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