Maddie Jo Robbins doesn’t look back at what she couldn’t do during the last year. The multi-time national champion mountain biker has moved forward to what she can do.
One week shy of the one-year anniversary of a crash that led to a severe concussion at the International Cycling Union (UCI) Mountain Bike World Championships at Mont Sainte-Anne in Quebec, Canada, Robbins was on her bike Friday back home in Durango. But she wasn’t only on her bike. She started her day with a 1½-mile swim across Lake Nighthorse, then she followed with a 25-mile mountain bike ride before she finished with a 6.2-mile run that finished atop Hogsback, the famed 7,400-foot summit in Durango.
Robbins came up with the triathlon herself. She wanted to do something that pushed her limits and tested her fears coming off a traumatic brain injury, and she wanted to include others in the community who also have overcome brain injuries in their sports. It all came together Friday in what she called “Tri the Brain.”
“It was all based off my concussion,” said Robbins, a 2020 Durango High School graduate who will attend Fort Lewis College and race for the FLC cycling team this school year. “That whole event was traumatic for me. To overcome that a year later, I wanted to do something to overcome my fears and have that feeling of racing again.
“I also wanted to build some camaraderie and do something to support other people who have gone through hard times with brain injuries. It was super cool for all of us to be together doing something fun to put a positive outlook on our injuries. It was about showing what we are now capable of doing that maybe we weren’t in the middle of the injury.”
Robbins and a small crew finished on top of Hogsback at 6:15 p.m. Friday. She had first set out on a paddleboard to the far end of Lake Nighthorse at 8 a.m.and began her swim back at 9 a.m. Her goal was to finish the triathlon by 3 p.m. Friday, but she was delighted to see a much larger crew eager to join her than she originally expected. So, the group set out together at a more moderate pace.
“I am very relieved and tired,” Robbins said. “But I am also just grateful for how cool it was and for all the people that came out to support an epic day with friends.”
Without high-profile mountain bike races to attend this summer because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Robbins has been able to slowly get back into racing form. She wasn’t cleared from her concussion to return to racing until seven months after her crash in Canada that sent her from third place to a 26th-place result. Robbins refused to withdraw from the race, but what followed was months of difficult recovery that included trips to Children’s Hospital Colorado in Denver. The National Honors Society student also missed time in the classroom her senior year at DHS as she struggled with noise and light sensitivity.
As she started to return to sports, Robbins immediately realized it was going to be a long road back. She not only had to conquer her fears of another crash, she also had to relearn motor skills.
“Coming off the concussion, I didn’t know how to swim anymore. It was super crazy,” Robbins said. “I went to swim, and I couldn’t do it. It was the craziest thing. I freaked out in the water. My brain had completely forgot how to do this innate skill. It was a step-by-step process to relearn to breathe and be OK in the water.
“So with this triathlon, I kind of thought if I swam across the lake, I could overcome that barrier. A lot of this was about overcoming those things. Mountain biking down the Ridge, it was similar terrain to Mont Sainte-Anne where I crashed. This was a way to overcome some of that post traumatic stress I had with the concussion.”
Robbins’ parents, Denise and Jeff Robbins, saw their daughter getting a bit restless without bike races to train for this summer. She was looking for a challenge, and so she began to come up with the idea for Tri the Brain with her coach Chad Cheeney, the co-founder of the Durango Devo youth cycling program and a coach with the FLC cycling program.
Cheeney was there when Robbins first got back on the bike March 15, and he helped Robbins slowly ease back into riding. It was a few months before she did any downhill trails, and it took until early July for Robbins to suggest riding down the Ridge in Horse Gulch.
“It’s burly with big rocks. It’s the kind of downhill where you’re always pedaling over technical sections,” Cheeney said. “When I asked her one day how she wanted to get home and she said the Ridge, it felt like she was back.”
Robbins has found coaches in places she never imagined over the last few months. Her friends Aleah Austin, Lauren Aggeler and Hannah Garvey helped her rediscover her swimming abilities, and they did a practice swim across Lake Nighthorse to prepare for the triathlon. They were proud Friday to cut five minutes off their previous time.
Aggeler, Austin, Garvey, Ainsley Haggart and Ian Kutzleb all joined Robbins for all three legs of the triathlon.
“It was one of the more special days I’ve ever had,” Robbins said. “I was stoked and thankful to have everyone with me. When I first started this, I thought it would be just me and people might come join me for a couple of different legs. But the team aspect of Durango Devo got people jazzed to do the whole thing. It was an epic day to all suffer together when normally we compete against each other.”
Robbins also was joined on the full triathlon by DHS junior Wiley Corra, a Nordic skiing, mountain biking and paddling star who suffered brain damage after a 40-foot fall from a pedestrian bridge in Salt Lake City in March 2018. Corra’s injury affected the motor skills on the right side of his body as well as his language skills. Refusing to stay away from the sports he loved, Corra has worked tirelessly on his recovery.
“Conquering a challenge with friends and going through thick and thin, it was a great day,” Corra said. “There were parts I thought I was going to drop out, but then you make it to a point and see your friends there, and I knew I just had to keep pushing to be with them. If they can do it, I can do it.
“We had so much support from people and family members. It was a hard day, but I appreciated the idea and think it was a really positive thing. I hope it grows in the future.”
Robbins called Corra’s fight to complete all three phases of Friday’s triathlon the essence of what she had set out to create.
“He’s pretty amazing,” Robbins said of Corra. “His injury was way worse than mine, and he definitely still had a lot of complications from it. But he has rebounded so well with his attitude. I wanted to get people out and put our injuries behind us for a day and celebrate what we could do and not what we couldn’t do. He epitomized that.”
Other athletes such as pro cyclist Emily Schaldach, a 2014 DHS graduate, accompanied Robbins for portions of Friday’s unofficial event. FLC cycling coach Elke Brustaert, who suffered a brain stem injury during a cycling crash more than two years ago, assisted with the effort. She used a paddleboard to follow alongside the swimmers and keep them safe from boat traffic Friday morning. Brustaert was proud to see the soon-to-be Skyhawk leading the way in an event to recognize brain injuries.
“Maddie Jo is bringing a positive angle to head injuries that many people don’t always think about,” Brustaert said. “All you hear about is when somebody has a head injury and they are not riding or racing. You hear how they’re struggling. You don’t hear a lot about the success stories when someone does recover and can get back to activity. It is a big deal. Some head injuries last several years. To get back to functioning is a huge deal.
“It’s great to see Maddie Jo doing something to bring awareness to head injuries and bringing people together in the community who have also had to go through the same common struggles she has. Being back out there, taking on new challenges and doing something she has never done before, that’s big.”
Robbins has always wanted to become an Olympian. At a young age, she envisioned standing on the podium as a skier. That transformed to mountain biking as she started claiming national championships early in her high school career. After conquering her fears of distance swimming and running, Cheeney said he wouldn’t be surprised to see her chase the triathlon at the Olympics some day.
After watching her overcome her concussion and the lingering effects, Cheeney believes she is capable of anything.
“She has opened my eyes,” Cheeney said. “I feel like a lucky coach to have her as an athlete. She’s always been so coachable and comes at me with ideas for her training like this triathlon. That doesn’t happen with all your athletes at this age. She’s pretty all-in on challenging herself in all these physical ways. It’s a lucky time in my life to have somebody this fun to coach.”
jlivingston@durangoherald.com
