Wednesday everyone was already shocked by the amount of food I was eating. After seeing the flyers on the wall, I had a feeling that I might get some encouragement. Well, there was a pie eating contest Thursday night. I was slightly concerned that I would ride pretty bad on Friday if I went for it. But, I was reassured by Rick at Wednesday night’s meeting that it was okay to ride bad on Friday as long as I did okay in the contest. Rick was our kick ass coach for the week by the way.

So, after little thought I was in. I went outside for the contest Thursday night and sat down. What a site. Turns out it was basically the weight lifting crew. I swear the smallest guy had a least a 100 pounds on me. Well, not one to back down from a challenge with my team behind me. I had Aaron taking pics and organizing everyone to cheer for me, Pat played the part of my manager, and the rest of the team did some yelling for me. Contest was pretty simple, 1 pie, no hands and 4 minutes. Whoever ate the most won. Well, I took off way too hard. I think I must have been in like a 53x13 where I really needed to be geared a lot lower. But, I came around and by the end only had two small bites of the bottom left. Good enough for second place. It was my moment of glory without a doubt. Honestly I am not sure that I’ve ever had that many people shouting my name so loud. I think it scared the weight lifting guys a little. I never laughed so hard after the contest was done. I couldn’t even breathe I had pie stuck in my nose and my face was covered. Then I made everyone laugh even more at me. I walked inside, and ate my dinner that I had waiting for me.

Couple other highlights of the week:

Time Trial, well for qualifying for the paralympic events there is a standard time that you have to meet to be on the team. Thursday I think it was we did a “10” TT. That’s 10 by Rick’s standards. Turns out it was really 14K. At any rate, I felt horrible all day. I got lost on the ride out to the air force base, and rode about 5 extra miles. And was having big issues with autonomic dysreflexia, google it. It sucks, butt, its one of those fun things that comes along with my spinal cord injury. I lose a lot of the power in my legs when I am having problems. I still road fast enough to meet my national standard, so baring any big issues or blunders next June at nationals, hopefully I should be able to make it on the team to go to Spain next September for World Championships.

Velodrome, it rocks. Plain and simple that thing kicks ass! I suck on it, but I still enjoy it. I am thinking track racing will be in the future come spring. I have to figure out how to spin faster, so hopefully that will help.

“Three Stooges”, the nickname that Rick came up with for me, Aaron and Andy. I am not sure if that’s a good thing or not. I am actually leading towards not so good.

There are tons of other great stories from the camp. But I am just too tired and my head doesn’t always work good enough to type/remember them all.

Overall camp was a great time. Nowhere near as brutal as the camp I did back in the spring at the Chula Vista center. But then again that was with the national team and this was more of a development camp. Then again, this one was a little more fun, and less painful. I am already looking forward to getting to go back for more camps hopefully in the near future at either Chula or the Springs.

I took my time driving home and left Sunday the 28 and got home late Monday the 29. I slacked off all week and took 4 complete days off, ate lots of donuts and Mexican food. Now it’s Sunday the 5th and day 1 of my very exciting weight training program for the fall. YAY for me! (I think?)

So what’s next and what does next year hold?

Well, as most of you know I am done racing triathlon. It’s just too hard on my body. With that in mind, I have two events left for 2008. Fiesta Island 20k time trial on the 12th of October and then I am doing Silverman in Las Vegas as a rely team with Marc and Sebastian on November 9, don’t worry I am not running. As for 2009, basically lots of road races, crits and time trials. The big focus of the year will be on World Championships in Spain next September. I guess that’s all for now, as always feel free to send a little feed back to me.

Thanks for reading,
Matt Bigos
mattbigos@earthlink.net

 

 

 

 

Posted by matt on October 6, 2008 11:45 AM