Obsession, Deja Vu and Opposable Thumbs

I have been back here in Girona since Monday and have settled in just enough in time to pack up and leave again this weekend for Criterium International. Yes I will be racing this weekend on Corsica in the two day, three event race. Saturday is a road race guaranteed to be difficult with 5 categorized climbs and a mountain top finish over 175km. Sunday is an early day starting with a short circuit of only 75km and nothing too much of note. Sunday afternoon is a short 7.7km TT. I haven't ridden a TT bike in probably 6 months, so this is sure to be interesting! Not of big concern though.

Finally received my bikes on Tuesday night. What an operation! Being ill-versed in the Spanish language, I spent a solid 90 minutes trying to direct the delivery company to the house, which conveniently does not show up on the GPS. My lack of Spanish and the worthless GPS created one heck of a situation; nonetheless, I eventually found the delivery guy, shared some words in English, that he responded to in Spanish, let out my frustration and got my bikes.

It was Tuesday that I also found out I have an obsession to anything related to food. I am not 100% certain where this obsession stems from; however, I can take a 99.9% guaranteed guess that it is related to my lifestyle. Being a health conscious individual, I am always concerned with what goes in the pie-hole, although that does not stop me from indulging more often than I should. Anyway, on Tuesday, I think I spent about 8 hours of the day between the farmer's market, grocery stores, health stores, bakeries and other various outlets. It was a funny feeling standing in the store when I realized I sure have an obsession with shopping, reading labels, cooking and of course eating. I was raised to care about eating/being healthy, being taught from a young age that if you want the engine to perform well, you can't feed it crap. Thank you mother! Yes my mother was great throughout my childhood, packing me lunch nearly EVERY day all the way through high school. Yup, yours truly here was the geek with a lunch box. I called it my treasure chest because it was always full of goodies! Thanks mom, you're the best! So this is my recent, although not completely astounding "self-discovery". Just ask my wife if I have a food obsession. She thinks I am a shop-a-holic. For example, when I was home recently, I remember us stopping at the store, leaving and then saying we had forgotten something. She replied with some remark about how it didn't matter because I was sure to be back to the store at least 4 or 5 times that week. She was probably right. I wonder if they have shop-a-holics anonymous.

On Wednesday, I woke up (1145am- totally out of the ordinary), assembled my bike and got ready for some training. I was excited. Weather was alright, but it didn't matter, I was going to get out for a steady 4ish hours. It wasn't really until I experienced deja vu about 5 minutes into my ride that I began to doubt 4 hours. Deja vu: last year Lisa and I made a spring break trip to California at about this time and I had an unfortunate training crash up on the Mulholland Highway where my tires just disappeared from beneath me for no apparent reason. Well, about 5 minutes into my ride at the bottom of the hill from the house, I ate it in the roundabout. Not sure why this happened, but I venture a guess that it was all the dust on the road from the construction going on for the new high-speed train (stoked for this). Needless to say, I was about half way around when it felt like ice and before I knew it, it wasn't rubber side down anymore; it was Matthew side down = not good. I came out of this little ordeal rather unscathed. Bike was slightly damaged as usual; rear shifter is partially broken, but still functional. I managed to get a small raspberry on BOTH hips, along with a few other minor scuffs. The worst injury was my right thumb/palm. I smashed it so hard that when I stood up it was already swelling and bruising. I am not sure what happened but I venture a guess that when I fell my hand was on the brake hood and the impact of the bike on the ground reverberated into the brake hood causing a sever blunt force trauma.

Last night/this morning my right thumb was virtually useless, which is how I have come to the realization how valuable opposable thumbs are. I know many famous researchers/scientists (important people) have talked about this before, but until you personally experience the inability to grab things and function normally, you cannot appreciate the functionality of the opposable thumb. I am happy to report that it seems to be getting better throughout the day however. Swelling is going down and bruising is becoming quite apparent. ICE, ICE, ICE! Yes I am icing and that seems to be helping.

Today I had a nice training ride. Felt a bit more tired than yesterday, but still alright. I went over to Rocacorba, a beautiful climb and did a nice 30 minute tempo piece to try and get myself nice and open for this weekend. The rest of the day is dedicated to preparing for my venture! Thanks for checking in!

**First picture is from the plane as I landed in Barcelona. I love the headrest screens and it shows how far I traveled from Newark; quite a ways! Missing home :(
**Second picture is from a bakery in town. Pay particular attention to the weight listed on the label...