In-class Blogging pt. 2

Well I tried this once before, and it didn't work... Blogging in class. I know mom, I should be paying attention... but c'mon, it's my Geography class that CU is making me take because I guess my high school didn't offer it. Right now we are watching a film on why Walmart is bad. Well to sum up the film, walmart sucks, it's really bad for people all over the world.... but what are you gonna do? I don't really ever shop there, but sometimes I have no choice, like when I'm on the road... I'm always pretty blown away aby how big that place is. It takes me about a half hour to find a toothbrush.

Speaking of teeth, I get to have four of my wisdom teeth pulled tomorrow. I'm trying to get all of my health issues/surgeries out of the way while I'm still in my off-season. I tried to begin training this week, but school is just too overwhelming right now. I've only logged in about 4 hrs this week so far and will be lucky to get 3 more with my surgery. Next week is the last week of school with my first final on Friday and my last final on Monday (dec 13) night. The next day I gonna drive down to Durango to meet with some top-chiropractor/balance specialist. He's suposed to determine all of the muscle imbalances that I have in my body and set me up on a program to fix these imbalances.

In-class blogging

New Team!!

I’m very excited to say that I’ve been picked up by Targetraining. This is a professional road team that's being managed by Rick Crawford, and Tom Schuler. Check out the team website at http://www.targetraining.com/racing/index.html. This is going to be a new chapter in my life; actually, it will probably be more like a new book. I’ve decided to take this next semester off from school to focus all of my energy into racing and training. I’m going all in, 100%. I want to succeed at this sport more than anything else, and making it onto this team is a huge step in my progression towards that goal. I will begin officially training again on Monday, and begin building my fitness for the upcoming spring racing campaign which possibly will begin with the Tour of California in mid-February.

In my last post, I talked about starting a juice fast the next day (Tuesday). Well, I failed the juice fast. I lasted about twenty-four hours before I gave into the need for glucose in my brain and protein to nourish my disintegrating muscles. By about the 20th hour of fasting I came to many conclusions as to why fasting is a pointless endeavor for someone like me. The main reason that most people fast, at least the people I know, is for its detoxifying effect. Well, I thought a lot about this whole idea of detox and I believe that there are many other ways to detox the body without having to starve yourself. As a cyclist, I believe that every time I go out for a ride, I'm detoxifying my body. The harder or longer the ride, the greater the detoxification. When I was fasting, I felt very similar to how I feel towards the end of a 5-6 hour ride, depleted. I'm sure a lot of you have gone riding the next morning after a heavy night of drinking. You begin the ride feeling tired and sick... sure signs of the toxic levels of alcohol that still reside in your system. By the end of the ride, you feel great, as if you had never even taken 5 shots of tequila, had three margaritas, and few more drink that you'd forgotten about. That is proof, my friend, that exercise is the ultimate detox. It's just that exercise is so mainstream and it can't be advertised as an alternative treatment in the homeopathic alternative medicine circles that are so popular in Boulder. In conclusion, my study disproved my hypothesis that juice fasting is a great way to detoxify the body. Intestinal cleansing is another possible benefit of juice fasting. However, healthy, clean intestines can be maintained by eating diets that consist of raw foods and avoid refined sugars and flours. Intestinal cleansing can be done by ingesting psyllium husk, using enemas (I have yet to try this avenue), or drinking a ton of coffee the morning before a bike race.

I probably would have tried to last a full three days doing this, however, my friend from out of town was visiting, and I couldn’t turn down going out and having a good time while she was in town. So that’s what I did. I also went out on the road bike and hammered harder than I have in a long time. It just felt really good to go out there and ride at my limit for a couple hours. Unfortunately, I think I sent my body way out of balance with the fasting, then not fasting, then going out and eating rich foods and drinking, then riding my bike really hard, then eating more rich food on Thanksgiving. Now I have a cold, but I’m jumping on the alternative homeopathic Boulder bandwagon again and I spent about 20 bucks on Chinese medicine and some homeopathic medicine to try to kick this virus as fast as possible. I really do believe this stuff I’m taking works though; I feel pretty dang good right now.
Good night

Moab and Juicing

Somewhere around 20 riders (most were pro MTBers) including myself made the pilgramage to the mountain bike mecca of Moab, Utah this past weekend. As part of Brian Smith's birthday celebration we rode the White Rim trail, which was around 105 miles. It took me about 11 hours to complete, which is not a fast time at all. I was not out there to set any records, but to enjoy it and take it all in. It was a fun, spiritual, painful, and revitalizing expereince. This ride will be recorded as the biggest and best epic that I've ever done. I'll definately be going back next year.

