Race Report: Clean Sweep at the Paralympic Road National Championships
By Matt Bigos
8/30/11 - I know this is late , but, I’ve been on the road for coming up on 9 weeks now, and things have kind of been crazy to say the least. Road Nationals were held in Augusta, Georgia this year, and the city did an AMAZING job putting on what I thought was the best Road Nationals that I’ve been to yet.
Things started off fast paced and a little crazy just getting there. I had the second World Cup the week before Nationals in Spain and flew home for all of 2 days before heading back out again. I took off Thursday from San Diego to head to Colorado Springs to pick up Greta Neimanas and her sister Nadia. From there it was just a quick short 27 hour drive to Augusta. It rained for 26.5 of the 27 hours, the other 30 minutes the ground was covered with snow. We arrived Saturday night in town with plenty of time before racing began on Thursday. I wanted plenty of time to get settled in, see the courses, and get used to the heat.
Matt attacks from the gun during the Paralympic National Championship Road Race.
The TT course was much better in my mind than the last two years in Bend. The course started out on the Strom Thurmond Dam and traveled out for 11k along a mostly flat to rolling road then just a cone at an intersection and back in to the starting line. Pretty simple. I got a handful of laps on the course before race day and my legs felt pretty good. The weather was looking to be a tad toasty for race day, the days leading up it was in the upper 90s around 3 pm, which was when my start time was. I was hoping for rain, praying, doing the rain dance, anything, I LOVE racing in the rain. Well turns out, I got my wish. It started raining around maybe 12 or 1 that day and kept raining all the way through the race and finished up maybe an hour after I was done. My race itself went pretty well, I’ve spent a ton of time over the last year working on my TT game after last years disaster at Nationals and failing to make the road Worlds team. As a side note, the TT at Road Nationals is the selection event for the Road Worlds Paralympic team. Needless to say, this was the most important race of the year and I feel I rode the race of the year for me, so far that is. In the end, my time was good enough to win my classification, National Championship number 1 for the week, and give me a spot to the Road Worlds Team to be held in Denmark in September.
The Crit was held in downtown Augusta the day after the TT. I am glad we have the Crit for para racing, but it has room to grow. The turn out this year was bigger then last year, but still could be bigger. For the Crit, we all started together, all the separate classifications, C1-5 men and woman. Things rolled along smoothly for me. Nothing really too exciting, I just hid as much as I could and wanted to make it to the line safely. Mission accomplished! I crossed the line first in my classification giving me National Championship number two for the week.
Saturday brought the Road Race and the final day of racing. The race was held on Fort Gordon, the local Army base. I do love when the military lets us race on their bases. It’s nice to get out of the normal streets for racing from time to time. The course was a bit harder then it appeared on paper. Not long climbs, but lots of short punchy climbs that would take it’s toll. Me being me, attacked from the gun, literally from the whistle. I didn’t really have enough time to get my legs warmed up and felt a little sluggish in the morning, so figured that if I went first, I would get to control the early pace to some extent. My plan worked. Once again, the men and woman C1-5 all started together giving us a larger field to race together. Turned out my attack from the gun pretty much cut the field in half from the start, which was kind of nice in a way. I stayed with the main group for the majority of lap 1 of 2 and towards the end of lap 1 the group was getting smaller and smaller and I was dropped from what was left of the front group. I ended up riding the second lap alone in between groups. Which in the end was enough to stay ahead of anyone in my classification and pick up my third National Championship of the weekend.
I am now in Colorado springs for final prep camp before heading off to Denmark for Road Worlds.
Ride Cyclery had a National Championship Jersey made for Matt.
I really can’t say enough to thank everyone that has helped me to get here. 2011 has been a big year for me, first National Championships (And 3 titles to top it off), first time making the Worlds team and so much more. Without the help of Travis (Nitro Circus), Brent from Ride Cyclery, Sonja with Zipp and Sram, Dave at Engine Ice, Brett Clare for always yelling at me, Daggs for keeping me from 35 hours a week all year long and everyone else, thank you helping me make it this far.
