UCI Introduction to Para-cycling

Italy Para Worlds 2011

Carrie and I at training. 

I am LOVING the tandem! Going to worlds with Carrie was such a great experience, I learned a lot and we made huge improvements as a tandem team. Italy was beautiful, the weather was great almost the whole time we were there, the track was beautiful and FAST. We did a few rides on the road prior to our races and got to train on the track before the racing started, which was nice to get a feel for the track before having to race on it.

Cappuccino I had every morning

Our first event at worlds was the kilo, although painful I was looking forward to it, as was Carrie. We set our goal to go 1:17, to qualify for talent pool team. The day started off as any race day would for me: lazy morning, good breakfast, some joking around early on to keep the jitters away, oh and COFFEE, lots of coffee. We rode over to the track, I grabbed a peanut butter and jelly sandwich from Brittany, one of our awesome staff members, and just relaxed while I watched other races. Then it was warm up, I got on the rollers, Carrie next to me on the trainer and Adam, one of the coaches, came to tell us our structured warm up. After warm up it was time to head over to the nervous box, just sitting and waiting for our turn on the track. After what seems to be forever we finally get our turn to shine. We get on the bike, feet clipped in, hands on the bars *beep* 12 seconds to the start, I tell myself "you have done this a million and a half times, don't mess it up this time!" *beep* 5 seconds *beep* 4 *beep* 3 *beep* 2 *boop* GO! 4 laps around! 1 minute 16 seconds! (5 second personal best) I was so pumped we met our goal. We ended up placing 13th, which I didn't even care what place we got, of course I would have loved to do better but we accomplished the time we set out to do, and made talent pool standard. I was pleased with all of it considering we have only been riding together for a month/ month and a half.

Start of the Kilo

We had a day in between our 2 races and we raced the 3k pursuit the final day of racing. I don't know what shook me up so much for this race but I was not as calm and collected as the kilo. We rode over to the track, like usual, watched some races but the whole time I was not calm I couldn't get level headed no matter how many times I told myself "it's only 12 laps!" I was crying and shaking and I finally got on the rollers for warm up and thought I would chill out after that but I was still freaking out a bit. We walked over to the back straight for the start of our 3k and sitting in the hot seat I finally pulled it together. Adam walked the bike up to the gate, Craig went to the turn to call times and then we started all over again, *beep* 12 seconds. We start the race, and come around our first lap and here our targeted time, I was so happy to hear that. The second lap we come around we are nearly a second faster then our scheduled pace, 3rd lap .7 seconds faster. I yelled at Carrie "Just roll with it!!" So we did, and ended having another personal best time, and Craig was happy because his goal for us was to break 4 minutes, which we did with a time of  3:58 

Karrisa, Me, Carrie, and Mackenzie (Pilots and Stockers) 

On top of the racing being awesome, my family was able to come to Italy and support us and luckily I was able to hang out with them for a bit and just catch up. The first day they were there we went to a little cafe/bar thing and had a great time. I was also able to go and see their beautiful apartment they got that over looked a lake. 

My parents, sister and I, all happy!

My sisters and I at the cafe

Vince (2nd in Kilo), Me, and Aaron after a training session. 

Obviously I am sad to say I had to leave beautiful Italy and head back to reality of school...

New Chapter

As my mentor and second dad, Richard Lamb has always said to me "you are turning the page" in my book of life. This means I have accomplished a goal, make improvements, or just in fact move on to a new thing in life.
Currently my new thing is tandem and I am going to Italy in a few days to be the pilot for Carrie at the Paralympic World Championships. Carrie is visually impaired, so obviously she can not ride a bike herself.. so that's where I come in!
I basically ride a bike like normal except I have a little extra weight behind, but the good thing about having another person means we get to go faster!! I call her our motor! hehe
We are a new partnership so we are still working on getting our kinks out but we have improved so much since the beginning. We have dropped like 3 seconds off our standing start lap in less than a month, we can only keep getting better from here.
We have had about 3 training camps here in Los Angeles where the whole team comes and trains for a few days at the ADT Velodrome. The training is awesome, the team is awesome, and we all have so much fun together on and off the bike.
Worlds is on March 12-13 so I will follow on how the experience was and how the racing went!
Here is the website on the event: Click Here

Carrie and I during a training session