Tomorrow I will be continuing my recent theme this month by begining a juice fast. This means that all I will be consuming is freshly juiced juice and water for the next three days. I know, this sounds pretty crazy, and it probably is. But, I know a lot of people who have done it, and they all say great things about it. In many ways it makes a lot of sense to me. I imagine it will be pretty hard, but so are a lot of things. I think it will make me stronger. The third and final day will be Thanksgiving... so no turkey for me. I'll let you know how it goes.

I can run again!

Damn I enjoy running... at least for like the first 15 minutes. Then I enter the pain cave... but it's still fun. I've been shelled with HW lately, and I finally finished writing a study on drafting in cycling that I've been working on all week. I have not gotten any exercise all week because of academia. But now that I'm finished, I can go out for a run. I was finally able to get out by about 8:00 tonight. It was dark so I decided to go for an urban run. I live about three blocks from peal street now so I headed that way... I took the longer route down the Boulder creek path to 13th street, I took that to the Pearl street mall. I usually just go trail running, but I realised that urban running is pretty fun too. It's kinda like urban assualt on the bike... Damn I havn't done that in a long time... I gotta give the DHers a shout out.

Tommorow is the last day before I leave for the Moab Epic... Gotta get ready.

Well that's all for now.

Ahhhhhh, The Off-Season

I know, it's been like 2.5 weeks since my last post. Since then, much has happened. As you probably already know, I won collegiate MTB nationals for the second year in a row (XC and Omnium). The race was muddy and cold, which was expected.

Since Nationals, I have been on the off-season program... which consists of doing whatever the hell I feel like. If I had hair, I'd be "letting it down right now" , but since I don't, I'll just "grow out my leg hair", instead. Now, whenever I look down at my legs, I no longer feel like a cyclist, but just a normal dude, it's kinda wierd. For the first week, I did absolutly no exercise. I did a ton of homework to catch up from all that I missed at nationals, and have been trying hard to make up for lost party time during the season. Lynch and I have decided that we're Mexican's for many reasons, so now the only drink we consume is tequila... which always leads to a crazy night. I'm already feeling pretty much over all of that though, and starting to feel the riding/training bug coming back.

I'm also pretty much over running. I did a few hard days of running over the weekend, and my legs are destroyed. I don't know what I was thinking by doing such hard epic runs. I'm actually writing a research proposal that has to do with how damaging eccentric (lengthing muscle, from downhill running) exercise is to the muscles. Everytime I feel pain in my legs, I think about how all of my sarcomeres (contractile units in muslce fibers) have been ripped apart. At least in a few more days I'll be over this DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness), and will be reaping the benefits of the RPE (repeated bout effect). I will then be able to run way more without the soreness the next day.

Next weekend I'll be joining some friends for the biggest epic mountain bike ride I've ever done. In honor of Brian Smith's 30th birthday, we will be doing the White Rim trail with a little bit extra in Moab, UT. Why is this ride so epic? It's 120 miles of mountain biking... so somewhere around 12 hours of riding. Also the guys that are doing it are all fast pro mountain bikers, so it won't neccesarily be an easy pace. Yesterday was my first time wearing chamois' since collegiate nationals. I went out for about a 2 hour ride and by the end of it I was wasted. It kinda made me a little worried about next weekend... which will be like six times longer at a much higher pace. My guess is that many of the other guys on the ride will be in my same boat though, seeing that it is the off-season for most everyone except crossers. I'll be fine.

Well time to do some HW and start my week!!

Cheers to Monday!!